26. Hunter #2
I sat in the booth. Jessica's hand in mine. My brothers around me. My knuckles throbbing. The bar had gone quiet — not empty, but the music was off and the voices were low and every face was turned toward the hallway.
Liam came back. He crouched beside the booth. His face close to mine. His voice pitched for just our table.
"CCTV got all of it." He paused. "And him getting up again. He was getting up to go after her, Hunter. He was on his feet heading for the back door when you came through it."
My jaw locked. My hand tightened on Jessica's.
"Garrett's being arrested. Assault charges. The footage is clear." Liam's eyes moved to Jessica. "They'll need a statement from you. Tonight or tomorrow — your call."
"Tonight," Jessica said. Her voice was rough. Her hand didn't let go of mine. "Let's get it done."
Penny Calloway arrived forty minutes later.
I was outside. On the bench in front of the Silver Spur.
Mom had arrived. Dad with her. Mom was inside making coffee — her hands needed something to do.
Dad was in a chair by the booth. His jaw was locked and his eyes were dark and he hadn't spoken since he came in.
He'd gripped the back of my neck at the door. Held it. Said nothing.
I was alone on the bench. My hands on my thighs. Shaking.
Penny's heels crunched on the gravel. She came around the corner in evening clothes — a dinner interrupted. Her face was pale. Her mouth tight.
The sheriff met her in the parking lot. He held his phone out. The footage. I watched from the bench as Penny Calloway looked at the screen.
Her hand went to her mouth. Her body stiffened.
She kept watching — the whole thing, start to finish.
The cornering. The grab. The wall. The dress tearing.
The slap. The kiss forced on a woman pressed against brick.
Her son's face — flat, wild, unhinged. Jessica's knee.
And then him getting up. Getting up to go after her again.
Penny's knees buckled. She caught herself on the sheriff's arm. Her hand still over her mouth. Her eyes closed.
She stood very still for a long time.
Then she walked to Jessica. Jessica was in the doorway of the bar — Callie beside her, my jacket over her shoulders. Penny took both of Jessica's hands. Her face was wrecked.
"I'm sorry." Her voice broke. "Jessica, I am so sorry. I didn't — I didn't know he was —" She couldn't finish. Her hands were shaking on Jessica's. "Every time I introduced you. Every time I put you next to him. I thought I was — I thought he was —"
Jessica's chin trembled. She squeezed Penny's hands. "You didn't know."
"I should have." Penny's voice was raw. "A mother should know."
They stood there. Penny's hands shook on Jessica's. My jacket still around Jess's shoulders.
The bar was empty. The cruiser was gone. Penny was gone. The family was still here — every one of them, somewhere inside, the low murmur of their voices coming through the screen door behind me.
I was on the bench outside, alone again, with my hands flat on my thighs and the tremor running through them in slow, uneven waves I couldn't put down.
I pressed them flatter. They still shook.
I gripped my knees through the denim, and they shook through the grip.
I laced my fingers together in my lap and squeezed until the tendons stood out across the backs of my hands, and the tremor ran straight through the squeeze and kept going.
There was blood under my fingernails that wasn't mine. The skin across my second knuckle had split open. The third was already swelling, the joint going stiff and dark and hot. These hands. The hands I had used to rebuild the transmission. The hands that had held her.
The screen door opened behind me. Boots on the step.
The bench shifted under me as Dad's weight settled beside me — slow, careful.
He braced his elbows on his knees and turned his hat over once in his hands, slow, the way he turned a thing over when he was thinking, and he didn't say anything for a long time.
Then his hand came up and settled on the back of my neck.
The grip was firm and broad and warm, his palm pressing flat against the muscle, his thumb resting at the base of my skull.
It was the grip he had used on the back of my neck the morning I broke my first horse.
The grip he had used at sixteen when I'd rebuilt the transmission and got it right.
The grip he had used the night three weeks ago when I had told the family about Garrett at his table.
The pressure of his hand on the back of my neck pulled something loose in my chest that I hadn't been able to find on my own.
"You did what any man would do, son." His voice was low. Pitched for me only. "What I would have done. What your brothers would have done."
“I wanted to kill him, Dad,” I whispered. My jaw locked. My eyes were stinging. The tremor in my hands had started running up my arms.
"But I need you to hear me." His grip on my neck tightened by a fraction. "You stopped. Your brothers came, and you stopped. That matters. You hear me, son? That matters."
I nodded. My throat had closed. The words were not coming.
"She's inside. She's safe. Your momma's got her." He paused. His thumb moved once, slow, along the bone at the base of my skull. "She's tough, that girl. Tougher than she knows. She's got you. She's got this family. And that man is never going to touch her again."
My breath came out in a ragged, uneven pull. Dad's hand was on the back of my neck, and the weight of it was pulling me back into my body. My shoulders settled a fraction. My jaw came unlocked.
"Your hands will heal." His voice was quieter now. "The rest of it — the anger, the part of yourself that scared you in that alley — that's gonna take longer. But it'll come back ‘round, son. You're a Blackwood. We don't break easily."
He sat with me. His hand stayed on the back of my neck. The parking lot stayed empty. The night air stayed cool. The porch light stayed on across the fields.
After a while, my hands went still.
He squeezed my neck once more — firm, the tendons standing out in his hand — and let go and stood, and his knees cracked the way they always cracked, and he put his hat back on and looked down at me with the same patient look he had been giving me since I was small.
"Go take care of your girl, son."
I stood. My legs were heavy, my hands were sore, but the cool air had got under my collar and my hands were still, and my dad was beside me, and Jessica was inside with the rest of my family.
I went in.
She was in the booth in the corner with Mom's arm around her shoulders and a mug of coffee in front of her she hadn't touched. Her hair was a little wild on one side from where Garrett's hand had been in it. Her cheek was already going dark along the bone.
She looked up when I came through the door. Her eyes found mine across the room and held. Her chin trembled.
I crossed the bar in long, quiet strides and slid into the booth beside her, and my arm came around her, and her body pressed into my side. Her hand found mine under the table, and her fingers laced through mine and held on, careful around the swelling, firm around everything else.
Dad came in behind me. Mom looked at him across the booth. He nodded once, slow. She nodded back.
The family was here.
That was enough.