28. Hunter
Hunter
I sat in the workshop until dark.
The bench was in front of me with the half-assembled transmission to my left, and the rag I had used to wipe my hands clean before I told her go take it was still in my hands.
The worn patch of wood where Jessica’s legs used to swing was at my elbow.
Her coffee rings were on the surface. A hair tie she had left three weeks ago was caught in the vice handle.
The air smelled like grease and sawdust and underneath both, if I breathed deep enough, her shampoo — coconut, which had no business being in a workshop and had been in this one since the first afternoon she came back.
I sat in the chair with my hands on the bench and my fingers flat against the wood. The light changed around me from afternoon to evening, the sun moving across the floor in a slow yellow stripe, the shadows stretching, the gold turning to grey. I didn't reach for the lamp. The grey turned to dark.
My chest was hollow. My ribs ached around the empty space. My jaw was tight, my eyes were dry, but I knew the tears wouldn’t come. My body was doing something else — emptying. The warmth drained out of me until what was left was cold and still and sitting in a dark workshop with a rag in his hands.
I had said go. Same words. Same workshop. I had stood in this room when she was eighteen and told her you worked for this, go take it. I had meant it then, and I meant it now, but fuck did it hurt so much worse this time around.
She was the brightest thing that had ever come through Copper Creek.
I'd known it when she was twelve and bossing the boys at the creek.
I'd known it when she was seventeen, and I couldn't speak around her.
I'd known it when she came back and turned the county upside down, and I'd watched her from across rooms, my chest aching with pride and want.
She was meant for cities and stages and rooms full of people who couldn't look away from her. She was meant for the career she'd built with her bare hands and the name she'd put on doors. She was too big for this place. She always had been.
And I'd let her go. Because Jess was the brightest light I had ever stood next to in my life, and a light like that didn't belong to any one man. It belonged to the rooms it was going to walk into. And the only thing a man who loved her could do was open the door and let her shine.
My throat burned. My hands pressed flat on the bench. The wood was cold under my palms. Every part of the life I'd built around her was gone and I didn’t know how to breathe — how to exist — without her anymore.
I didn't move for a very long time.
The screen door banged at noon. Mom's voice from the kitchen: "Wash up. Five minutes." The smell of roast and rosemary hit the porch where I was sitting with my coffee that had gone cold. My boots on the railing. My eyes on the paddock.
I washed my hands at the kitchen sink. Mom was at the stove. She looked at me — one look, her eyes moving across my face the way she'd been doing all week — and then she turned back to the pot. Her hand found my arm as I passed. Squeezed once. Didn't say a word.
Clay came through with Callie and Maisie — Maisie in a sundress with what appeared to be glitter in her hair. Wyatt and Ivy behind them. Maggie and Jack. Liam and Stephanie. Dad last — his hat on the hook, his boots wiped, his hand on my shoulder as he passed to his chair.
The food came out. Mom's roast, rosemary potatoes, green beans that nobody liked except Mom and that she kept making because, as she said every week, vegetables build character. I ate. The food was good. My mouth chewed. My hands worked the fork.
Clay was telling a story about a bull rider from Abilene who'd tried to ride a mechanical bull drunk and ended up in a horse trough.
Callie was shaking her head. Maggie was arguing with Jack about the best route to Dallas.
Ivy was laughing at something on her phone.
The sounds of the family moved around me and I sat inside them and the empty chair beside me was louder than all of it.
"How are you doing, Hunter?" Stephanie. Her hand on Liam's arm. Her eyes careful.
"I'm fine."
Nobody responded. Forks moved. Glasses lifted. My jaw tightened.
Maisie slid off her chair. I didn't see her coming until she was at my knee. She climbed into my lap — her small body warm, her legs dangling, her hands gripping my shirt for balance. She had a soft toy horse in her fist. Worn. One ear loved flat.
"Uncle Hunt, you look sad."
My hand found her back. "I'm okay, Mais."
"You can hold Horsey if you want." She held up the toy. "He makes me feel better when I'm sad. You just have to hold him and think about happy things, and then the sad goes away." She looked at me with Callie's eyes and serious mouth. "But sometimes it takes a while."
I took Horsey. My fingers closed around the soft body. The worn ear.
She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around my neck. Her face pressed into my shoulder. Her hair smelled like strawberry shampoo and glitter glue. She held on — tight, the hold of a child who has decided you need love and is delivering it without negotiation.
My arm went around her. I held her against my chest. Everyone watched.
Maisie pulled back. Patted my cheek with her small hand. "There. All better."
She climbed down, went back to her chair, and picked up her fork as if nothing had happened.
The table was quiet. Horsey was still in my hand.
Dad put his fork down. His eyes found mine across the table. His voice was low. Easy. The voice he used on the porch at dawn when there was something that needed saying. "What do you want to do now, son?"
The table went still. My hand tightened around Horsey. The worn ear soft against my palm.
"I'll cancel the trip." My voice flat. "Doesn't make sense to go alone."
"Why?" Clay. Leaning forward. His elbows on the table.
"Because —" My jaw locked. My eyes dropped to my plate. "Because the whole point was going with her."
"Was it?” Mom's voice. From the kitchen doorway. Quiet. I looked up. She was leaning against the frame with the dish towel in her hands and her eyes on me. Her face was calm. Not surprised. Not sad. Calm.
"Mom —"
"Was the whole point going with her? Or was the point going?
" She came to the table. Sat down in her chair.
