Chapter Thirty
HUNTER WOKE UP THE next morning with a pounding headache. His bed was cold, and it was all his own damn fault.
Wincing against the too-bright sunlight, he staggered to the kitchen, where he swallowed a couple of ibuprofen with two full glasses of water.
In his effort to fill up the carafe for the coffee maker, he almost knocked over the empty bottle of whiskey last night’s sad-sack version of him had been considerate enough to leave by the sink.
To be fair, the bottle had been three-quarters empty by the time he picked it up. But he’d sure as hell chased all his hurt and anger to the bottom of it.
As the coffee brewed, he braced his arms on the edge of the counter and hung his head.
What had he been thinking, laying all of that on Emma last night? She’d been trying to be nice, apologizing for asking so much of him, and he’d taken every olive branch she’d offered him and whittled it into a shiv.
The thing was that he wanted to take care of her. He wanted to help her out with whatever she needed, and at the end of the day, he wanted her to want to come home to him. He wanted this to be their home. Forever.
And that realization terrified him straight down to his bones. He’d spent his whole life dead set against getting attached, much less finding a soulmate. He knew how the story ended.
So being here? In this purgatory of being attached to this perfect woman—a woman who was still discovering herself, and who was becoming more and more incredible every day?
Who had hopes and dreams she still hadn’t even figured out?
Who’d started this entire journey by just floating along? Just passing through?
It hurt.
So he’d pushed her away.
And he regretted being so goddamn harsh. A part of him wanted to drive over to her place right now and set the record straight. He’d take what he could get, and when she decided to move on, he’d be supportive.
But could he really do that? After everything he’d been through… after watching the way his parents’ love affair had gone…
Wasn’t it better to just stay here? He could go back to his old, grumpy, misanthropic, lonely life, and it would be fine. Great, even.
The coffee maker finally finished its cycle, and he poured the bitter brown magical cure-all into the biggest travel mug he owned. Back in his room, he got dressed for work. Just before he could head for the door, his phone buzzed, though.
Oh, Jesus.
It was a picture from his sister, Kyra—a selfie of herself standing in front of a jam-packed minivan.
Hitting the road right after the kids finish school, the message read. See you—and the pumpkins!!—soon
Right. Kyra and her perfect husband and her two perfect kids came in for Harvest Fest every year. He’d known they’d be on their way, but somehow in all of the commotion, he’d let it slip his mind.
Drive safe, he replied.
He was excited to see her, but that meant heading to his dad’s place right after work and being sociable and playing with his niece and nephew and having a beer with his brother-in-law. Which sounded great; he loved getting to spend time with them.
But seriously? Today?
Putting it out of mind for now, he got in his truck, the seat of which was basically molded to his ass after the hours and hours he’d spent in it the day before. He rolled the windows down for his drive out to the preserve, letting the crisp autumn air clear his head a little.
It worked, too. Between the coffee and the ibuprofen and the scent of fall leaves, his head was feeling better.
Right up until he walked into the ranger station and immediately got accosted.
“There you are!” Alix’s mom, Greta, launched herself out of his chair.
“Uh…”
“I am so sorry,” Alix murmured from the other side of the room.
“Can I help you?” Hunter asked.
Greta stalked right up to him and jabbed him in the chest with a pointy, pointy finger. “I don’t know. Can you?”
“Um—”
“She”—Greta jabbed a finger from her other hand at Alix—“says you told her not to go to college.”
Hunter was not caffeinated enough for this conversation. The headache he’d thought was fading came roaring back with a vengeance.
Edging past her, he set down his coffee, then took off his jacket and tossed it over the chair. Scruffing a hand through his hair, he turned back to face her. “Ma’am, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Tell him, Alix. Tell him exactly what you told me.”
“I didn’t tell her anything,” Alix pleaded. “Just, she was all in my face about my college applications, which aren’t due for months, by the way.”
“If you want to go early decision—”
“My early decision is that I’ve made the decision not to go!”
Hunter held up his hands, as if that were going to stop the two of them from going at each other. “Is this really the place to be having this conversation?”
“Yes,” they both answered at once, and okay, fine.
“Anyway.” Alix folded her arms over her chest. “I finally put my foot down and said I’m not going.”
“Because you told her not to,” Greta accused yet again.
