Chapter 18 Hunter
Hunter
The mansion is laughing, and I’m hiding from it.
Not a polite chuckle. Not the careful, measured kind of laughter Aunt Jane used to reserve for company. This is unfiltered, bright bursts that echo off marble and drift down corridors like the house has forgotten how to be quiet.
I sit at my desk and pretend I’m reading an email I’ve already skimmed three times.
From my office, I can hear everything anyway. Aunt Jane’s voice rises first, delighted and dramatic. “No, no—too tight. I refuse to be cinched like a pastry.”
Mrs. Lane answers with her usual warmth disguised as authority. “Jane, if you don’t hold still, this poor woman will lose her patience.”
And then there’s Adaline, soft laughter, a breathy sound that feels like it slides under my skin.
“Mrs. Lane,” she says, amused, “I promise I can manage.”
I’m not in a grim mood today. Not exactly. The sharpest edges from the past few days have dulled into something steadier, something I can almost control.
But I’m not ready to face her.
Every time I do, my body reacts like it has its own agenda. Every time I hear her voice, one word hits me like a punch to the ribs.
Wind.
It doesn’t matter that I’m not looking at my phone. It doesn’t matter that I’m not opening the app. My brain does it for me, pulling up memories I can’t shut down.
Wind teasing me, calling me predictable, telling me to stop letting other people’s opinions build the walls of my life. Telling me, in a rare moment of softness, that she’s glad I’m there.
I grip the pen in my hand a little tighter.
I should join them, I should step into the kitchen, pour coffee, let Aunt Jane make some ridiculous comment about my “antisocial habits,” let Mrs. Lane shove a plate at me, let Adaline smile politely like she did before I knew who she was.
But the thought of walking into that warm room and seeing Adaline there, real, solid, barefoot in my life, makes me feel vulnerable.
So I stay in my office.
I keep the door mostly closed. I take calls I don’t need to take. I review documents I’ve already approved. Anything to avoid the “accidental run-ins” I know Aunt Jane is fully capable of engineering.
Because the truth is simple and brutal.
I can’t look at Adaline. Not without thinking about what she was to me when I didn’t know her name. And I can’t talk to her without hearing Wind’s voice layered beneath every word.
My phone sits on the edge of my desk, screen dark. It’s still there, though. Even when I’m not looking at it, I know exactly what waits inside the app.
Wind’s last message. Read on the screen.
Unread in my chest.
I saw it earlier, her words sitting in our chat like a hand reaching out into empty space. I stared at it until my eyes burned. I typed three replies. Deleted them all.
My fingers hover over the keys.
I’m not sure what happens when I step into the truth, and it turns out the only place I felt safe was never safe at all, just another room in my own house, another door I’d locked and thought no one could open.
My mind betrays me by replaying what she told me as Wind, her heartbreak, betrayal, and starting over.
That constant determination she tried to project even when she was cracked down the middle. The way she never asked for pity, only for a place to breathe.
And then the face behind it clicks into focus again.
Adaline, stubborn and soft all at once, standing too close in my office, eyes fierce, finger pressing into my chest like she’s not afraid of me.
And of course—Dr. Connor Davis.
The name has been circling me like a predator since the fall festival. It’s there in the gossip columns I’ve avoided reading but can’t fully ignore. It’s ridiculous. She’s not mine. She was never mine.
But jealousy doesn’t ask permission. It doesn’t care about logic. It hits anyway. Because she loved him once. Or thought she did.
Because he had her in a way I never have, publicly, openly, in a life she lived before she came here.
And then the colder realization settles in behind the jealousy, heavier and more dangerous.
She took this job to disappear from him. To hide from a man with money and connections. Why?
The question claws at me. What did he do that made her run to a mansion in Rose Hills and accept an NDA and strict rules, and my mood swings rather than stay in the city?
What happened behind that engagement photo? My phone rings, and the sound slices through my thoughts.
Mark.
I answer on the second ring. “Talk.”
Mark laughs like I haven’t just been dissecting my own life in silence. “Good to hear from you too.”
“Yeah,” I mutter.
He doesn’t waste time. “I got the updated permit timeline. We’re on track. But the council vote is going to be the choke point.”
“I know.”
We talk details, site plans, environmental reports, and the way small-town politics can turn a clean project into a battlefield. Mark’s voice is calm, steady. He’s always been the kind of guy who sees problems as puzzles, not threats.
