30. Hunter #2
Her words started pouring faster. Her hands moving.
Her eyes bright and wet. "I'm sorry. Hunt, I'm so sorry.
I was such a fool. I was scared — I was so scared.
and the whole thing with Garrett messed me up, and I didn't know how to — and then I was in New York and it was terrible. It was so terrible. The city was wrong, the job was wrong, everything was wrong because you weren’t there.
I missed you so much it felt like part of my soul was missing, like I was walking around with a hole in the middle of my chest and nobody could see it and I couldn't —"
Her voice cracked. Her eyes dropped to my chest, and her mouth stopped mid-sentence. Her eyes moved to my shoulders, then my arms and my stomach, then back up.
Her lips parted. "Fuck, Hunt." She blinked. "You look good. Like really good. All tanned and — how did you get so ripped? Were you always this —" Her hand came up and gestured at my torso. "Did Queensland do this to you? Because I need to send Queensland a thank-you —"
I stopped in front of her. My bare feet on the wet dock. My wetsuit folded at my waist. My face — I could feel what it was doing. The grin pulling at my cheeks. Pulling at something deeper. The grin was as big as Texas, and I couldn't stop it, and I didn't want to.
"Sweetheart?"
Her rambling cut off. Her mouth closed. Her eyes locked on mine. Her chin trembled. "Yeah."
"Took you long enough."
Her face crumpled. The laugh and the sob came at the same time. I stepped forward, my hands found her face, and I kissed her.
I kissed her like she was my oxygen. Like I'd been holding my breath for weeks, and her mouth was air. My hands on her jaw. Her hands on my bare chest — her palms flat against my skin, her fingers pressing into muscle. The touch sent a shock through my ribs that I felt in my spine.
Her bag slid off her shoulder and hit the dock, and neither of us cared.
I kissed her with her tears on my thumbs and her laughter against my mouth and the taste of airplane coffee and salt.
Her hands slid up my chest to my neck. Her fingers dug into my hair, and the sound she made against my lips — a small, desperate sound — cracked something in my chest that had been sealed for weeks, and the air rushed in.
My arms went around her, and I pulled her so close there was nothing between us, and I breathed her in. Coconut. Airplane. Coffee. Her.
The kiss went on. The light coming up gold over the Coral Sea. The boats creaking. Davo's head appeared in the wheelhouse window and then disappeared again.
I pulled back. My forehead against hers. My hands on her neck. Both of us breathing hard. Her palms still on my chest. My heart hammering under her hands.
"You're here," I said.
"I'm here." Her fingers tracing along my collarbone. Her eyes on mine. "I quit, Hunt. The job. New York. All of it. I'm starting a business in Copper Creek, and I'm coming home, and I'm never leaving you again."
My thumbs traced her jaw. My eyes burned. My chest full and aching.
"Good."
She laughed. Wet. Her forehead pressing harder against mine. "Good? I fly twenty-two hours and pour my soul out on a dock, and you give me good?"
I grinned. ”I'll give you more later."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
I took her out to the reef that morning.
Davo found her a wetsuit. Blake turned up at six-fifteen with coffees and his Stetson pushed back on his head and took one look at Jessica and said, "Fuck me, she's real.
Clay said you were moping about a girl and I told him no sheila was worth that much sulking" and Jessica said, "I'm absolutely worth that much sulking" and Blake laughed so hard he spilled his coffee and said, "Yeah, she's a keeper. "
I fitted her mask. My fingers on the strap, adjusting it against her hair. Her eyes on my face the whole time. I handed her the snorkel. The flippers.
"You're going to love this," I said.
"I know."
We slipped off the back of the boat. The water warm. The surface calm. I put my face in and the reef opened up below — the colors hitting through the glass the way they'd hit every morning for weeks. I turned to watch her.
Her body went still. Her hands floating at her sides. Her face in the water. Her eyes were wide behind the mask. She lifted her head — gasped — and said, "Oh my God" and put her face straight back in. Her hand found mine underwater. Her fingers laced through mine and squeezed.
We swam. The coral below us. The fish around us.
The light shifting through the water in columns of gold and blue.
She kicked beside me — her flippers moving, her head turning in every direction, her whole body trying to take it all in at once.
Every few minutes, she'd lift her face and gasp and say something — "Hunt, the purple ones" or "Did you see that turtle" or just "Oh my God" again — and then her face was back in the water.
She lifted her head and tipped it back and laughed. Full. Open. Water streaming down her face. The sun on her skin. The snorkel hanging from the strap of her mask.
She looked at me. The water warm around us. The boat rocking. The Coral Sea stretching in every direction.
"I love you.” Clear. Steady. No crack. No performance. Three words she'd been carrying across oceans. Three words I'd been carrying across oceans.
My hands left the boat. I pushed off. Three strokes. My hands found her face. My palms on her cheeks. The water around us. The sun above.
"I love you, too.” My voice rough. "Jess. I have loved you since I was twelve years old, and I will love you for the rest of my life."
Her face crumpled. Her hands found my wrists. We were treading water — her legs and mine working, my hands on her face, the Coral Sea holding us up.
I kissed her. Her mouth warm and salty. Her hands on my wrists. The water rocking us. The reef below. The sun on our faces.
Davo's whistle — sharp, carrying, bouncing across the water. "Oi! Lovebirds! You're drifting into the shipping lane!"
Her forehead came down against mine, and we stayed there with our breath catching against each other's mouths, her laughter shaking out of her in small wet broken sounds and her tears running down her face and onto mine, the water warm against our skin and the sky enormous and blue above us.