Hunter
The workshop is full. It filled up in minutes actually, and we already have requests for more, which is great, but as I stand at the back of the room and watch Drake talking to Silla, I find it hard to focus on the workshop. Instead, I’m brooding, wondering if I can offer Silla a place here at Salacious full-time, even if it means I have to watch her flirt with and befriend the man I love.
I know that even though he’s wearing that bright, flirtatious smile, he’s not happy. Not really.
Isabel keeps glancing my way. She’s watching my reaction. I don’t know, maybe she’s waiting for me to break.
Fuck, maybe I’m waiting for me to break.
Ever since the little fight in the bathroom on Thursday, Drake hasn’t spoken to me much. Nothing aside from work-related conversations about the workshop tonight.
Isabel hasn’t spoken to me much either. I’m single-handedly fucking up the two most important relationships in my life and I don’t know how to fix it. He just said fix it as if it’s that easy. As if I know what the hell to do now. He wants me to come out as bisexual. Okay, will that really make things better? Isn’t that big step for me to decide? Am I really bisexual, though, because so far, he’s the only man I’ve ever wanted to put my mouth on. So what does it matter to him if I come out?
Except, I know that it matters. It matters because until I accept who I am, I can’t accept him. Until I can undo all the hateful, ignorant shit my father ingrained in me, Drake will never truly trust me.
Isabel glances my way again as if she can read my mind.
“Hey, Iz, come here,” Drake calls, pulling her attention away from me. She crosses the room, quietly discussing something with the other two while the room continues to fill up and the patrons start taking their places at the tables. The workshop is set to begin in just a few minutes.
Every few minutes, Isabel glances my way cautiously then back to them to continue their conversation. With a tight-lipped expression, she nods. I stand stoically as she leaves their conversation and heads toward me.
“Silla wants me to help demonstrate,” she whispers carefully.
“With Drake?”
She nods, watching me with a sheepish look in her eyes.
“Sure. I think that’s a great idea,” I lie. As if watching them on stage, again, is going to make this already tense situation any better.
“Okay.” Staying glued in her spot for a moment, I notice the way she chews her lip and watches me, as if she’s waiting for me to say more. “You know…if you want to come up there instead of Drake…”
“No,” I cut her off. “I’m terrible at it. Drake’s better.”
“It’s okay that you’re bad at it. We’re supposed to be learning.”
“You two look better together anyway,” I reply, and her breath hitches as she stares at me.
“Isabel, you ready?” Silla calls, but it takes my wife a few long moments to tear her eyes away from me. Finally, she rushes to the stage with Silla and Drake and plasters on the same fake smile that Drake is wearing.
From the back of the room, I stand silently, staring with a vacant expression. Unlike the last time, watching Drake and Isabel touch each other does nothing but make me feel empty. They’re not excluding me. I’m excluding myself.
In the midst of my internal pity party, a deep voice whispers from behind me. “I’d call this a success.” I turn to find Emerson Grant surveying the crowd. A sense of pride swells in my chest at his words.
“Yeah. People are asking for more too.”
“I bet they are. You somehow managed to put this together quickly. You should be proud, Hunter.”
“I am,” I reply, turning toward him, my words coming out flat.
“Then, why are you sulking?”
“I’m not.” Even I hear how quickly I answered that.
He turns his attention to Isabel and Drake, giving her a quick, warm smile, which she politely returns from the front of the room. Then, he looks at me.
“Why is he up there and not you?”
“He’s better at it,” I reply.
With a nod, Emerson frowns, a crease forming between his brows. “Well, they do look good together.”
I force myself to swallow, seething jealousy and profound attraction warring inside me. “Yes, they do.”
“I’d lose my mind if Charlotte was that intimate with someone else—especially Drake.”
I flinch, my head spinning toward them. “Emerson,” I snap. The couple closest to us turns our way, but Emerson just smiles at them, and they lose interest in our quiet conversation.
“There’s nothing going on between them, if that’s what you’re implying,” I whisper in an almost silent, seething tone.
But he doesn’t even bother to look skeptical because the look on his face says it all—he knows. With a flat, unimpressed roll of his eyes, he pulls me into the hallway. I expect him to argue, but he doesn’t. “Drake said something strange to me this morning,” he says, adjusting his tie, and I tense. “He asked if I had any other projects for the club that needed to be completed before the end of the month.”
I force myself to swallow, without looking surprised or worried—both of which I am.
“Do you know if he has plans of leaving or taking on another contract?” he asks when I don’t respond.
“No.”
A round of applause accompanied by oohs and aahs fill the room behind me, and I turn in time to see Isabel, once again, wrapped around Drake; this time, her hands bound above her head. They’re smiling at each other, intensity coursing between their stares.
“I’d hate to lose him,” Emerson says quietly, and I turn to face him with a furrow in my brow. He cracks a smile. “I know you all think I’m not the biggest Drake fan, but that’s only because he tends to push my buttons more often than not, but he does good work. And I like having him around. Even if I’m the asshole who doesn’t say it enough. I should do a better job of making it known.”