We discuss more details about the trade school, a project very close to my heart. It’s a lifeline I wish I’d had.
A place where kids from surrounding towns can learn real skills, mechanics, electrical work, and building trades, without needing college tuition or city connections. Kids without anyone rooting for them.
It matters. It’s personal.
Mark clears his throat, amused. “So. fundraiser tonight. You bringing a date?”
I should scoff. I should shut it down. Instead, my mind flashes to Adaline before I can stop it.
Her laugh, warmth, and her stubborn mouth. The way she looks when she’s focused, like she’s trying to put broken pieces back together without letting anyone see her hands shake. Like how she always creates a mess with her presence and in my head.
I surprise myself by smiling. It’s brief. It’s involuntary.
Mark catches it somehow, because he always does. “Oh, that’s interesting. Someone left you speechless.”
“It’s nothing,” I say flatly.
“Sure,” he replies, clearly enjoying himself. “Anyway, I’ll see you there. I want you meeting a couple of people tonight, the kind who can make a council vote harder to block.”
“Good,” I say. “That’s the point.”
We hang up a minute later, and the silence returns, thick, heavy. Dread settles in like a weight across my shoulders.
If the town learns my construction company is involved, especially tied to outside partners, they’ll dig up every old story they can find. The fire, my almost arrest, the years I disappeared, and the money I came back with.
And they’ll block the project because it’s easier to punish me than to admit the town needs something new.
The fundraiser isn’t just politics, though.
It’s Aunt Jane’s heart.
It raises money for teens who fall through the cracks, kids from broken homes, kids without foster support, kids who age out with nothing but a garbage bag of clothes and a “good luck.”
Aunt Jane believes in giving them more than luck.
So do I.
Tonight matters.
Tonight is a fight I’m willing to have.
And somewhere down the hall, Aunt Jane laughs again, louder this time, and Adaline answers with that soft, bright sound that unsettles me.
The mansion is alive. I’m determined to keep it that way. Even if it means I have to survive the rest of the day without breaking.
Even if it means I have to face the one person I’ve been avoiding, because she doesn’t just live in this house now.
She lives in the one place I thought was untouchable.
I tell myself I’m fine, that I’m in control. But the second the hallway quiets and my mind has space to roam, it does exactly what I don’t want it to. It goes back to that afternoon.
Adaline in that emerald green dress.
I’m standing in Aunt Jane’s doorway, with the guest list, pretending I don’t care about anything other than logistics, and then Adaline steps out, and I skip a heartbeat.
The color makes her skin glow like candlelight, and her eyes can’t lie, she feels the connection when they land on me. Her hair is pinned up, exposing the curve of her neck, bare, vulnerable. She turns slightly to check the fit, and I hate what that does to me.
My gaze stays locked on, like looking away would cost me something.
I remember how Aunt Jane looked at her, eyes bright, like she’d found something she’d been missing.
I remember how Adaline looked at herself in the mirror, surprised by her own beauty, as if she didn’t trust it, and remember thinking, without permission, without sense—I want to keep that look on her face.
And hating myself for it.
It’s infuriating because wanting to protect someone is a kind of attachment. And attachment is a thing that gets ripped away.
I can’t even have a memory of Adaline without the other version of her creeping in.
Wind in my phone, in the quiet hours, telling me, You’re not brutal and mean, you just act like that when you’re scared.
I swallow hard and stare at my laptop like it’s going to save me.
It doesn’t.
The temptation has been there since the moment I knew. A door I swore I’d never open.
I built HeartLines because I wanted distance between people and their judgments. Because anonymity meant safety. Because it meant you could be honest without the world turning it into ammunition.
I made rules.
Hard rules.
No digging into user identities, no curiosity that crosses into power. And never using data as leverage. But rules are easier to follow when your heart isn’t on the line.
And I am, whether I admit it or not, standing on the edge of something that feels too close to hope.
I open the admin dashboard.
Emotion is a liability. I’ve lived by that rule for years, kept it sharp, kept it close. And still, my hand is shaking. My fingers hover. My pulse ticks harder. One part of me is screaming Don’t.
The other part is already moving. Because hope is a dangerous drug.
And I need to kill it.
I type in Wind’s handle. A profile loads. Basic demographic band. Region. New York.
Age bracket: mid-twenties. Then the verification note, the one internal check that ties a user to a real identity without ever exposing it publicly.
