20. Hunter
Hunter
Jess was in the fairground office at seven PM.
The crew had gone home two hours ago. The fairground was dark except for the fluorescent strip above the card table where she was sitting with three binders open and her laptop running and her phone buzzing with messages she wasn't answering.
Her coffee was cold. Her hair was in a knot that had given up on itself around lunchtime.
Her shoulders were up near her ears. Her pen was moving across a checklist, but her handwriting had gone from sharp to a scrawl that drifted off the line.
She was stressed. Three weeks of four-hour nights, skipped meals, and running every minute of every day were sitting in her jaw, her posture, and the dark smudges under her eyes.
She was holding. She was handling it. But the handling was costing her, and the cost was visible in the rigid set of her spine and the way her free hand kept clenching and unclenching on the table.
I leaned against the doorframe. "Come with me."
She didn't look up. "I can't. I need to finish the —"
"Jess."
She looked up. My face must have said something my mouth wasn't because her pen stopped. Her eyes moved over me — my clean shirt, my damp hair, the fact that I wasn't in work clothes anymore.
"Where are we going?"
"Come with me."
Her jaw worked — the internal argument, the Jessica Williams override, the voice that said stop means fail. The argument lasted three seconds. She closed the laptop.
The outdoor bath was behind the barn. Private — tucked into an alcove formed by the barn's back wall and the old stone fence that ran along the property line, hidden from the main house by a stand of live oaks.
Dad had built the surround years ago — a deep copper tub set into a timber deck, gravity-fed from the tank on the hill.
The oaks gave cover overhead, and the sky opened up beyond them.
I'd been out here since four. While she was in the fairground office running herself into the ground, I was setting everything up. Candles, flowers, a playlist — the first one I’d ever made — bath salts, wine, and most importantly, snacks.
The tub was full. The water was steaming. The bath salts had dissolved in milky swirls. The candles were lit. A woman's voice and a guitar, the kind of sound that made the warm air warmer, came out of the speaker. The wildflowers caught the candlelight. The stars peeked out above the tree branches.
I'd done what I could with my hands. The rest was up to her.
She stopped at the edge of the deck.
Her hand was in mine — I'd led her from the truck across the paddock and through the gap in the oaks. She'd followed in the dark without asking questions because the asking had run out of her around the same time as the arguing. She stopped when the candlelight hit the tub.
She didn't speak. Her hand gripped mine. Her jaw was working — the clench, the release, the clench. Her eyes moved over the tub, the candles, the flowers, the wine glass on the deck rail. Her chin trembled once.
"Hunt." Her voice was rough. Thick.
I squeezed her hand. Didn't say anything.
She let go of my fingers. Pulled her shirt over her head. Kicked off her boots. Her jeans came down, and she stepped out of them. Her bra. Her underwear. The warm light on her bare skin made her look golden.
But she always looked golden to me.
She stepped into the tub. The water closed around her ankles, her calves, her thighs. She sank down, and the heat swallowed her and the sound she made — long, low, a groan that came from somewhere deep in her body — was the sound of three weeks of tension meeting hot water and losing.
Her head tipped back against the copper rim.
Her eyes closed. Her hands floated on the surface.
The rigid line of her shoulders softened in the heat — not all at once, but inch by inch, the muscles releasing their grip as the water worked into them.
The crease between her brows smoothed. Her jaw went slack. Her lips parted.
I sat on the deck beside the tub. Poured the wine. Set the glass in her hand. Her fingers closed around the stem without opening her eyes. She took a sip. A slow exhale through her nose.
"You made me a bath."
"I ran some water."
"You made me a bath with candles and flowers and music and wine, Hunter." Her eyes opened. The candlelight in them was gold and wet. "You drove to town for bath salts."
"I drove to town for crackers. The bath salts were an impulse buy."
Her mouth curved. The first real smile I'd seen on her face in a week — not the professional smile, not the Jessica Williams performance smile. The real one. Slow and warm and a little bit broken around the edges.
I picked up the cutting board. Held a cracker with cheese on it in front of her mouth.
"Open."
"Are you feeding me?"
"You haven't eaten since Mom's sandwich at eleven."
