Chapter 2 #2
Then Mila yelled from outside, Jaden yelled back, and the moment broke exactly the way moments always did in our family.
The backyard was already full when I stepped onto the patio.
My parents’ ranch sprawled under the July sun, all green grass, stone, white fencing, and wide-open Texas sky.
There were long tables set with food, red-white-and-blue decorations, kids running everywhere, music playing low, and the pool looking tempting as ever in the heat.
Daddy stood near the grill with Wolfe and Rebel Judd, laughing at something Wolfe said.
Aunt Paris was with Mom, Ryse beside her.
Nils and Sierra Karlsson were there too, though without the chaos of their triplets, which was unfortunate because Liv, their daughter, and I had become good friends over the years.
Max stood near the drinks with his younger sister, Hannah, looking like he had appointed himself the official supervisor of doing absolutely nothing.
And then I saw Hunter. Everything inside me paused.
He stood near Max with a beer in one hand, sunglasses hooked into the collar of his shirt, his attention angled toward the pool where Isla was already with Mila.
He looked relaxed in a way I had rarely seen when I was younger, though maybe relaxed was the wrong word.
Hunter Russell always carried tension quietly. It lived in his shoulders, in his jaw, in the way his attention tracked his daughter even while he listened to someone else speak.
He had not gotten less attractive with age, which felt rude.
Honestly, it felt personally rude. He was older now, obviously.
There were faint lines at the corners of his eyes and a harder edge to his face.
But instead of making him less dangerous, it made him worse.
More solid. Like a man who had learned exactly what he wanted to protect and what he refused to risk.
My seventeen-year-old crush, apparently, had not died.
The second Hunter looked up and saw me, my crush flared to life with a vengeance.
I wasn’t the seventeen-year-old inexperienced girl anymore.
I was a woman with needs. I enjoyed sex.
I had learned in medical school that sometimes it was necessary to take the edge off.
His gaze moved over me once. Not slowly and not obviously, but not fast enough either.
Recognition crossed his face first, then shock, and then something else he buried so quickly I might have missed it if I had not spent half my life studying people.
His beer went down wrong. He coughed hard, turning away, and Max slapped him on the back with a laugh.
A hot, stupid thrill moved through me. Well, that was new.
I hugged him because it was normal. Because he was a family friend.
Because he was my father’s player and my father’s friend, and I was not going to stand there staring at him like he had just stolen my ability to breathe.
The hug lasted maybe one second. It was still a mistake.
He was warm and solid, and his hand touched my back just long enough for me to remember every forbidden little thought I’d had as a teenager and realize with horror that adult me was much, much worse.
“You look exactly the same,” I said, because saying you look dangerously good seemed like a terrible choice.
“That’s because I moisturize,” he said.
And then I remembered that he always attempted these terrible jokes that made me laugh anyway.
I laughed, and then Isla came running up, wet hair stuck to her cheeks.
I had a quick conversation with Isla, taking in how much she looked like her daddy.
She was the spitting image of him. I also noticed how his eyes still glowed at everything she said.
She made me laugh just like her daddy, and when I looked at Hunter, he was watching me.
Then I greeted my cousin Max who was more like my big brother growing up.
He also gave me a reason not to look at Hunter for at least a few seconds.
I knew he was close with Hunter. I remembered when Max was signed to the Blaze.
But before thirty seconds were up, I side-eyed Hunter, and he was still watching.
Daddy noticed me then, and because he was physically incapable of subtlety when he was proud of one of his children, he announced my elective to half the backyard.
Oh boy, he was really getting into the details.
I didn’t think anyone here cared except for him and Mom.
I smiled because everyone was looking at me, but my eyes found Hunter.
His jaw tightened. Just once. But I saw it, and my stomach flipped because I knew what that look meant.
Want and warning were tangled together in his expression, and I recognized that kind of restraint because I had seen it before.
My ex had looked at me like that in the beginning.
