Chapter 5
Theo
Hunter was right. It is cold outside the barn. I don’t know how I didn’t notice it last night when I was out here, but there’s a certain bite to the air. I pull his jacket tighter around my body, and a fresh wave of his scent washes over me.
It’s soothing in a fucked-up sort of way. Damien always smelled… clean. Like expensive cologne and money. When I was a wide-eyed eighteen-year-old paralegal at the law firm he worked at, I was enamored with him. By the wealth he exuded, by the way he presented himself.
Hunter is nothing like that. He has cows, for God’s sake. And though his jacket doesn’t smell bad, it does smell different. Earthy and woodsy. Like wet dirt after a hard rain.
Why am I even thinking about that? I barely know him. In fact, I don’t know him at all.
I clear my throat, and he pauses, turning to look at me. “You okay?”
Fuck. Why does he have to be so sincere?
I know what fake concern looks like. I stared into the eyes of it for my entire early twenties, and I spent the last of my twenties recovering from it.
This is not that. This is just warm, smiling hazel eyes, green and brown as rich as the earth he smells like swirling in them.
“I’m okay,” I say. I was actually going to tell him I should go back inside, but…
I can’t force myself to do it. I wasn’t lying when I said I enjoyed having company.
It’s strange being around other people after being alone, but it’s nice.
And there’s something about Hunter I trust, which makes not a single bit of sense.
Anyone that gentle with animals is surely gentle with humans too, right?
He smiles. “Okay, great. We’ll start with Lila, and then, if you’re still interested, we can do the chickens, and we can ride Molls to the cow pasture.”
“Molls?”
“My horse.”
My steps falter. “You have a horse? Like a real-life cowboy or something?”
He laughs. “I’m not sure I’d go that far. But yes, I have a horse. If you’d rather, we can take the four-wheeler over. Might be a little cold, though.”
I shake my head. “Fuck no. I wanna ride the horse.”
Other than laughing again, he doesn’t say anything.
When we get to the barn, he pushes his shoulder into the door and opens it.
Lila pops up as soon as she sees him. She’s incredibly cute.
I’ve never really been around animals before.
Well, outside of cats and dogs and the box turtle that I begged my mom and dad to let me have when I was young.
“How are you feeling today, by the way?” Hunter asks, opening Lila’s enclosure.
“What do you mean?”
He gestures for me to sit down, and as soon as I do, I’m bombarded by tiny goat hooves.
My lips pull into a smile. Fuck, I’m so glad it’s a good day for me.
After we fed Lila last night, I lay in bed silently begging my brain to just give me this week.
Just this single week to be happy, and then it could do whatever it wanted.
Not like I have any real control over it anyway.
Hunter hands me the bottle, and I pull Lila up like she was last night, then I press the bottle to her lips, and she starts sucking it down.
“When you got here,” he says, sitting beside me in the hay, “you seemed… down.”
Down. That’s one way of putting it, I suppose. “Yeah, I’m okay. Better today. It’s been a rough few weeks, though.” Few weeks. Few years. Few lifetimes. But who’s counting?
“Is that why you postponed? Rough few weeks?”
I nod, chewing on the inside of my cheek. Hunter’s eyes are boring into the side of my face, but I don’t look at him. “I have clinical depression. It’s, uh—” I stop talking as I try to find a way to explain how awful and embarrassing it is without making myself sound like an idiot.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
I wait for more. For the questions. For the have you tried… and the well, just be happy. But it doesn’t come. He just sits there in near silence, his breathing deep and his breaths puffing out in front of him.
“Yeah,” I mumble. “Me too.”
Lila’s ears twitch as she makes little gulping sounds, and I chance a glance at Hunter. He’s watching me. I already knew he was. I could feel it, but… It unsettles me. Not that he’s staring at me. But how little it unsettles me that he is.
“Today feels different?” he asks, peering at me through his lashes.
My teeth sink into the inside of my lip. “Yeah, a bit. It’s like… It feels like… Ugh.”
He shakes his head, his lips turning up in a sad smile. “You don’t have to explain. Thank you for telling me.”
I want to tell him. I want to tell someone, and yes, I know this is what my therapist is for, and we’re going to ignore the fact that I haven’t seen her in months.
Some part of me just wants to tell someone the ugly truths in my head.
And the reality is that I’ll be leaving in six more days.
I’ll never see Hunter again. Why not him?
I shift, adjusting Lila in my arms. I look at the hay in front of us for so long that my eyes go a little unfocused and blurry.
“You know how some people wake up with, like, a full tank of energy? That doesn’t really happen to me.
I’m so fucking tired, like all the time.
Just exhausted to my very core. Brushing my teeth?
Exhausting. Feeding myself? Even worse.”
He hums, like he’s piecing things together, and my heart thrums because, fuck, why am I telling him this shit?
But now that I’ve started, I can’t stop, and I’m not sure that I even want to.
“I have better days. Like today. Today is better. But my base level? Never one hundred. Hell, barely even fifty.”
For a long while, Hunter sits silently. I pull Lila closer to my chest, focusing on the warmth of her body and her solid weight pressed against me.
“I’m really sorry. That must be so hard.”
My throat tightens to the point of pain. “It is.”
“I don’t understand it personally,” he continues, blowing out a breath, “but I bet it’s really frustrating to wake up and already feel like you’re behind everyone else.”
I squeeze my eyes closed as my throat tightens more. “It’s embarrassing.”