Folded the towel in her lap. Her hands steady.
Her eyes steady. "Because those books have been on your shelf since before that girl came back to Copper Creek, Hunter.
They've been there since you were twenty years old. "
The table was quiet. Clay was looking at me. Maggie's lips were parted. Wyatt's hand had stilled on his glass.
"You knew?" Maggie. Her voice small. "You knew about the books?"
"I dust that apartment every spring." Mom's mouth curved.
"You think I didn't notice the same pages dog-eared for all these years?
The margin notes? The spine on the Italy one so cracked it barely holds together?
" She looked at me. Her eyes were bright and full and there was no surprise in them.
None. "I've been waiting for you to say something since you were twenty-two, sweetheart.
I just didn't think it was my place to push. "
My throat closed. My eyes burned. The table was blurring.
"Why didn't you ever tell us?" Clay. His voice rough. His hand gripping Callie's under the table. "You've had those books for years, and you never said a word."
I shrugged a shoulder. I couldn’t look at any of them. ”The ranch needed me."
"The ranch has always needed you. That doesn't mean you don't get to want things." Clay's jaw was tight. His eyes compassionate. "Jesus, Hunter. We had no idea."
"I didn't —" My voice cracked. I pressed Horsey harder into my palm. "I didn't think it mattered. It was just books. Just — dreaming."
"It's not just dreaming." Maggie argued, her hand flat on the table.
Her voice fierce. "Don't you dare call it just dreaming.
You've put this family and this ranch first for your entire life.
Every single day. While the rest of us were off — riding bulls and chasing music careers and getting law degrees —" Her voice broke.
She pressed her lips together. Jack's arm went around her shoulders. "You stayed. You always stayed."
"Because I wanted to."
"I know you did." Her eyes were wet. "And I love you for it. But you're allowed to want more than this, Hunter. You're allowed to want those places."
Liam spoke. Quiet. Measured. "What were you planning? The original trip."
"Two weeks. Italy. Paris. Then Australia later." The words coming out rough. The itinerary I'd memorized. The itinerary that was pinned to a fridge in an empty apartment. "The Alta Via. Venice. The Great Ocean Road. The reef."
"Two weeks." Wyatt. His arms crossed. His jaw working. He looked at me for a long time. "Why two weeks?"
"Because the ranch —"
"Maggie and I have the ranch." His voice cut through mine. Steady. Direct. "We've had the ranch. We had it before Jessica came, and we've had it every time you've taken a day off, which by my count is about four times in the last decade." He uncrossed his arms. Leaned forward. "Take six months."
My chest seized. "Six —"
"Six months. Maggie and Jack have the horses. Liam's here. Clay's here. Mom and Dad are here." Wyatt's eyes held mine. "This ranch and this family will be here when you get back. We're not going anywhere. We have never gone anywhere. Go see the world."
"He's right." Clay said, his voice thick. "Go. Do the whole thing. Italy, Paris, Australia — all of it. Whatever you want. I've got a friend who runs a dive operation out of Cairns. I'll get you the contact." His voice cracked.
Stephanie reached across the table and squeezed my arm. "We'll be here, Hunter."
Ivy nodded. Her hand on Wyatt's thigh. Her eyes wet.
I looked around the table. My family. Every face turned toward me.
Maggie crying. Clay fighting it. Wyatt steady.
Liam quiet. Mom with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes full of something I'd never seen directed at me before — not love, she'd always given me love.
Permission. She was giving me permission.
"Go, sweetheart." Her voice soft, her chin trembling. "You've earned this. A long time ago."
Dad said nothing. He looked at me across the table, his jaw set and his eyes warm and his mouth pulling at one corner. He didn't need to speak. His face was saying it — the same thing Mom was saying, the same thing his hand on my shoulder had been saying my whole life.
My hand opened. Horsey was still in my palm. Maisie's cure for sadness.
The fight inside my chest had been going on for six weeks, and I knew its shape by heart.
One side of it said the ranch needs you.
The other side just said her name. Jess.
Jess. Jess. And underneath both of them, quieter than either, was the question Dad had asked me in the workshop the night before she'd left, the question I hadn't been able to answer then and hadn't been able to answer since.
What do you want, son?
I wanted her.
The fight in my chest stopped fighting. It wasn't that one side won. It was that the question turned around. Stay or go had never been a choice. Stay had been a habit. I had stayed long enough that the staying had become a kind of staying still.
I looked up.
Mom's hand was halfway to her mouth, the way it went when she could see something coming on my face before I'd said it.
Dad was watching me with the patient quiet of a man who already knew the answer.
Maggie's eyes were wet at the corners. Clay had set his fork down.
Wyatt was leaning forward on both elbows.
Maisie was reaching for another biscuit.
"Six months," I said.
The table erupted. Mom's hand went to her mouth.
Clay stood up and came around the table and gripped the back of my neck — hard, fierce, his forehead pressing against the side of my head.
"About damn time," he said. His voice wrecked.
Maggie was out of her chair and her arms were around both of us and she was laughing and crying at the same time.
Maisie looked up from her plate and said, "Why is everybody hugging?
Can I hug too?" and climbed back into my lap and wrapped her arms around my neck for the second time that afternoon.
I sat at the table with my family around me and Horsey in my fist and my niece on my lap and my brother's hand on my neck.
My chest was full. The chair beside me was empty and the ache was still there and the ache would travel with me across oceans.
But the table was full and the family was here and they were sending me into the world.
I was taking six months.