“I’ll, uh . . .” He swallowed thickly, his throat shifting from the action. “I’ll get you a wet towel.”
“I’m fine,” I said when he stepped back.
With a jerky nod, he stormed away.
An aching breath heaved from me and my back hit the wall. My eyes welled up with tears, but within seconds, the burning stopped.
The fiery weight that had been pressing down on my chest, making it feel like I could no longer breathe, disappeared. In its place was the hollow I’d become familiar with.
And there it was . . . nothing.
No pain, no anger, no resentment. No suffocating agony.
Just nothing.
I didn’t remember leaving my position at the wall, but when Hunter came back into the kitchen in his jeans and a clean shirt, I was finishing putting on my pajama bottoms.
“Isabel,” he began hesitantly, gripping at the back of his neck. “This—I’m not—this can’t be something. I’m sorry.”
A cough of a laugh scraped up my throat, but it sounded lifeless.
“I just got out of a relationship,” he continued.
“I don’t want you, Hunter Dixon,” I said before he could go on. “I told you, I just wanted to feel something.”
His head bobbed. “I think I wanted to forget it all, if even for a few minutes.”
“I don’t think it worked, you looked pretty pissed.”
At that, he laughed. “I was . . . because it did work. Because I was doing it at all.” He took a few steps back to lean against the counter near the stove and folded his arms across his chest. “I was stationed in Kansas when my dad died. I’d met a girl there—Piper. We’d been engaged for a while, over a year because I got deployed during that time. When I told her I was gonna file dependency to get out, she said she wouldn’t come with me. So, I almost didn’t.”
An irritated huff left him and his eyes rolled. His stare staying somewhere off to the side as he continued.
“But I knew I needed to be here to take over the business and help my family, so I filed. Piper lost it. ‘You can’t expect me to marry a farmer,’ she’d said. ‘I’m the kind of girl who marries uniforms and dog tags. Not overalls and cow shit.’” Amusement briefly wove through his anger. “I don’t think I’ve ever even owned overalls.”
“She sounds pleasant,” I muttered. “So, this was recent?”
“Couple weeks ago.”
A noncommittal hum sounded in my throat. “Hence the no kissing.”
His stare flashed to me. “No.”
That was all. Just no.
“My husband died a month ago.”
Hunter’s expression shifted so quickly it might’ve been amusing under any other circumstances. Shock to sympathy to doubt to dread to outright confusion. “Aren’t you Sawyer’s age? Aren’t you eighteen?”
“And?”
“Nothing,” he said, backing off.
“He was there for me in a way no one else had ever been. Cared for me and took care of me.” My stare drifted as moments of my years with him danced through my mind. “My parents hated him, of course. Not because he was a bad person or anything. Honestly, any parent would want their daughter to marry a guy like him, but they could see how much we loved each other, and it scared them. My mom always said our connection wasn’t natural. ‘Too strong, too young,’” I explained. “My parents told me to stop seeing him, so we got married.”
Hunter waited and waited.
I don’t know if it was for me to continue or for me to break down, but I did neither.
“When did y’all get married?”
“A month ago,” I answered and looked at him meaningfully. “We spent our wedding night in Dallas at the nicest hotel. The next afternoon, we were driving back here to face my parents when someone ran a red light.”
Hunter hissed a curse. “Isabel . . .”
“He died instantly. So, that’s good, you know. He didn’t suffer.”
“I’m so sorry, Isabel,” he said, and I could hear that it was genuine.
I could feel that he was genuine. His empathy emitting a pang in my chest that threatened to transform into suffocating grief.
That . . . that, I didn’t want to feel.
After a while, Hunter cleared his throat. “You said my dad took everything . . . I would’ve asked if he had something to do with that wreck, but he’s been dead longer than a month.”
My shoulders jerked with the huff that forced from my lungs. My eyelids slowly shut, only to open as tears slipped free.
“I don’t know, Hunter. I just . . . I needed someone to be mad at. And your dad is so easy to hate when it feels like he’s the cause of everything.” My blurry eyes shifted to him. “Even if he isn’t.” I gave him a weak smile. “I’ll argue something to the ends of the earth even if I’m wrong.”
He gave a hesitant nod.
“I cried,” I began softly, the words thick with my emotions. “I screamed when I came to and saw that sheet over Dean. I took out an EMT trying to get to him.” One of my shoulders lifted. “I haven’t cried since. I haven’t felt anything until you walked into our house this evening. And then I just wanted to blame you and hate you for everything.”
“You need to feel it, Isabel,” he said after a moment. “It’ll kill you if you keep it in.”
I forced a smile but didn’t respond otherwise.
“So, there was nothing else?” he asked, breaking the silence we’d been standing in for a while. “My dad.” Part of him looked relieved, but there was doubt in his eyes as he watched me.
“Oh, no. I have every reason to hate your dad, Hunter. Just tonight, it all seemed so much bigger.”
“Tell me.”
I studied him, debating whether or not I should weigh him down with more of his dad’s uncaring soul. Finally, I said, “He refused to give the crew health insurance. Did you know that?”
From the way Hunter’s features hardened, he hadn’t.
“I got sick—really sick. The guys asked him every year to change his mind, but when I got sick, my dad begged him. Literally, got on his knees and begged. Your dad said we could find another way and hoped I felt better.”
Hunter looked too stunned to absorb what I was telling him, his eyes darting back and forth as if he were recalling something. “He had to offer it. Had to.” But he wasn’t speaking as if he didn’t believe what I was saying.
After all he’d already found out, I doubted he would ever side with his dad again.
“Supposed to,” I corrected. “I was in and out of the hospital and seeing specialists. On medication we couldn’t afford, but even with the medication, it wasn’t really helping. I needed surgery. But I’d already drained my parents of their money in barely over a year. So, I moved in with my tía and tío in Dallas so they could claim me on their insurance.”
“When was this?” Hunter asked, eyes wide with sorrow and regret.
“I moved right after I started high school.”
He glanced to the side, thinking. “We didn’t know. We thought . . . we thought you just didn’t wanna come around anymore.”