“You sound like them.”
“You mean, logical?”
He scoffed. “Did you know about my dad hiring yours?” He sent me a sidelong glance, scowling as he continued zipping through the open road.
“Are you insane?” I asked. “Of course not.”
“And if you knew?” he pressed.
I was hoping he wouldn’t ask that. I shook my head. “I don’t answer hypothetical questions.”
“Newsflash: you’re about to answer this one,” he shot back.
“You need to calm down.”
“What I need is someone on my fucking side.”
“I am on your side,” I growled.
“You’d be in my bed, if you were,” he had the audacity to say, no trace of guilt or remorse in his words. “Yet you aren’t.”
“That’s because I’m on my side, too.”
“Meaning?” He scoffed.
“Meaning I don’t want to be any more attached to you than I already am, because you obviously don’t feel the same.”
“And if I do?” he asked after a charged pause.
I shook my head. “You don’t. You’re incapable of that. You come from a long line of adulterers. How would you know any different?”
He sat back, shaking his head. I immediately knew how awful that sounded. How disgusting I was to him. “Cat’s out of the bag now. So if I’m a serial adulterer like my parents, does that mean you’re going to be carving people’s faces like a pumpkin like your daddy? Are we playing the gene game now? ’Cause rest assured, darling, we may not be the same brand of fuck-up, but we are both far from the realms of normalcy.”
I said nothing. He was right.
Hunter continued, “What would it take for you to know I’m serious about this? About us? A grand gesture? A binding contract? A fucking ring?”
“Maybe stop being ashamed of me. Of us,” I bit back. “That could have been enough.”
I referred to the night with Knight and Luna, to all the times he’d minimized whatever it was we’d had. I was sure he caught the reference.
Hunter got a text message. He opened it, driving.
“Fuck,” he muttered, throwing his phone to the central console as more text messages poured in, lighting his screen in white. His screensaver was a picture of a woman’s ass with the saying: Go hard or go home.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he punched the steering wheel, seething. “I need to catch a plane to London. Something came up.”
“What?” I asked, incredulous.
“Vaughn,” he said, as if that explained everything. “I’m dropping you off at home. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep my pants on while I’m there. As for you, try not to kill anyone, yeah?”
Now a week had passed since Hunter grabbed me by the arm and stormed out of the refinery apartments in Maine. It was the first time since he was a boy in the rain that I’d seen him truly broken.
I hadn’t heard from him since he’d left for London. I didn’t want to ask Aisling about him, but of course I couldn’t help myself. She said he’d gone for the weekend and hadn’t been picking up anyone’s calls. When I finally broke down and visited his apartment, he wasn’t there.
Not two days ago, and not yesterday, long after he was supposed to be back, according to Ash.
Hunter had disappeared, and with him, my favorite summer.
“Thank you so much for doing this. I know how much you loathe the media.” Vanessa Shieling of the Good Morning, Boston! show leaned forward and tapped my thigh, a veneered smile on her face.
There was something almost clownish about her Botox-enhanced perfection. Her carefully swept blonde hair was too shiny, too put-together. She straightened her back in her seat, brushing nonexistent wrinkles from her A-line red dress.
“How do you know I dislike interviews?”
She wasn’t wrong. The best part about retiring from archery was I didn’t have to talk to the media anymore. Because while Royal Pipeline’s refinery didn’t explode, the Junsu and Lana case did. The media wanted my side of the story. I refused, but then Crystal, whom I still had a contract with, argued that by not addressing it, I was letting the rumors about my own misconduct roam free.
“You did nothing wrong, at least this decade. You killed her dog, not her parents,” she spat over the phone, and I cringed. But she wasn’t wrong. I needed to set the record straight once and for all.
“Thirty seconds,” the director of the show called from the depths of the darkness in front of the well-lit studio. There was a whole other world in front of the stage, with Boston’s landscape in the background—one with cameras and wires and people with head mics and frantic assistants, living in the shadows of the glamorous TV world. There was also an audience. The seats were jam-packed and full of viewers.
Vanessa gave the director the thumbs-up. “We have everything we need?”
“Yup,” he answered.
Everything they needed? I didn’t like the sound of that.
“Ready?” She turned to ask me.
“As I ever will be,” I muttered.
Once we were on air, Vanessa began questioning me about the rivalry with Lana, the roots of it. I told her about Spot and about Lana’s injury, which I’d caused. I came clean about my part of what happened. Then we discussed all the things that had been done to me. Lana and Junsu were facing serious allegations, and likely weren’t going to participate in any official sports in this lifetime. Then Vanessa turned her line of questions to more private matters.
“Let’s talk about those paparazzi pictures.” Vanessa rested her chin over her knuckles, frowning in concentration. “You were seen storming out of your former archery club with a half-naked Hunter Fitzpatrick on your heels. For viewers who are not aware, Mr. Fitzpatrick is the nineteen-year-old heir to Royal Pipelines and a notorious playboy. Earlier last year, he was involved in a scandalous sex-tape incident that—”
I raised my palm. “No.”
“Excuse me?” She smiled tightly.
“No. You cannot reduce him to being a playboy, to…to some guy who had a sex tape. He was filmed without his knowledge while doing something…” I wanted to say “that he regretted,” but Hunter probably didn’t regret one second of it. “…something that should’ve been done more privately, yes. But he is not some silly heir. He is hardworking and honest and generous and caring. He would put himself at risk for those he cares about.”
I thought about the pub brawl he’d gotten into when we barely knew each other, about the lengths he’d gone to to save his father and brother. I even thought about that stupid fundraiser, when I’d freaked out and he’d held me in his arms, refusing to let go until I was completely okay.
“Hunter has made mistakes, but so has the rest of humanity,” I continued. “Only difference is Hunter has had the public eye on him since day one. He never had a chance to figure himself out privately.”
“Are you saying you guys are an item?” Vanessa grinned.
Seriously? That’s what she got out of everything I said?
I felt myself blushing under the thick layer of makeup. “That’s not what I’m saying at all.”