Chapter Forty
Camille
My textbooks lay scattered across the kitchen table, a single highlighter tracing neon across pages, the unfinished paper blinking from the laptop with expectation.
Hunter hung out with us for a while longer that morning, before heading off to get himself ready for work.
The coffee he’d made before he left now sat cold on the table.
Fatigue hung in the air, a heavy fog that wouldn’t lift.
Responsibilities crowded in; deadlines loomed, the endless juggle of work and home, the nagging ache of feeling never quite enough.
I felt hollowed out, bone-tired, with rare moments never refilling me completely.
And then, when least expected, there was him.
My phone buzzed. No caption. No emoji. Just a link.
Hunter: “Beautiful Crazy” by Luke Combs.
I stared at the screen, chest tightening before I even pressed play. It was so him, sending a song instead of words, letting the music say what he never quite could. Somehow, that said more than any message ever would.
I tapped the link and let the first smooth notes fill the room. His voice wrapped around me, warm and sure, carrying a promise I could almost believe. I closed my eyes, pulled the blanket tighter, and let myself just be present for a while.
The lyrics washed over me, sudden and overwhelming.
“Beautiful, crazy. She can’t help but amaze me.”
The words landed deep. The song wasn’t just about looks, it was about being seen, every flaw and edge, and still being chosen. The lines about waking up grateful just to have her there, about finding joy in a smile, felt like he was holding up a mirror I barely recognized.
“Yeah, she’s crazy. But her crazy’s beautiful to me.”
I pictured him crouched on the floor, building Lego towers with Zeke as if nothing else mattered. Letting the twins climb onto his back, laughing as he dropped into push-ups until they shrieked with delight. Catching my eye across a crowded room, smiling as if I was the only one there.
I typed fast, fingers shaking:
Me: You can’t just drop this on me
with no context.
The reply came almost immediately, like he’d been waiting for it.
Hunter: Don’t need context. Just listen.
So I did. Again.
Every lyric pulled me deeper, threading into places I thought I’d hidden for good. Words about gratitude, about never taking her for granted, about being enough just as she was.
No one had said things like that to me in years.
Not in a way that felt real. Not in a way that felt earned.
My ex’s words had always been sharp, critical, and draining, and by the end, I believed I was the problem, the reason he turned to drugs.
The reason he became angry was that I finally left.
There was this one night, I remembered sitting on the porch as he reminded me that I was too much and not enough all at once, as if the very fabric of who I was would never be right.
Those words lingered as a constant reminder of why I felt undeserving of Hunter’s love.
Yet now, I could see his judgment wasn’t a reflection of my worth.
I was not too much or too little; I was simply more than he could handle.
And here was Hunter, saying the exact opposite, without saying it at all.
Tears slipped down my cheeks as I curled into the corner of the couch, swiping them away with the back of my hand.
The light from my phone blurred, and I pressed it to my chest, allowing it to anchor me.
Blanket pulled up to my chin, soft threads twisting between my fingers, I tried to find some small comfort against the rush of feeling inside me.
I wanted to tell him what it meant to me, but the old ache in my chest took shape, whispering doubts spun from every past hurt, murmuring that I was never enough.
Vulnerability felt dangerous, like asking more than I thought I had left to give.
That small, stubborn hope pressed in, an urge to trust again.
Maybe, with time, I could let him all the way in.
So instead I sent back the safest thing I could manage:
Me: I love you, Hunter.
Hunter: It’s all true. I’m sure you’re
overthinking that. And I love
you too.
That was all he wrote. And somehow, it was enough to undo me all over again.
Because I finally understood, this was how Hunter loved.
Quiet, steady, without fanfare. He wouldn’t flood me with declarations.
He’d hand me a song and trust me to hear everything he couldn’t say.
Sometimes, in those rare moments when his guard slipped, I’d catch glimpses of Hunter’s own fears and doubts.
He never spoke of them directly, but there were nights when his eyes looked perilously tender, as if his heart bore silent scars he was still learning to heal.
This unspoken vulnerability made the way he loved all the more profound and trustworthy.
And the wildest part? I did.