With the new furniture and décor, it was still very much a farmhouse, just more modernized and so utterly Hunter.
And with each room, we’d had countless conversations in this kitchen. At the old table, then this one after he’d built it, where he’d asked my opinion on every single detail.
Despite my insistence in the beginning that it was his house, he’d claimed the same reasoning for wanting to fix my office first. I was here more than anyone, including him. He wanted me to be comfortable.
So, I’d fought smiles and pushed away the warmth his words had spurred as I’d given my advice.
But there was no warmth tonight. And there were no smiles I needed to hide.
That unease in my stomach was quickly spreading, sending little tremors through my body as I waited for him to continue.
I reached for him without thinking, my fingers weaving into his dark hair as I pleaded, “Talk to me.”
I sucked in a startled breath when he grabbed my hand and gently removed it, placing it in my lap with a brief glance in my direction.
A reminder.
A warning.
My lips parted, an apology on the tip of my tongue, but I was too stunned to let it fall.
Part of me couldn’t comprehend what I’d done. Reaching for him that way. Touching him like that . . . that wasn’t us. Unless we were fulfilling physical needs, the only touching we did was during our conversations. When he’d pull me or my feet onto his lap.
But we’d done that for years. And even then, it was purely for the physical connection. What I’d done was emotional.
He’d known that. He’d felt that.
The other part? I couldn’t get past how badly it hurt when he’d pulled my hand away. The sting that had stolen my breath and left me feeling cold.
Oh God, what is happening to me?
“I think I need to sit down,” I said somewhat breathlessly.
His blue eyes met and held mine. “You are sitting down,” he reminded me as if begging me not to move. Not to acknowledge what just happened. Not to make this more awkward than I already had.
After a moment, I nodded and said, “Cayson’s room.”
Gratitude darted across his face before falling away. “About a month ago, I noticed he had some loose floorboards.” He tapped rapidly on the papers. “I pulled them up and found all of this.”
Curiosity at what he might’ve found sparked inside me before immediately fading to match Hunter’s mood.
“A month?” I asked with a questioning hum.
If he’d found it a month ago, I couldn’t imagine why he wouldn’t have talked to me about it earlier. Especially if it was having this kind of effect on him.
He brought the papers closer. Silently urging me to look at them as he spread them out along the table and pushed a picture of a girl off to the side.
“Who’s that?” I asked distractedly as I tried to take in everything else.
“Emberly Olsen.”
The name triggered old memories, but it took a few minutes of studying the incredible sketches laid out in front of me before I remembered.
“Sawyer’s old girlfriend?” I asked with wide eyes.
“His best friend,” Hunter corrected.
My lips slowly parted as I thought that through. “Did you know?”
Hunter’s jaw worked for a moment before he nodded toward the table. “Izzy, I didn’t even know Cayson could fucking draw. None of us did.”
I looked back to the sketches as something tugged at my chest. As the drawings combined with the photo started making sense. “These . . . wait, so these were under the floorboards because he was hiding them? Why?”
“I have no idea,” Hunter mumbled. “They’re good, yeah?”
“Amazing,” I breathed.
I let my fingers lightly dance along the photo and then each of the sketches. An ache in my words when I asked, “Was he ashamed or just afraid of people knowing?”
“I think both,” he offered as he pushed a couple of the pages toward me that had clearly been crumpled up at one point.
I stared at the lines and curves on the smoothed-out pages for a while, my brow furrowing as I tried to make sense of it. “What is this?”
A ragged breath escaped Hunter. “It’s why I didn’t say anything until now.”
I looked at him in question but waited for him to continue.
“When I found everything, I was just shocked. I wondered why he’d never told anyone. This . . .”—he tapped the crinkled papers—“I thought maybe he’d been writing in some other language, but I stopped looking after about an hour.”
“You figured it out?” I assumed.
“That night?” At my nod, his head shook. “No, I gave up. Ended up figuring it out a couple weeks ago, when I was out in the orchard,” he said. “One of my friends from the Army had a daughter who was dyslexic. He had this paper that showed what letters might look like to her. I wasn’t sure, but I still thought . . . well, I was pretty damn sure.”
My body caved as I looked back to those lines and curves, tracing them with my finger.
“Raced back here to research it. Looked almost exactly like that.” A heavy silence settled around us for a moment before he continued, his voice tight. “And for weeks, I’ve been staring at those pages, trying to figure out how none of us knew, but I know that was my brother trying to write.”
My gaze darted from the picture to the sketches to the smoothed-out pages. My heart wrenching a little more with each pass I made.
“How sad that he felt like he needed to hide his entire life.”
“And that’s just it,” Hunter grunted. “I was up until two this morning, trying to figure out why he would. Why he would feel like he couldn’t tell any of us. And then I remembered Cayson wasn’t into sports.”
I snorted and glanced at him. “So?”
“Izzy, my dad only talked about this ranch and sports. He was always pushing us to find what we were best at, and then encouraged us to do better than our best. But he never pushed Cayson. He let Cayson skate by in everything. And then with his will . . .” Hunter looked all kinds of uncomfortable and infuriated. “Dad left nothing to him. He specifically said he only had three sons, leaving Cayson out of it.”
A pained and furious breath forced from me. “What? Why—why didn’t you ever tell me this?”
He gave me a placating look. “I found out before I moved back here and took over. At that point, you were already pissed off enough. I didn’t need to give you more reasons.”
“Is Cayson not . . .” I covered my mouth when it fell open in shock. “Did your mom have an affair?”
“No, no,” Hunter said quickly. “She was just as blindsided as we were when the will was read. We’d thought it was because Cayson had left, but he’d only been gone for a few days before our dad died, and his will hadn’t been altered in years.”
I sucked in a breath but forced my lips into a tight line before the words could escape me.
He’s such a bastard.
Still, Hunter seemed to know what I was thinking, because he responded, “I know.”
And that knowledge looked like it pained him, even still.
“But in remembering that, I was trying to figure out why Dad would’ve let him skate by, and then I realized that I couldn’t remember my dad ever talking about him at all. I couldn’t remember him talking to Cayson. It was like he focused on the rest of us and left Cayson in the background.”