A name. Adaline Miller.
My vision goes sharp at the edges. For a second, I don’t breathe.
For a moment, everything goes numb. My last hope, thin, stupid, desperate—dies quietly in my chest. Not because I didn’t believe it. Because I did.
But believing and confirming are two different kinds of pain.
Confirming makes it permanent. Confirming means I can’t pretend I’m wrong. It means I have to live in the reality where the person who knows me best, who made me feel human again, is the same person who looks at me like she doesn’t know me at all.
I close the laptop too hard. The click echoes in my office. My hands are shaking. Anger floods in next, like it always does when I don’t know what to do with hurt.
Not at her. Never at her. At the situation. At myself.
At the fact that I let an app become a lifeline and then let a woman become the face of it.
She thinks I’m pushing her away and rebuilding those walls that were finally starting to crack, because she didn't do her job right, that she went to meet her Ex.
But I know she truly cares for Aunt Jane, even without reading the messages from Wind. She thinks she lost my trust, but my loss is bigger; I lost the one person who knew me for who I am.
I stand, pace once, then stop. It’s time to leave.
The fundraiser isn’t optional. Mark will be there. The partners. The council members and others who decide whether my trade school project lives or dies.
I pull on my jacket like it’s armor.
When I step into the foyer, I hear more laughter, Adaline, Aunt Jane, and Mrs. Lane, still in their bubble. I walk towards the sounds. Then the staircase creaks. I look up.
And I see her.
Adaline is on the bottom stair, framed by the curve of the banister like the house designed itself around her. She’s wearing dark red, deep, rich, dangerous. The dress clings at her waist and falls in a smooth line to her ankles. She’s adjusting a bracelet, focused, lips slightly parted.
The sight hits me in the gut. Immediate. No warning.
I stop moving because I’m in too deep. There is no turning back.
I can lie to myself all I want, but my heart doesn’t lie.
I’ve been physically attracted to her since the first night I found her on the side of the road—rain, headlights, her stubborn chin, the way she looked at me like she didn’t want to need me.
And emotionally…
Emotionally, I’ve had her wrapped around my chest for months, Wind.
The one person I told things I’ve never said out loud. The only person who made the worst parts of me feel… survivable.
It’s almost funny. In a cruel way.
I built HeartLines because I couldn’t stand the idea of being seen. And it gave me someone who saw right through me anyway. Someone who made me believe, for a second, that connection might not always end in loss.
Now she’s here, in my house, in my life. And she has no idea what she was to me.
Aunt Jane appears behind her, radiant in a deep navy dress, shawl draped over her shoulders. Mrs. Lane is fussing at the clasp, hands practiced. “Hold still,” Mrs. Lane scolds gently.
Aunt Jane laughs. “If you want me still, you’ll have to sedate me.”
Adaline moves closer, stepping in to help. “Let me… here, Aunt Jane, lift your hair a little.”
I’m already walking toward them before I can stop myself. Aunt Jane turns, brightening.
“There you are. Come help me, darling. These women are attempting to strangle me with elegance.”
I reach for the shawl at the exact same moment Adaline does. Our fingers brush.
It’s nothing. Barely skin. A fraction of a second. And my entire body reacts like it’s a match struck in a dry room.
Heat races up my arm. My pulse spikes, my breathing stutters.
Adaline freezes too, just for a beat. Her eyes flick to mine, startled, as if she felt the spark and doesn’t know what to do with it.
Her breath catches, sharp enough that I feel it like a pressure change in the room. I hate that I can tell. I pull my hand back like I’ve touched fire. Aunt Jane doesn’t notice or pretends not to.
I force a neutral expression. “You’re not being strangled, Aunt Jane.”
“Yet,” she replies.
Adaline’s mouth twitches, like she’s fighting a smile. And I’m standing there watching her, knowing she once smiled at me in private, easy, unguarded.
Then my phone buzzes. A sharp vibration against my palm. I glance down.
Private Investigator—Urgent. I already know what the message will say. Even before I open it, the name flashes through my head like a warning bell.
Dr. Connor Davis.
Whatever this is… it isn’t going to stay outside these walls.
And if Connor learns she’s here, under my roof, then this isn’t just a complication.
It’s a collision.
And tonight, of all nights, the woman who knows me best is standing ten feet away, with no idea she’s about to become the most dangerous truth of my life.