“I don’t know that you could ever be accused of being mysterious.”
“Don’t burst my bubble,” she said.
“I’m not about to try to burst your bubble, sweetheart.”
“Honestly,” she said.
“No, that’s good. You did exactly what I would’ve told you to do.”
“He said maybe he’ll see me at the bar again sometime. Which is perfect, because I’m going to get something so that I can be dressed up next time I go to the bar.”
“Perfect,” Hunter said.
She settled back into the truck seat. “Yeah. I’m just curious,” she said, “why...why is it a game? I mean, I don’t play around with you or Alaina, but it’s like this thing... Like a dance that you have to know the steps to if you want to make sure somebody knows that you have a thing for them. I don’t really get it.”
“Protection,” Hunter said.
“What, condoms? What does that have to do with anything?”
He laughed. One short, sharp crack. “That’s not what I mean. I just mean... I don’t know, I think people feel exposed when they let somebody know they want to sleep with them. It’s a thing. So you pretty it up and put all these layers around it. Play cooler than you might otherwise.”
She frowned. “Do you feel vulnerable?”
Hunter was like a mountain. Nice to look at, but forbidding, unforgiving and just as hard. She would never look at a mountain and think vulnerable. But then, she didn’t look at Hunter and think that either.
“Not me. Doesn’t really mean anything to me.”
“It doesn’t mean anything to you?”
That pulled her up short for a second, and sent her mind careening down a rabbit trail. An image of Hunter taking a woman into his arms in a bar, taking her home. Taking her clothes off...
It meant nothing?
The idea made her feel scalded and she wasn’t even imagining herself or anything. Not like she would imagine herself with Hunter. She wasn’t even thinking of herself with a different man. She would never imagine herself with...
No.
Except the shirt she pictured floating to the floor suddenly looked familiar and the girl in her vision had a long, dark braid.
She blinked.
“Not at this point,” Hunter said, his tone dry.
She should drop it. But she didn’t. “Did it ever?”
“Let me cast my mind back. Yeah. I guess. Your first time, you worry about doing it right. And then after that, you worry about it less. But in terms of getting hurt?” He cleared his throat. “No. No, I know what real hurt looks like in relationships. Because I watched my parents. And I never had any desire to be a part of anything like that.”
Yet again, he was talking about his parents, and while she knew about them, she hadn’t heard him talk about them so...so personally. It felt like a heavy and strange gift, and it made her want to be careful. With what she said. With who she said it to. It made her want to hold the knowledge close and treat it like it was special, and it was such an odd feeling.
“So...I guess knowing up front that I didn’t want any relationship to become anything... That’s protection, right? That all by itself.” She fiddled with her seat belt. “I don’t want anything. Like, relationship stuff. But I don’t want to get made fun of or look like an idiot. Or like somebody more than they like me.”
“Well, that’s exactly the kind of thing I mean. So you put on a little bit of armor. And if that happens to be an outfit that makes you feel good, then that’s one way of having armor. If it’s making him think that maybe you aren’t interested, that’s armor.”
“What’s your armor, Hunter?” She genuinely wanted to know, because... She just did.
Because he’d given her some truth, and now she wanted more.
“Whiskey?” He said it, light and funny, and for some reason it sounded like a lie.
“No. It’s something else, isn’t it?” The words scraped at her throat.
“It’s not caring,” he answered. “That’s it.”
She looked down.
“I want to learn to do that. But I think that’s it, that’s exactly what I’m getting at. If it doesn’t feel like a rare opportunity, if it doesn’t feel like something that’s hard to come by, then I think I’ll care less. But I’ve got to rip the Band-Aid off.”
“That is one way of looking at it.”
“It’s weird,” she said. “Watching Wolf and Violet. And Sawyer and Evelyn. Because I didn’t really believe in that stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“Happy marriages. I don’t know. I guess I’m still waiting for them to leave. For them to leave my brothers. For them to leave the babies. I... Maybe for them to leave me too.”
That was her deepest, most unspoken fear and she’d never been able to admit it to anyone. Even saying it to Alaina would have felt like a betrayal. Of Wolf and Sawyer, and her sisters-in-law. But she could say it to Hunter. She didn’t know why, only that she could.
“They’re not going to do that,” Hunter said.
“How do you know? All we know is people who leave,” she pointed out.
“Yeah. Historically.” Silence passed for a long moment. “I don’t think they will, though.”
“Why? How do you figure out who will and who won’t?”
“Because not everybody in the world sucks.” He looked toward her, and she shifted, until she realized he was just changing lanes, checking his blind spot and not her at all. And she didn’t know why that made her feel silly. “And I think they genuinely love your brothers.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“My mom should have left,” Hunter said. “Before she did.”
“Well, she shouldn’t have left you.” Because mothers shouldn’t leave their children. Especially knowing they wouldn’t be taken care of. At least her father hadn’t been cruel.
“No. I guess not.”
“I don’t think that I could ever handle that. The relationship thing. It makes me feel claustrophobic.” Except that was a lie. It wasn’t the enclosed space she feared. It was the space left behind when people decided to leave.
“We have that in common,” Hunter said.
She thought about her brothers, about their lives. Their happiness. The thing was she did believe that Evelyn and Violet would stay. But she couldn’t imagine ever trusting somebody enough to believe that they wouldn’t leave. To really believe it.