Chapter Forty Four
Hunter
If someone had told me a year ago that this would be my life, I would’ve laughed them out of the room.
Laying on the floor surrounded by blocks and stuffed animals, Zeke narrating some elaborate battle plan with his toys, the twins squealing with delight every time I pretended to “lose” to them.
Sitting at Camille’s kitchen table, textbooks spread between us, quizzing her like some kind of fake professor while she rolled her eyes at me and tried not to smile.
Me: carrying diaper bags and strollers without thinking twice, like it was second nature.
Yet here I was. And the craziest part? I liked it. It didn’t feel like babysitting someone else’s chaos. It felt like being part of it.
The kids had wormed their way into me faster than I expected. Zeke, with his endless questions, testing me on sharks and space like I should have a degree in both. The twins toddling after me with their curls bouncing, calling out “Hunty!” like I was their favorite discovery.
And Camille… She was the center of it all.
Strong and stubborn, always pushing forward even when I could see the exhaustion in her eyes.
She carried so much, but when she let me shoulder even a piece of it, I felt like maybe I was finally doing something right, and I hadn’t felt that in a long time.
But there was still the other side I didn’t let her see too often.
Instead, I tried to just be the guy who brought toys, fixed cabinets, and made her laugh. And every now and then, when she looked at me like she trusted me, as if she believed in me, and I felt the weight of it.
Because I didn’t just want to be a visitor in her world.
So I decided to open up to her one night when she came by my apartment. I’d spent months dodging her questions about the Marine Corps. I’d joke, brush it off, change the subject. But tonight, the silence was too heavy.
“In the ten years I was in, I did four deployments to Afghanistan,” I said finally, my voice rougher than I intended.
Her eyes softened, lips parting, but she didn’t interrupt. That silence, her silence, wasn’t judgment. It was space. And somehow that was worse.
“The last one…” My jaw clenched. “That one was bad.”
She hesitated, then asked the question people dance around but always want to know. “Did you…?”
I let out a slow breath and stared at my hands. “Out there, you don’t get a choice. It’s them or you. They don’t hesitate.” My throat burned. “You just do what you have to do to get home.” The words hung heavy, like smoke.
I left the couch, needing to move, needing to do something with the buzzing in my veins. From the back of the closet, I pulled the small box I hadn’t touched in years. When I set it on the table, the weight of it thudded louder than it should’ve.
Inside were campaign ribbons, medals, and unit patches.
Bits of metal that meant survival, though to me they looked like reminders of loss.
“These don’t mean much anymore,” I muttered.
“Medals and ribbons for different accomplishments or trainings. But all I see are the guys who didn’t come home.
” I went through each one, answering the questions as she asked, and tried to let the appreciation and validation in her eyes sink in.
Her fingers hovered, careful, like the box held everything she’d been searching for. “Hunter…” Her voice trembled. “You made it home. You gave everything, and you’re still here. That matters. I’m proud of you.”
With those words, the carefully constructed walls I’d built began to come apart. Nobody’s ever said that to me, not like that.
When she asked why I kept them in a box, I didn’t have a real answer. Truth was, they reminded me of stuff I’d rather leave in the past. Yet seeing the way she looked at me, maybe I didn’t have to keep hiding those parts anymore.
???
Days passed, but that night stayed with me.
The way she said she was proud of me.
The way her voice cracked like she meant it. Nobody had ever said it like that before. Not even me.
So when she texted one night saying she had something to show me, I didn’t think much of it.
Probably another excuse to see her, not that I needed one.
Any reason to end my day in that small apartment of hers, surrounded by toys, the faint smell of lavender, and that quiet warmth she carried like a light, was enough.
But when I walked into her living room, I froze.
It was sitting on the coffee table.
A black frame with a glass front. Inside, every medal, every ribbon, every piece of that old life I’d shoved into a box years ago was laid out in careful rows. My unit patch near the top, a faded photo of my squad tucked in the corner.
Camille stood beside the couch, fingers worrying the hem of her shirt. “I made you something,” she said quietly, nerves flickering behind her smile.
For a second, I couldn’t move. My throat tightened, and the air felt heavy, thick. I crouched down, resting my elbows on my knees. The medals caught the light, all lined up like they belonged to someone who had his life together, someone proud of what he’d done. They didn’t look like mine.
The faint hum in my ears was the same one that used to hit before a firefight, like the world had gone still, waiting to see what I’d do next.
“You did this?” I muttered, my voice rough.
“I didn’t want them hidden,” she said. “You gave so much of yourself. You shouldn’t hide it. You should honor it. It felt like the least I could do.”
That one hit deep. The kind of truth that burns on the way in.
I cleared my throat, trying to ground myself. “Camille…I kept these packed away for a reason,” I said, nodding toward the frame. “They don’t feel like accomplishments. They feel like… ghosts. Names I don’t get to say out loud.”
She stepped closer, voice warm, “They’re proof you came home. That you fought your way back.”
I let out a slow breath, rubbing the back of my neck. “Yeah. Sometimes that’s the part that stings the most.”
Her hand found mine then. They felt so small and warm in my grasp, but it was all it took for the noise in my head to quiet.
Her voice wavered. “I’m sorry…did I overstep?”
I looked up at her, the uncertainty showing in her eyes.
For a second, I didn’t trust myself to speak. I just stood there, taking her in. The quiet doubt behind her question, the way her hands trembled ever so slightly.
Then I shook my head. “No. You didn’t overstep.”
She exhaled, a small, shaky breath that hit harder than I expected.
I stared at the frame again. At the medals, the photo, the dust of years between who I’d been and who I was now. Usually, it felt like looking at someone else’s life, a different time, but now, it felt like it was mine.
“You didn’t overstep,” I said again, quieter now. “You gave me something I didn’t think I’d get back.”
Her eyes softened. She didn’t fill the silence. She just stood there, letting me find my footing.
“Thank you,” I said, and it came out rough, too small for what it meant.
I shook my head, searching for words that didn’t exist. “You don’t know what that means to me, Cami.
For the past year, I tried to forget that part of my life.
Figured if I buried it deep enough, it couldn’t reach me.
But you…” I paused, swallowing hard. “You didn’t try to fix it.
You just saw it. You saw me. And you didn’t flinch. ”
Her eyes glistened, and she smiled. “You deserve to be seen, Hunter.”
The air between us shifted. For a heartbeat, everything felt still. Like the first breath after surfacing from deep water.
I stepped closer, brushing a curl from her cheek with my thumb. “You didn’t have to do this,” I murmured.
“I wanted to,” she said. “You should be proud of who you are.”
I nodded, jaw tight. “Yeah, maybe you’re right.”
She smiled again, and for a long moment, neither of us said anything. I just listened to the sounds of her apartment, all of it grounded me in a way nothing else could.
When I finally leaned in and pressed a kiss to her forehead, a thank-you I couldn’t put into words.
Her hand squeezed mine gently, and I caught myself thinking how damn lucky I was that she saw something worth saving in a man who’d spent years running from himself.
This wasn’t just a frame on a coffee table. It was proof that someone saw me, all of me, and stayed anyway.
That was the first time I didn’t feel like a soldier just trying to survive.