7. Hunter
Hunter
Underneath the adventures, something else was building, and Jessica told me about it on a Wednesday in the workshop.
"Okay, so." Her legs swung. "Garrett Calloway."
The wrench slowed. I started turning it again. "What about him?”
"He texted me at eleven last night about a tent supplier. Eleven, Hunt. PM. Who is on the clock that late to talk about tents?"
"Nobody."
"Right? Thank you! And then there was a super boring meeting on Tuesday. It ended at four-thirty, and at five-fifteen, I got a follow-up text. About follow-up items. I didn't ask him to follow up on anything. I sent him a thumbs-up and turned my phone face down."
"Jess."
"And then —"
"Jess."
" — flowers, Hunt. Carnations. They came to my parents' house yesterday.
The card said Thinking of you, no punctuation, like the man started writing a sentence and gave up halfway through, and it looked like the arrangement had been Googled together by a guy in a panic, and I'm sorry, I know it's not the point, but — carnations? Like I'm in a hospital bed?"
I rolled out from under the truck.
"What?"
I sat up on the creeper, wiped my hands on the rag, and did everything in my power to not start wringing it in my hands.
"Show me the texts."
She looked away from me. ”They're nothing."
"Then it'll take you ten seconds."
She squinted at me. Then she took the phone out of her back pocket, scrolled, and held it out across her lap. I stood, walked over, took the phone, and read.
The texts were polite. The texts were professional. They were also at 11:04 PM, 5:14 PM, 9:32 PM, and 7:47 AM, going back two weeks, and twice he'd sent just thinking about you. I scrolled until I hit the most recent one, and gave the phone back.
I felt like I was going to puke.
"He's been at the hall, too." She was watching my face now.
"Twice last week, when I was meeting vendors.
Permit thing one time, schedule thing the next.
Stood around for forty-five minutes after the ninety-second reason was done.
Standing too close. Asking me about the layout when I'd already sent him the layout. "
"Jess."
"What?"
"That's not nothing."
She deadpanned like I was being ridiculous. “Hunt."
I relayed the list of everything she just told me so she could see how clear it was that he was into her.
She opened her mouth. Closed it.
"Oh. Oh. Hmm."
My jaw tightened. "Yeah."
"I — yeah. The flowers. I didn't clock that one. I just thought my mom was getting a kick out of it."
"He wanted your mom to get a kick out of it."
"Well. Damn."
Her legs had stopped swinging. She set the coffee down.
The workshop door rolled back, and Maggie came in carrying two paper cups from Dottie's and a paper bag tucked under her arm.
She looked at Jess, then looked at me. I could see it all over her face: she heard what we were talking about.
She walked the rest of the way in, set the cups on the bench, and pulled her sunglasses up into her hair.
"Pecan kringle," she said. "I brought enough for three because I had a feeling, and now I'm having a stronger one. What did I just walk into?"
"Garrett Calloway.” I could barely get his name out.
Maggie’s face lit up. ”Oh, good. That's exactly who I came here to talk about."
I sighed. ”Mags."
“Hold on.” She held up a hand and walked past me to Jessica.
“Let me — okay." Maggie set the bag down.
Picked up one of the coffees. Took a sip.
Put it down. "Dorothy Sullivan stopped me at the post office this morning. Apparently, Penny Calloway told her at choir practice that you and Garrett are — and I quote — spending time together?”
Jessica’s brows shot up. "Excuse me?"
"Her words. Penny's. Through Dorothy. At the post office. Half an hour ago. I came straight here."
"Spending time together?"
"That's what she said."
Jess made a noise. It started as a scoff and turned into a laugh and turned into a head-tip-back, eyes-on-the-ceiling, sweet Lord help me exhale, and when she came back down, she was already shaking her head and waving one hand in the air in a way that meant she was about to put this in a small mental box and shove the box on a high shelf.
Jess tipped her head back and laughed. I didn’t find anything about this amusing. “He told his mother? He's thirty-two, and he told his mother about a relationship that isn’t even happening? Mags, this is the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to a grown man."
She wiped under her eye with the side of her finger so she didn't smudge the mascara, then waved a hand in the air. "Okay. Enough. Tell me literally anything else. Tell me about a horse."
Maggie's eyes flicked to me, then back to Jess. "Jessica."
"Maggie. I love you. I am deciding to be done with this topic for the next forty-five minutes because it literally doesn’t matter.
I’m not interested in him. You can come back to it after.
Right now I am going to eat a piece of that kringle, and you are going to tell me about whatever rich person tried to buy a pony at the clinic this week, because I know somebody did, and I want the story. "
"It was a goat. Not a pony."
"A goat.”