“Hey,” Hunter says softly. “No. It’s a real problem that affects tons of people. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“I was going to be a lawyer,” I whisper, even though I’m not sure why. “And then I met Damien.”
Hunter swallows so hard I can hear it. “There’s nothing that says you can’t now.”
A humorless laugh bursts from my throat. “I can’t even reliably show up at the gas station I work at. No way I could manage law school.”
Silence falls over the barn again. Fuck. I can’t even have a normal conversation with someone. I hear air being sucked through the bottle, so I gently work it free from Lila’s mouth.
“You’re good with her. She likes you,” Hunter says as he takes the bottle from me.
Rubbing my thumb along her forehead, I try to smile. It doesn’t work. “She likes food, maybe.”
Hunter chuckles, standing up. “Yeah, that too. Are you ready for the chickens?”
I whip my head up. “You still want me to go?”
His brows draw together. “If you want to.”
If I want to. “There’s a difference between charity and someone actually wanting to be around you. You don’t have to feel sorry for me.”
“I don’t feel sorry for you,” Hunter says slowly. Carefully. “I just don’t want you to feel locked into anything. If you want to come, I’d love to have your help.”
Holding a hand out to me, he raises an eyebrow. I take it, feeling the callused skin against my own, and let him help me to my feet.
We walk outside in silence. The sun is sitting low on the horizon, and as we make our way across the field and to the barn that I’m assuming is the chicken coop, I can’t help but stare at it.
“Is now a bad time to tell you I’m afraid of birds?” I ask when we get close to the coop.
“Are you?” Hunter asks. “I can walk you back to the house and do this alone.”
I shake my head. “No, that’s okay. They just freak me out a little bit. They won’t like… jump on me, will they?”
“Not if you don’t have food. They really love spaghetti. You got any spaghetti in your pocket?” Hunter tilts his head, a lopsided smile spreading across his face.
“Are you serious?” I ask, my jaw falling open.
Hunter winks. “I’m dead serious.”
I shake my head, patting my pockets. “Fresh out, thankfully.”
That makes his grin grow, and something about it warms my chest.
When he reaches up to open the coop, my heart does a little flip-flop, and when the door swings open and a shitload of chickens comes flying out, my stomach joins the party.
“Holy shit,” I breathe, watching them all scatter and start pecking at the ground.
Hunter laughs. “We can collect eggs later.”
“Oh. I guess that makes sense. They lay eggs.”
He turns to me with a bright smile. “Wow. You really are a city boy, huh? Where do you think eggs come from?”
My cheeks heat. He’s teasing me, even picking on me a little, and by all accounts it should make me feel bad. It doesn’t. For some reason, it makes me smile. “Well, I guess I just didn’t think about you having to collect eggs. Do you eat them?”
“Would be a waste not to,” Hunter says, still grinning. “We get more than we’ll ever eat, though, so we give a lot away.”
“You give them away? Couldn’t you sell them?”
He nods. “Sure, but we like to help folks where we can.”
A smile tugs at my lips. “That’s nice. I’ve never had farm-fresh chicken eggs.”
“Well, we’ll have to change that.” Hunter turns and starts walking away. “Come on. Let’s go get Molls.”
I follow Hunter, my feet crunching over the gravel and dirt, trying to ignore the flurry of chickens pecking and clucking behind me. We come to an older barn. It’s smaller than the first one, though not by much, and when he slides the door open, we’re met with a huff.
“Yeah, I know, girl, I’m late this morning.”
Holy shit. He has multiple horses. Not just Molls. But when he steps in front of what I’m assuming is Molls, I freeze in the doorway. “She’s big.”
He laughs. “She’s actually kinda small.”
He runs a hand over her brown coat. She’s so glossy, and her mane is dark and pretty. She leans into him, resting her forehead against his. “She’s really pretty. How are we both going to fit on her?”
“We’re not. You are.”
“What?” I’m already shaking my head. “I couldn’t.”
He smiles, turning to me. “Why not? She’s a great horse to start with.”
“Can’t they smell fear?”
Cocking his head, he blinks at me. “Are you afraid?”
I start to nod, but then stop because I’m actually… not. And what a strange thing to realize. “No, I guess not. Apprehensive, maybe.”
I move further into the barn, sidestepping past a much bigger black horse to stand beside Hunter in front of Molls. Looking toward Hunter, I raise a hand in the air. He nods at me, so I hold it out in front of her, and she noses at it.
“Holy shit,” I whisper.
“She’s a beaut, huh? I’ve had her since she was a baby. She’s my girl.”
I smile despite myself, glancing at Hunter. “I bet you get all the pretty girls, don’t you?”
“Nah.”
Shooting him an incredulous look, I snort. “Sure. You’re telling me you don’t bring girls back to the farm, show off your horses and your baby goats, and have them falling over themselves to get a real-life country boy of their own?”
Hunter laughs. Loudly. “Well, for one. Real-life ‘country boys’ aren’t a rare commodity around these parts. Besides, I’d be much more interested in impressing the other country boys,” he says with a wink.
Oh. Oh. I can’t fight my grin. Holy fuck, this is dangerous. Only it doesn’t matter that it’s dangerous because I’m leaving soon. Finding the real-life country boy wildly attractive isn’t going to hurt anything. “I see,” I say, ducking my head.
“Let’s get you set up on Molls so I can impress you with my cattle.”
For the second time in less than twelve hours, I find myself laughing.