THE LIGHT OF THE moon faded into my vision as I came to, the vestiges of my orgasm still pulsing through my body. Hunter lifted me from the sand, naked and damp with salt water, and trudged up the path we’d come down until he took confident steps up the wooden deck and placed me on my feet, wrapping me in a soft blanket and settling me in an overstuffed lounger. I curled into the soft knit fibers of the blanket and snuggled deeper, my eyes fluttering closed with the scent of lush tropical flowers swirling in the air.
I was roused awake, I’m not sure how much later, to the smell of fragrant herbs wafting in the air and the pop of a bottle of champagne. My eyes flickered open to find Hunter standing there, soft knit pants hanging low on his tantalizing hips, a chef’s towel over one shoulder, pouring us each a glass of bubbling golden liquid. “You made dinner?” I sat up in my chair, drowsy from sleep and sex and love.
“Not much…I did what I could. Apparently they thought a world class chef was staying here. How the fuck am I supposed to cook sea urchin?”
I burst out into a fit of giggles as I took the glass of champagne he offered before settling next to me on the lounger, the small round table pulled to the cushions. I tucked the blanket more tightly around my shoulders and planted my feet on the warm wood of the deck next to him, as if we were little kids at a picnic bench.
I recalled my only memory of going on a picnic as a child and in the far reaches of my mind, my father was with us. He and my mother sat side by side on a blanket, while a chunky, not-yet-walking me crawled between them. There isn’t much that stands out in my memory of him, just his eyes. They had the ability to pierce with a single gaze, fill the space with tension in a second, and take the air from your lungs in a single breath.
I sighed, letting old skeletons lie, and set my glass on the table.
“Okay? Can I get you something else?” Hunter rubbed at my arm fiercely to help generate heat under the blanket. I was still naked, feeling a little abused by the sand that’d rubbed me and by the man that’d invaded every sensual crevice of my body in the moonlight.
“I’m okay. Just still soaking everything in.” I nibbled on toasted baguette drizzled with oil and tapenade before placing it back on the plate. “I don’t think I can eat.” I did my best at swallowing the concoction then washed it down with a healthy swallow of champagne. The bubbles scorched my lungs and caught fire in my throat, but I was thankful for the warm feeling spreading through my belly, tingling my toes, and allowing reality to slip into a comforting fog.
“Let me make you something else.” Hunter rushed to stand but I pulled him back into me on the couch.
“I just need a minute,” I hummed and curled myself into his sturdy arms.
“Sure, Princess.” He sighed and then pressed a soft kiss to my head. “All the time in the world.” He was stroking my back, then wiggled himself beneath my soft blanket and we were skin to skin, his hot body like a furnace lighting my own.
“Things have been so wrong with Brant for a while now, I just never could have imagined…” I trailed off, finding myself at a loss for words. My mind hadn’t fully formed an opinion yet. All I knew was that I was down in Belize with a man who was in essence on the hunt for my husband. It made my stomach hurt.
“It’s easy to ignore the signs when you love something.” He lulled me with his soothing, rich voice.
I snuggled closer and let my mind wander more. “We met in college. It was quick; we dated for only a year before he convinced me to go to the courthouse with him.” I shuddered thinking I would soon be headed to the very same courthouse to file divorce papers. “It was picture-perfect at first. But then he quit school and took the job at InteliCorp.” My gaze found Hunter’s as he watched with rapt attention. “The job, the parties, the cars, the things. So many things. Brant’s always loved things…” I trailed off and picked at the soft edges of the cotton. “I think he thought all the things would keep me happy while he was gone for weeks on end.”
“Why did you stay so long then? If he wasn’t treating you right?” Hunter asked.
I sighed then, my shoulders tensing as my mind flew back to thoughts of our wedding day, before our marriage had fallen. “It’s a terrible reason, I can’t even tell you how long the story is.” I huffed and leaned up to grab my champagne again.
“I’ve got all night.” His grin quirked before he lifted the bottle from its chilled bucket and poured the pale liquid in my glass.
A wry smile tilted my lips. “You sure you know what you’re in for?”
“I know exactly what I’m in for.” His grin stopped my heart for one long pause. “I told you, I want to know all the things the paperwork can’t tell me.” He traced a thumb and finger through a strand of my hair that had blown across my face.
I leaned further back in the chair and settled into the story I’d never told anyone. Not because it was so heinous, but because it was the shattered pieces of my heart laid bare.
“Sometimes I think I married him to get out,” I finally stated, the sentence running on repeat in my mind as shame choked my airways. “Growing up with my mom is difficult to explain to anyone who hasn’t lived it. She’s was abusive in all the non-physical ways.” I thought of his scars then, hidden beneath the tattoos that hinted at a very physical past he never shared. I hoped someday he’d tell me more. “She worked two jobs,” I continued, “and relied on the church to put clothes on my back because she was too drunk to notice I’d grown out of last year’s. Brant sent her money all the time after we were together—five hundred here, a few thousand there. He even bought her a car, and still she would call me for more. And if I didn’t want to give her more money for whatever lame excuse she had, she would say the nastiest things.” I twisted my hands in my lap, thinking of the rushing criticism she threw with a sharp-barbed tongue. I shook my head. “If she was in a bad mood, she went crazy. You couldn’t even talk to her, the screaming and hysterics. It felt like I was more in control than she was a lot of days.” Hot tears spilled over and before I knew it I was sobbing and choking into Hunter’s shoulder. “Isn’t that terrible of me?” I whispered as I wiped my cheeks on the blanket. “Marrying Brant to escape home?”
