“So, does that mean that when a random woman walks into Smokey’s I’ll be able to tell whether or not you had sex with her?”
“No,” he said. “Because I haven’t shared intimacy with anybody else.”
That made her feel like she’d been punched in the chest. She felt afraid of what the sex had made her feel. All that it opened her up to and he was just...
Fearless.
“I don’t... I don’t even know what that means.”
“I know you, Elsie Garrett. I’ve never known a woman that I had sex with. Much less spent the night with her. Much less spent the whole night holding her. After telling her about my childhood trauma.”
That made her eyes feel scratchy, and she resented him for that. “Well—well, what the hell. What the hell even? What am I supposed to do with that.”
“Maybe say that we should keep on having sex?”
“But we can’t,” she said. “And you said that what I wanted mattered.”
“What you want does matter. The thing is, though, I just think that the problem isn’t whether or not you want it. It’s that you’re afraid.”
She hated that he knew her then. She should have slept with Travis. Travis, who didn’t really know her. Travis, who didn’t really care. Because this deep insight Hunter suddenly seemed to have into all that she was, was really very inconvenient.
“I’m not afraid,” she said, even while she feared a little bit that she might be. “Not for me, anyway. Honestly, you’re hot, and you’re a charmer, but that won’t hold weight with Wolf and Sawyer. They’ll be so pissed and it’ll wreck stuff and I like... I like our lives, okay?”
“If you don’t want to keep doing this, Elsie, we don’t have to.”
“I just, I care about Four Corners. I care about what happens there. And there are too many people in my life who should have cared who just didn’t. And you do care about me. And Alaina—”
“I don’t care about Alaina.”
“She likes you.”
“I know,” he said. “Gus told me. But I didn’t encourage her and I’m not into her that way. So for me, she’s not part of this.”
That both pleased her and hurt her, somehow. Because she loved Alaina deeply, but also she didn’t want Hunter thinking much about her. “I have to, though, because she is my only friend.”
“I’m your friend.”
“Yes. I care about that. So let’s just be friends.”
The words fell from her mouth. Flat. She had never called Hunter McCloud her friend in all her life, and this was about the dumbest time ever to do it. She despised that. She despised the words even as she spoke them.
“Suit yourself, Elsie.”
“Are you... Are you okay with that?”
“I’m not okay with it,” he said. “I’m going to have to be.”
She stamped her foot. And it echoed on the floorboards of his truck. “Can’t you just make me feel better? Can you say that it’s okay?”
“No,” he said. “Because I’m not in the business of making you feel better, little girl. I’m in the business of telling you the truth. So, no, it’s not okay. That meant something to me. That night in the hotel room. I compromised my friendship with your brothers, and I would do it again in a minute, but I didn’t do it for just one night.”
“What did you do it for, then?”
He didn’t have a response. The road noise echoed in the car, too long. Too loud.
“I thought so,” she said.
“Elsie...”
“No, that’s the thing. We can keep doing it. We could. But to what end? Just until we make Sawyer and Wolf mad at you, and Alaina mad at me. Until it gets to where things are going to be awkward between us forever. Until there’s more nights that we spend together than...” But of course they could never spend more nights together than they had apart. Because that would be a lifetime. Because she had known him for a lifetime.
And they would never have a lifetime.
She just didn’t believe enough in that. She hoped that Wolf and Sawyer would have it with their wives but she...
She thought it was probably a pretty rare thing.
“If that’s the way you see it, even if I’m not ready. Even if I don’t want to. Well, maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s no point.”
“Yeah, well. It must pain you to admit that I could be right. But I am. About this.”
“Okay,” he said. “If you say so.”
She leaned in and turned the radio on, and didn’t even bother to hook up her phone. She didn’t care about her playlist. Not right now. She just wanted to drown out the awkwardness. Just wanted to drown out the feelings that were echoing in her chest.
And she thought so many times about starting an innocuous conversation as they continued to drive, because she had to find her normal voice with him, so that when they got back home things would feel right. They would feel normal. But she couldn’t find it. She couldn’t find it in her.
And she just felt miserable.
“Buck up,” he said when they pulled onto the long dirt road that provided access to the different parcels of land that made up Four Corners.
She did need to buck up. They were here now and it would only be a few minutes before they were around other people.
They went straight to McCloud’s because they had to drop off the horses. And when they got there Gus and Alaina were there. Her friend being there was such a shock, she started breathing in short, sharp bursts and her vision went blurry.
“Don’t worry,” Hunter said, squeezing her hand quickly, and before she could say anything about it, he got out of the truck.
She sat there for a moment, trying to get her bearings, and she realized that Alaina was staring intently into the truck cab.
Great.
She tumbled herself out of the cab and went back toward the horse trailer.
“Show me what I bought,” Gus said.
“Hi,” Alaina said brightly when Elsie got closer. “Gus said I could come see the horses.”
Elsie felt prickly with discomfort. “That was nice of him.”
Alaina rolled her eyes. “I mean, he’s not really nice,” she said.
Gus’s facial expression didn’t change, but Elsie had a feeling he heard that.
In general, his presence was disconcerting. There was a dark intensity to him that the other McCloud brothers just didn’t have. Of course, she had never seen him be anything but gentle and kind. If anything, he was like a big benevolent protector. He just looked dangerous.