Maggie proceeded to tell us about the goat. Jess was her typical self, and I watched Jess decide, in real time, that she was going to be fine, that she was going to laugh about it, that she was going to make Garrett Calloway smaller than he was by refusing to give him another minute of her morning.
Her eyes flicked to me once over the rim of her coffee. I can see your face, Hunter Blackwood. I see what you're doing. Do not start.
I didn’t start.
I picked up a piece of kringle. I ate it. I let the conversation move where she was making it move.
But under the laughing and the goat and the way Jess was tipping her head onto Maggie's shoulder, a knot was forming in the pit of my stomach. The one that came when bad things happened.
Each individual act was defensible. But I had seen this pattern with him before — the approach, the flattery, the steady accumulation of proximity disguised as coincidence.
Junior year. Katie Mills. He asked her to prom three times. She said no three times. But he hounded her enough that she eventually caved.
After college. A young teacher new to Copper Creek. Garrett offered to show her around town. And six weeks later, she transferred to a school in Abilene before the semester ended. Nobody talked about why. Penny said it was a career opportunity.
The pattern was always the same. The interest arriving heavy and fast. The persistence outlasting the welcome.
The women going quiet, before going away.
And Garrett's face never changing — the same easy warmth, the same practiced charm, the same absolute inability to register the difference between a woman saying yes and a woman running out of ways to say no.
And then there was the Silver Spur.
Three years ago. A Friday night. The Silver Spur packed the way it always was. Country on the jukebox. The bar three deep. The noise level that meant everyone was two drinks in and nobody was going home yet.
I saw her from across the room. Sarah Kemp was at the end of the bar with Garrett Calloway leaning in. Close. Closer than the conversation required. Her body angled away from him.
"Come on, one more drink." Garrett's voice carried over the music. Easy. Smiling. His hand on the bar beside hers, close enough that his pinky was touching her wrist. "I'm not ready to let you go yet."
"I really should get home, Garrett." She laughed — the kind of laugh women learn to produce when they need a no to sound like a maybe so the maybe doesn't become a problem. "Early morning."
"One drink. Ten minutes. What's ten minutes?" He signaled the bartender without waiting for her answer. "Two more. Whatever she's having."
"Garrett, I'm good. Really."
"You're better than good." The drinks arrived. He slid one toward her. "See? Already poured. Can't waste it."
I walked over and put my hand on the bar between them. "Sarah. You need a ride home?"
Her whole body exhaled. The relief came off her in a wave so strong I could feel it in my chest. "Yes." Fast. No hesitation. "Yes, I do. Thank you, Hunter."
Garrett's eyes moved to mine. The smile held — but the architecture behind it was shifting, the warmth draining out of it from the bottom up like water leaving a glass.
"We were just talking, Blackwood. Having a drink."
"She said she needs to go." Low. Not a suggestion.
"And I heard her." The smile wider now. Harder. "I'm just saying there's no rush. We're all friends here."
I didn't repeat myself. I didn't need to. I stood there and looked at him and let the looking do what words wouldn't. And something happened in that moment that defined us. I had him, and over my dead fucking body was I going to leave Sarah at the bar with him.
His hand came off Sarah's back. He picked up his drink. Took a slow sip, our eyes locked before returning to Sarah. "Have a good night, Sarah." Smooth. Easy. Like the whole thing had been nothing. Like he'd been the one to end it.
He walked to the far end of the bar. Didn't look back. Sarah's hand was shaking on her glass. I walked her to my truck and drove her home, and she didn't say a word the whole way.
He's never forgiven me for it.
We are not enemies. There is no feud. It's quieter and worse than that. It’s the knowledge that I've seen what he is, and that my seeing it is the one thing his charm cannot undo.
And now he was circling Jessica. The same patience.
The same pattern. The flowers and the texts and the showing up and the proximity that looked like friendliness and smelled like strategy.
And I was carrying the history of what I knew this man was capable of, and I couldn’t say it.
Because saying it — from me, about a man circling the woman who sat on my workbench — sounded like one thing and one thing only.
Jealousy. Possession. Territorial bullshit from a man who had no claim.
And I would rather swallow glass than let Jess think I was being territorial or think she was incapable of handling herself.
She had always been my friend. My best friend. The loud to my quiet. The person who cracked me open and found what was underneath. And she was that again now — fully, completely, the friendship sliding back into place like it had been oiled and waiting.
But something else was running underneath it this time.
Something that hadn't been there at twelve or fifteen or even eighteen. Something my body knew and my brain was circling, but my hands couldn't fix it because the problem wasn't mechanical. The problem was that Jessica Williams was back in my life, and I wanted her in it. In it the way Ivy was in Wyatt’s, Jack was in Maggie’s, Callie was in Clay’s, and I refused to let her get hurt.