"I had a —"
"Coffee is not food."
She opened her mouth. I put the cracker in. She chewed. Swallowed. Her eyes closed again and her hand found mine on the edge of the tub and her wet fingers laced through my dry ones and she held on.
I fed her. Crackers with cheese. Grapes — one at a time, her lips closing around each one, the juice on her lower lip that she licked off with her eyes still closed.
Slices of turkey that she ate without argument.
Her body was sinking deeper into the water with every bite — the heat doing its work, the food filling the empty spaces, the wine warming her from the inside.
The music played. The candles flickered. The stars wheeled overhead.
She opened her eyes. Looked at me. The flame light was in her irises — gold, warm, flickering.
"How long did this take you?"
"A while."
She was quiet for a moment. Her fingers tightened on the wine glass. She took a sip and the sip steadied her.
"I used to do this in New York," she said, watching the stars above us.
"Not —" She gestured at the candles, the flowers, the sky.
"Not this. It was an old bathtub in a four-hundred-square-foot apartment with the radiator clanking and the neighbor's TV through the wall.
But I'd get in the water after a big event and I'd lie there and the heat would hit and I'd just —" she exhaled. "Dissolve."
"Nobody ran you a bath?"
"Nobody knew I needed one." She took another sip of wine.
Her eyes were on the stars. "That's the trick, Hunt.
You get really good at looking like you don't need anything.
You get so good at it that people believe you.
And then you're in a bathtub alone at midnight after you've just delivered a flawless event for two hundred people who don't know your last name, and you think — this is it? This is what winning feels like?"
The creek frogs pulsed in the dark. The candle nearest her flickered, and the light shifted on her jaw.
"What do you want winning to feel like?" I asked. Quiet.
She turned her head on the rim. Looked at me. Her eyes were wet and steady, a warm golden brown from the light.
"This." Her voice cracked on the word. “You. The fact that you did all of this for me." Her hand found mine on the tub edge. Her fingers threaded through mine — wet and warm and gripping tight. "Somebody who knew I needed this before I knew I needed it."
My thumb traced her knuckle. The guitar drifted from the speaker. The warmth hung between us.
"I keep waiting for the part where it gets hard," she said. "You and me. I keep waiting for the complication. The catch. The thing that makes it not this easy."
My brows raised a fraction. ”This is easy?” The hour and a half I spent at the store proved otherwise, but I’d never admit that to her.
“Yeah, Hunt, this is the easiest thing in the world.” She squeezed my hand, and my heart skipped.
"You and me. The way you just — show up.
The coffee. The loading dock. The bath with candles and flowers and a playlist you made on your phone this afternoon, don't think I don't know that's the first playlist you've ever made in your life. "
"I'm not confirming that."
She smiled — soft and knowing. “You don't have to. I know you." Her thumb traced circles on my knuckle. "That's the terrifying part. How well I know you. How well you know me. How easy this is when everything else in my life has been so goddamn hard."
"It doesn't have to be hard, Jess."
"I know." She closed her eyes. Her head settled back against the rim. "I know it doesn't. I'm just not used to easy. Easy makes me nervous. Easy makes me wait for the other shoe."
"There's no other shoe.” Would never be another shoe.
"I know that too." Her lips curved. Her eyes stayed closed. "I know that because you're you and you don't have other shoes. You have one pair of boots, and you've had them for six years, and they're the same boots you'll be wearing when we're eighty."
"They're good boots."
"They're great boots." She squeezed my hand. The squeeze was tight. Her voice dropped. "Thank you, Hunt. For this. For all of it."
“You don't need to thank me, baby.”
Her skin was flushed from the heat. Her breathing long and slow. Her mouth was soft, her eyes half-closed, and her whole face had changed. She finally looked like the version of her that I knew. Not the stressed-out, running on fumes version that had gotten in this tub.
I stood. Picked up the towel. Held it open.
She rose from the water, and stepped out of the tub and into the towel.
I wrapped it around her — tight, thick, the cotton enveloping her from her shoulders to her knees.
I pulled the edges closed across her front.
She leaned forward and pressed her wet forehead against my collarbone.
The heat of her skin through the towel soaked into my shirt.