“It’s not terrible at all. And I know you—I bet there’s more.” His warm hand cupped my jaw, the pad of his thumb working slow circles at the tense muscles of my neck. “You loved him. You love everyone you meet with something fierce and loyal; it’s who you are.”
I cried harder then, feeling the emotional burden of the love I carried, before tucking back into Hunter’s biceps and letting out all the pent up frustration I’d held in for the last two years. “I thought I loved him. I thought he loved me.”
“How could you put the one you love in danger?” Hunter huffed into my hair and I looked up. “Sorry.” His eyes softened when he caught my gaze.
“It’s okay. You’re right. It seemed like Brant was trying to escape from the moment we got married. He worked long hours from the beginning, but he didn’t even care that I was left alone and hurting. My mother tried to console me when he was gone, but her consoling turned into harping when all she ever did was defend him and make me feel like I was being a spoiled brat, an arrogant rich girl, but I didn’t want to be a rich girl. I never wanted any of that shit!” I screamed in frustration before Hunter’s hands latched around my wrists and pulled me to him again.
“Hey, don’t pull away from me. What he did to you was bullshit, Erin. No self-respecting man would ever leave his wife at home if he didn’t have to. And no self-respecting man would ever get involved with JW willingly…” he finished and his fists tightened almost painfully around mine.
“Hunter…” I twisted my hands away. “That hurts.”
“Fuck.” He let go instantly, the faraway look in his eyes suddenly replaced with remorse. He tilted my palms to his lips and placed delicate kisses at the center of each.
“No one good ever got involved with JW. I don’t mean to say that your husband deserves what’s coming to him, but he deserves some retribution.”
“What about you? You’re involved with JW. What am I supposed to think about that?” My emotions were a pendulum swinging from one extreme to the next, but how was I supposed to feel?
“Hey.” His wrists caught mine again, this time with gentle force. “I didn’t ask to be with JW. That power was taken from me when I was a kid and my mom was fucking killed. I had no one. I was a punk teen with no friends and no way to feed myself. I was desperate, Erin. You’ve got to understand that.” Our faces just inches apart, Hunter begged me to believe him. “I’ve been working every day since then to get out. Keeping him at arm’s length, making it clear that my life is my photos, not this. But getting rid of JW isn’t easy.” He ran a frustrated palm through his short strands. “I watched the tank ahead of me get hit by a suicide bomber. It was brutal, Erin. Watching those guys get blown apart handing out candy and toys to kids. One of the guys I was closest to told me just the night before how he lost his sister to a random, gang-related drive-by back home. It fucking haunted me. The very next day, he’s helping a little civilian kid and then gone.”
“That must have been terrible to see,” I uttered. “It could have been you in that tank.”
“I was, and it could have been me. Sometimes I think it should have, coming home to someone who manipulates and brutalizes people… I never forgot that conversation with that soldier the night before. That’s why when I came back, I wouldn’t have anything to do with JW. So much violence in the world, and JW making it worse right here on my streets, I couldn’t be a part of it anymore. Until you.”
“Hunter…what were you a part of before?” I struggled to finally ask one of the questions that had danced in my head. “What did you do?”
“I never killed anyone, Erin. Never. I bruised a few people when I was young, but I couldn’t take the blood. The cold-calculated killer isn’t me. Some of those guys—the look in their eyes is chilling. They don’t feel.”
My hands stretched to his face and cupped his angled jaw as I held his gaze. “You protect people.’ I crawled into his lap to wrap him in a hug.
“Look at you getting all sweet,” he teased, but I heard the emotion in his voice.
I stared into his glowing green eyes, emanating with energy that I couldn’t place. My palms tingling and the hairs on the back of my neck rising, I trusted him. With every fiber of my being, with every beat of my pulsing heart, I had faith in him. Hunter wouldn’t lie to me any more than I would him. “I believe you when you say you want out.” Tears threatened at my eyelids again when Hunter’s forehead tilted to mine. I finally meant it. I finally could say I believed him, inside and out.
He bent his head and whispered, “Thank you,” he said the words softly as his fingers laced with mine and we held both of our hands in my lap between us. “It’s us against them.” His words breathed across my lips and sent chills racing down my spine. He was right. I’d sensed it from the first night at JW’s. Hunter and I were in over our heads, fate had twisted our paths like the gnarled knot of a rope, and the only way out was to see it through to the end.
“Can we do this?” I breathed.
“We don’t have a choice.”