Alix shouted in retort, “He told me that I should do whatever I wanted, because it’s my life, which is something it’s high time you got through your head!”
Hunter pinched the bridge of his nose, muttering, “That does sound like something I would say.”
“College will open so many doors for you,” Greta implored. “It’ll broaden your horizons.”
“But why do I have to broaden my horizons when I’m good, Mom? I don’t want to see the rest of the world. I have everything I need right here.” She looked to Hunter, desperation shining in her eyes. “Right, Hunter? I can just stay here forever and be a happy hermit, living in the forest like you.”
And then it hit him. That wasn’t just desperation shining in her eyes. It was admiration, which he’d never done anything to warrant. The kid looked up to him, which, okay, fine, he knew. But she was trying to be like him?
Suddenly all that stuff about being “bros” hit him with a new flush of meaning.
“Alix, I am not… What do you kids call it? ‘Life goals.’” He made the finger quotes and everything.
“Sure you are.”
“I’m not.” And he couldn’t keep the ugly chuckle from his voice now.
If she could have seen him this morning, hung over and miserable and alone, she’d realize that he was the last possible person she should be looking up to as a role model.
“There’s nothing wrong with being a hermit, if that’s what you want to be. ”
“See?” Alix interrupted.
“I’m not finished.” He held up a warning finger to Alix and to Greta, whose mouth was already open to protest. “But you can’t push away the whole world, Alix.”
“I’m not.”
He fixed her with the sternest look he had in his arsenal. “Really?”
“You won’t even go visit your father,” Greta interjected.
Alix crossed her arms defensively over her chest. “California is all the way over there. If he wants to see me, he’ll come here.”
“He has. Multiple times.”
“Well, if he wanted to see me more, he shouldn’t have left.”
Good lord, maybe Alix really was just like him. No matter what her mom said, she found a way to twist it into a new, different problem.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I think we’re getting off-topic here.”
“No.” Greta shook her head, a new clarity growing in her gaze. “We’re not. If anything, we’re getting to the heart of the matter.”
“We are?” Both he and Alix asked the question in unison.
“Of course we are.” Greta’s hands twitched, like she wanted to reach out and shake her daughter, but she clenched them together. “Alix, sweetheart. There’s a big world out there. And whether it’s California or UVM, you can’t pretend it doesn’t exist.”
“Yes I can,” Alix retorted, but her voice had a little tremor to it.
Something in his chest dully ached.
Because that was what he’d been doing, wasn’t it? All this time. His whole life.
“Your mom’s got a point,” he heard himself say. His voice was echoing in his ears.
“Of course I do,” Greta said smugly.
Alix’s jaw flexed. “But—”
Hunter held up a hand. The conversation he’d been having with Alix and Greta was important, but it faded into the background as the stark truth of his own situation came into focus.
He’d been hiding from the world, all right. Pretending it didn’t exist, even.
Until Emma came along.
And everything had changed. For the better.
“Staying closed off to the world is no way to live,” he said, and it was as if the words were coming from a long, long way away. “It’s scary to open yourself up to it. You might not like what you find. But you might love it.”
His throat tightened, and he coughed into his elbow in a vain effort to clear it. But there was no loosening the iron bands around his ribs.
“Hunter—” Alix tried to interrupt.
But he shook his head, well aware that he was speaking to himself as much as he was to her.
“It’s easy to stay safe in one little place, all by yourself.
There’s nothing wrong with being a happy hermit.
But there’s also a lot more out there.” His heart squeezed even harder.
“And maybe it’s worth exploring—even if it means a little risk. ”
By the time Hunter arrived at his dad’s place that night, his brain roughly resembled scrambled eggs.
Between his fight with Emma and his conversation with Alix and her mom, he was all turned around, and there was a tenderness at the center of his chest. All he wanted to do was go home and pass out and hope things seemed clearer in the morning.
But Kyra only came into town a couple of times a year, and he wasn’t going to miss the chance to see her or her family. That said, he checked his watch getting out of his truck. If he was still feeling miserable in an hour’s time, he was fully prepared to fake a headache and nope out.
The instant he walked in the door, though, he was just about bowled over by forty-something pounds of pure chaos.
“Uncle Hunter!” His six-year-old nephew Wolf jumped on him and immediately started regaling him with everything he’d learned about dinosaurs in the past few months.