Back when I thought he was intense, focused, and brilliant.
Back when I thought dating a resident made sense because he understood the hours, the pressure, the ambition.
He knew what it meant to cancel plans because of the hospital.
He knew what exhaustion did to a person.
He knew why medicine mattered. Two years.
I gave him two years. Then last year ended with me opening the door to an on-call room and finding him with a nurse.
His white coat had been hanging on the edge of the bed.
For some reason, that was the detail that stayed with me.
Not the shock on his face, not her scrambling, not my own voice going cold and strange when I said his name.
It was the coat. The symbol of everything I had admired about him, tossed aside like it meant nothing.
After that, something in me went quiet. Not broken exactly, just numb.
The part of me that wanted, flirted, burned, and hoped went silent.
I buried myself in school because school was always demanding and constant.
I assured my family I was doing well. Until Hunter looked at me by the pool, and my entire body proved I had been lying.
I tried to enjoy the day. I spent time with Mom and let Daddy brag.
I laughed with Max and listened to Rebel, Mom’s best friend, tell a story about college that made Mom cover her face while Wolfe grinned like he had not matured one bit in twenty-five years.
I watched Mila and Isla be inseparable while Jaden complained about there being no boys his age and then immediately joined their pool game anyway.
It was a good day filled with family and friends.
A normal day. And still, my awareness of Hunter ran under every moment like a second pulse.
Hunter near the cooler. Hunter laughing at something Daddy said.
Hunter crouching at the edge of the pool to fix Isla’s goggles.
Hunter lifting his beer to his mouth. Hunter looking away every time I caught him looking.
By late afternoon, I had changed into my yellow bikini because it was hot and because I wanted to swim and because some reckless, newly awakened part of me wanted to know if he would look again.
He did. For a second. The water cooled my skin, but it did nothing to calm me down.
If anything, it made everything worse. I was too aware of my body, too aware of every drop of water sliding over me, too aware of Hunter.
It was ridiculous. I was twenty-four years old, a fourth-year medical student, a grown woman who had survived humiliating heartbreak, impossible exams, brutal rotations, sleepless nights, and hospital shifts that made my feet ache so badly I wanted to cry.
Surely, I could survive attraction. Apparently not.
Because when Hunter got into the pool at Isla’s request, all bare chest, tattoos, wet hair and reluctant smile, my mouth watered so badly I had to swim to the other side.
I lasted another twenty minutes before I got out, wrapped a towel around my waist, and told Mom I was going to rinse off in the pool house.
She was busy mediating a dispute between Mila and Jaden, so she barely heard me.
The pool house was quiet, cool, and private. I closed the door behind me and leaned back against it for a second, my eyes shut as I tried to gather myself. The problem was that I couldn’t.
I was overheated and restless and embarrassed by how alive I felt.
Months of numbness had snapped apart in one afternoon, and all because watching Hunter Russell got me hot and bothered.
I turned on the shower. Steam rose quickly, curling around the glass and tile.
I untied my bikini top, stepped out of the bottoms, and moved under the water before I could think too hard.
For a minute, I just stood there, letting the spray soak my hair and run down my face, trying to breathe, trying to cool down, trying to convince my body that nothing had happened.
But my mind betrayed me. Hunter’s hand on my back when I hugged him.
Hunter coughing when he saw me in the white dress.
I came up with a fantasy of us alone in the pool. He walked up to me and told me how beautiful I was. How he knew I was grown up. That I was a woman with needs.
Catherine, what are you doing?
My pulse kicked hard. I should’ve turned the water colder, gotten dressed, and gone back outside. I should have remembered that this was my father’s team, my father’s friend, Isla’s father, and a man tied so closely to my family that wanting him felt like stepping toward a cliff.
But I was alone and needy after months of sexual drought. I was allowed to want something privately, even if I could never touch it in real life. After months of feeling nothing, wanting him felt almost like relief, and I let myself have that relief for one reckless, stolen moment.