I wanted to ask if we could continue driving, but I could barely think as it was in the truck, and that was without him in it.
And—oh my God, I’m a thirty-year-old woman, for Christ’s sake. I can talk with a man in the bed of a truck and not lose my mind. And am I seriously sitting in here arguing with myself?
I blew out a steadying breath and opened the door. Climbing out and inhaling a deep lungful of Hunter-free air, savoring the tease of a promised spring storm—
And nearly choked on it when I walked back and saw Hunter standing in the bed of his truck, looking down on me in a way that knocked me right back into the past.
Yet, everything was different. He was different.
Taller.
Broader.
Broken.
Down to his soul, I could feel that he wasn’t the boy I’d grown up with. Fallen in love with.
He wasn’t the relaxed and infinitely happy boy I’d left behind. There was a sadness that had rooted deep within him. There was anger and bitterness that rolled beneath the surface. A whisper of it, but there just the same.
And I knew I was partially—if not, wholly—to blame for this new Hunter.
I swallowed past the knot of emotion gathering in my throat as I rounded the back of the truck, reaching for the handle on the tailgate.
He stepped forward to help me once I got it down, stretching out his hand for me to take. “You forget how to get in a truck?”
The question was a gentle tease, but that sadness wove through each word. As though the changes in me were just as hard for him to digest.
I forced a little laugh. “Yeah, uh . . . I guess I did.”
Even with the tailgate down and him helping me, I got in clumsily. Like I wasn’t sure what to do with my feet or legs. Like it was my first time.
I glanced to the side to avoid his eye, flashes of all the times I’d hopped into a truck just by stepping onto a rear tire bursting behind my eyelids. But I barely remembered that girl.
“Should I grab blankets?”
My head snapped to the side to see Hunter sitting in a corner, up against the cab of the truck, watching me with a mixture of uncertainty and amusement.
A warm shiver worked through my body at just the memory of blankets in trucks with Hunter. But he couldn’t—the implication alone was—oh my gosh, say no, Madison. And why am I sweating?
My lips parted as words failed me.
“This gonna ruin your fancy clothes or something?” He gestured to me. “You’ve been standing there at least a minute.”
“Oh.” I quickly sat in the corner farthest from him, embarrassed heat filling my cheeks as my attention shifted back to the side of the truck. “No, I . . . I was just thinking. Remembering.”
A grunt of understanding rumbled from him. The sound so familiar and so different that I wanted to relish it. But that wasn’t why we were there.
“Who goes first?” I asked softly.
“With what?” he countered. “Questions, accusations, or explanations?”
I met his stare as he lifted his baseball cap so it was barely resting on his head, the corners of my lips twitching at the sight.
With that one move, he’d inadvertently showed he was in for the long haul.
“Any of the above,” I finally answered.
He tipped his chin toward me and shifted deeper against the truck.
“You’re not married.” The words fell from me in an instant. As though they’d been waiting on the tip of my tongue ever since my parents told me that he’d come back to Amber, no longer engaged.
A laugh sounded deep in his chest. “That an accusation?”
“No, I—” I licked my lips as I thought, trying to sort through the flood of emotions and jumble of questions gathering in my throat. “I’m just surprised, is all. I’ve thought you were. All this time, I thought that. I came home, and my parents said you were engaged and living in Kansas—and Kansas.” My head moved in quick shakes. “The Army . . . Hunter, did you not go to A&M? Why?”
Hunter just watched me, letting my ramble linger in the open air for a moment before releasing a sigh. The weight of it getting trapped in the energy that sparked and stretched tight between us. Pulling us close despite the distance we kept.
“We doing this, Madison?”
“Doing what?”
“Laying it all out there. Bringing up the pain and bullshit. Being honest.”
My chest pitched. My breaths puffed out from me in shallow wheezes as my entire being screamed no while my heart whispered yes.
“No,” I finally managed, earning a grave look from him. “We’re offering what we can. You don’t owe me anything.”
He inhaled quickly, nodding a little as he did. But with the long silence that followed, I thought he’d decided not to answer. Decided not to continue speaking at all.
It was almost enough to make me take back what I’d said even though I couldn’t give him all the answers he wanted—as long as it got him talking again.
“You,” he suddenly said as I warred over keeping my mouth shut. “I didn’t go to A&M because of you.”
My heart wrenched. My lips parted with a pained breath. “But that was your dream. That was—that was your plan so you could have this.” I gestured to the orchard beside us.
“I thought if I showed you I wasn’t tied to Amber and the ranch, I could get you back.”
Oh God.
“But you kept me from your life. You kept Savannah and everyone else from your life and did a damn good job of it, and it about broke me.” He lifted a hand only to let it fall. “That’s when I met Piper.”
Funny how a name can hit you so violently. How it can dig under your skin and leave you feeling sick in an instant.
I had no right to the feeling. For so many reasons, I had no right. But it was there just the same.
“Everything with her was bullshit, not that I realized it at the time.” Hunter shrugged. “Or, maybe I did. She always wanted the relationship to go faster, and I was always trying to slow it down. I only asked her to marry me because she wouldn’t let it go, and all my other buddies were getting married to girls they’d just met.”
That sickening feeling grew stronger as I realized the girl he was talking about was the one he’d been engaged to when I’d come home. When I’d raised a middle finger to everything else because nothing had mattered more than Hunter.
I wanted to blame her, but I knew I couldn’t.
The blame would never lie anywhere else but with me.
“When my dad died,” he continued, “I told her I was gonna file dependency to get out. When she said she wouldn’t come with me, I almost didn’t.”
A stunned breath blew past my lips.
“I ended up filing anyway because I needed to take over the business and help my family. She lost it and started screaming at me, saying all this shit that basically let me know she was only with me to be an Army wife.”
“Oh my gosh,” I mumbled, unable to wrap my mind around someone like that.
“Came back and been here since.” A bitter laugh left him. “Like you said . . . I’m tied to this place.”
I wanted to explain. I wanted to apologize. I wanted to tell him I had also been tied to Amber and this ranch and him. I’d wanted to be tied to it forever.