There was a long, uncomfortable pause before his voice came through, all bitter betrayal. “You said you were coming back.”
“I—” I searched for something to say, something to appease him when I couldn’t think straight.
I didn’t want to go back. There was nothing there for me except for Avalee to be near her dad.
“Madison!” he snapped, a loud crash sounding in the background. “We talked about this. Try to keep her from me, I’m coming after you with lawyers.”
“I’m not,” I said quickly, standing and hurrying for the back door where there wouldn’t be eyes on me.
Where all of my reasons for wanting to stay weren’t watching and listening. Where the source of my frantically-beating heart wasn’t studying my every move.
“I’m not keeping her from you,” I said over Raf’s ranting as I took the call off speaker. “I won’t.”
“I want her back here tomorrow,” he ground out.
“Tomorrow?” I choked over the word and then sucked in a shuddering breath when large hands slowly eased around my waist.
Pulling me against him and surrounding me in his strength and his scent. All leather and cedarwood.
I gripped one of Hunter’s hands in mine, my head falling back to his chest as my eyelids tightly shut. “Raf, that’s—”
“I said tomorrow, Madison,” he said in a low tone that left no room for argument. “I haven’t seen my daughter in over two weeks because of you. If you’re going to start saying the kind of shit you just did, you bring her back now, or I’m coming at you with everything I have. And then I’m taking her from you. Do you hear me?”
Panic seized my body. Gripped my throat. “You can’t—”
“You have no way of providing for her. You took her from her home at a moment’s notice. That isn’t a stable life, and I’m pretty fucking sure that isn’t what’s best for her.”
I couldn’t feel my body.
I couldn’t breathe.
I wasn’t sure if I was even standing anymore.
“I can easily prove that and more if you try to keep her from me,” he said, voice a strange mixture of furious and regretful.
“I’m not,” I choked out. “Raf, you can’t do this!”
“Bring me my fucking daughter.” There was a harsh exhale before he said, “I’ll send you the tickets.”
Before I could respond, the call ended, and I sagged. Folding in half and letting Hunter hold me up as I violently trembled.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” I whispered to the ground as tears clouded my vision.
What had I done?
What had I thought I was doing by staying away so long? If the roles had been reversed, I would’ve come after Raf long before then. But to threaten me with custody of her?
I felt sick.
One of Hunter’s hands moved up and down my spine in a soothing trail before he pulled me upright again. His voice low and comforting once I was wrapped in his arms. “What can I do?”
“I have to pack,” I said shakily.
The hand on my waist tightened. As if just hearing the words out loud had his spirit protesting.
“I have . . . I have—God, Hunter. I don’t know the man I just spoke to, but I created that.”
“No.”
“I did.” I turned so I was facing him and felt every part of me relax when one of his hands lifted to tenderly cradle my neck. “For all his faults lately, being a father is not one of them. It never has been.” My head moved subtly. “I wouldn’t have given him as long as he’s given me—not with Avalee. And my reactions probably would’ve been so much worse.”
“You’re not keeping her from him.”
“But I left with her,” I said, my voice strained.
Hunter studied me for a moment before nodding and repeating, “What can I do?”
One of my shoulders lifted as I struggled to figure out what I was going to do. My soul was screaming not to leave while every reasonable part of my mind knew I had to. “Wait, what are you doing here?”
“I live here.”
Despite the stress and worry weighing me down, my lips twisted into a soft smile. Widening when the corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk that was all sex and dimples, and made me all kinds of weak.
His thumb brushed across my lower lip as his eyes traced the movement. “Last night . . . you said your daughter was going to bed when I showed up. Figured the same went for tonight.”
“Have we gone to sneaking around my daughter now?” I asked softly, a hint of a tease weaving through the question.
A smile ghosted across his face, but there was something pained about it. “You don’t wanna pull her into this, and I respect that. That’s why I let you go this morning and gave you the rest of the day. I wasn’t gonna knowingly put her in a situation you’d already told me you didn’t want her in.”
Gratitude and regret washed through me as my head fell to his chest.
“You comin’ back?” he asked softly.
My chest heaved with a pained exhale. Tears stung the backs of my eyes.
That strength coming from him? I felt it wrapping around me. Trying to comfort me.
That underlying fear in his voice? I felt it down to my soul. And I wanted to erase it. Take the root of it and burn that memory until it was nothing but ash.
I wanted to know why I’d been given this glimmer of a second chance with Hunter when I couldn’t keep him.
A sob caught in my throat as I ducked out of his hold and hurried into the house. Ignoring my parents’ worried stares and questions as I rushed to the room I’d been staying in. Tears streaming down my face as I pulled out one of my suitcases and started grabbing clothes at random.
Not sure what I was packing, and not really caring.
My entire body jerked with the force of my tears when he appeared a couple minutes later. Taking the handful of clothes from me and setting it on the bed as I rambled things I’d already told him before.
“I thought you were gone. Married. I didn’t know when I was coming back here that you would be here. I didn’t know I would get this,” I cried out as I took the stack of clothes he’d set down and shoved them into my already-full suitcase. I jerkily zipped it shut and then turned on him, not bothering to wipe at the tears staining my cheeks. “I don’t know. That’s the answer, and it’s the most honest one I can give you.”
He didn’t respond, just stood there with his arms folded tightly across his chest. His devastatingly handsome face set in stone to hide what he was thinking.
“I mean, yes. I’ll have to come back for the rest of our things and my car. But I don’t know what will happen.” I pressed a hand to my chest. “I know what I want, but I’m pretty sure it’s the most selfish thought I’ve ever had. Moving here when Avalee’s dad is in Washington?” My face crumpled and my head shook. Saying it out loud made me more sure that it wasn’t possible. “Even if I thought it was something Avalee could handle, Raf would never let me.”
“What you said this morning . . . about where you stand. That still true?”
Regret and want for the man in front of me tore through my veins. “I said that when I stupidly thought I could fight Raf.”