With that, he just…walks away, and I’m left here standing speechless. I’m sure he has no idea why those words hit so hard, but I can’t help but be annoyed at just how right he sounds.
Walking back into the room, I watch the rest of the demonstration, and Silla comes around to each table, instructing the various couples and groups. Isabel and Drake do the same, their eyes finding each other more often than not, and I don’t see the same tension in their faces that I did before. The same tension I feel now.
I wish I could erase all of the stubborn demons making this so hard on me. I wish I could be exactly what they need, a man able to accept who he is without struggles, a man unafraid to tell the world he loves two people and wants them both. But what they don’t understand is that my flaws aren’t my choice, they are ingrained in the DNA of my very existence. The things that keep us apart are woven into who I am as a person and if I unravel those things, I don’t know what will be left of me.
And just like that, the solution hits me.
It slams into me like a tidal wave, knocking me to the bottom of the ocean. Because now I know how to fix this, and it means removing myself from the equation.
I asked Drake to drive Isabel home, feigning a headache. She offered to come with me, but they were smiling and having fun with Silla and the rest of the team, and I couldn’t bear the idea of ending that. Plus, I needed to get home first. It would be easier this way.
As I’m standing in my closet, I think about my dad. And a really distinct memory pops into my head. I was somewhere between childhood and adulthood, maybe twelve. It was almost a good day, when he was a little more sober than the rest of the days and both he and my mother could stand the sight of each other. They took me to the beach on my first day of summer vacation, and I remember thinking that that was the day everything was going to be better. If I just didn’t make him mad, he wouldn’t have any reason to hit me. If my mom could just keep smiling, they wouldn’t split, and she wouldn’t leave. If everything stayed the way it was that day, then everything would be fine.
We splashed in the waves, and I smiled as I watched them kissing in the water. It was a moment of perfect peace.
In the distance, a couple parked a pair of towels on the sand, not too far from ours. And the moment they unpacked their umbrella, a sense of doom settled over my heart. I mentally begged them not to do anything. Don’t touch each other. Don’t talk too comfortably. And definitely, please don’t kiss.
Those two men had no idea they were about to ruin the perfection of my day. Although I guess my father was the one who ruined it—I realize that now. But to my prepubescent brain, it was their fault.
One look at them, and my father knew. It was enough to have him barking at us to pack up our things. Enough to make him mutter something ugly in their direction before leaving. Enough to make me promise myself at that moment, no matter what, I will never, ever let myself be like those men.
I choked on that promise every day of my life. Even after he died twelve years ago. Even after that perfect day turned into another daily nightmare with his beer breath and belt bruises. That stupid fucking promise became my curse.
My stupid childhood perception stayed with me as I aged, like an ill-fitting suit that imbedded itself into my psyche. I can’t just un-feel the way I felt as a child. But I can fix it now.
Because I do love Drake. Even if I can’t say it out loud yet. I love that man as much as I love my wife, and I should have been telling him that all along. Instead, I’ve held him prisoner to my love—but that ends now.
I don’t even know what time it is when they finally walk through the door, but I greet them in the living room with my bags packed. Isabel freezes on the doormat and stares at me with wide eyes when she notices the duffel bag at my feet.
Drake takes a moment longer to realize what’s going on.
My throat aches with the emotion I’ve spent so long stifling. But it’s one look at her face that finally makes it sting so bad, I nearly break.
“Where are you going?” she murmurs, tears already filling her beautiful green eyes.
All right. Here goes nothing.
“I’m going to stay at Maggie’s for a while. She has a guest room for me.”
Isabel’s face contorts into shock and confusion, those sweet freckles on her cheeks lost to the blush of anger. “What? Why?”
Drake stands stoically behind her, a vacant stare in his eyes as he waits for my answer.
“You told me to fix it,” I say to him. “And I realized that the only part that’s broken is me. I’m the one with shit to work through and demons to fight, and until I can do that, I can’t give either of you what you need from me.”
Isabel’s nostrils are flaring at me now as she fights the urge to cry. “So you’re just going to leave?”
“I don’t think I can do this while we’re together. I want you two to just be happy together, and give me the time I need to figure this out.”
“Are we…separating?” she asks with a whimper.
The fear in her voice guts me. “No, Red. We’re not separating. I’m coming back.”
“Fuck that,” Drake snaps, stepping farther into the house, starting to pace as he throws a finger in my direction. “This isn’t fixing it.”
“Yes, it is, Drake.”
“No, it’s not, dammit,” he barks. “You’re running away.”
“I’m running away? Tell me the truth,” I reply, glaring at him. “Were you thinking of leaving Salacious? Were you thinking of going to another club? Another state?”
When he doesn’t answer, it’s pretty obvious. Isabel replies with a gasp. “What?”
“Emerson told me you talked to him this morning. I bet Silla offered you a job in New Orleans. I know you better than you know yourself, Drake.”
“You’re leaving?” she whispers.
He shoots her a sympathetic expression, shoulders slumped and mouth turned down. “No. I’m not leaving.”
She lets it all go and lets out one gentle gasp before the anguish takes over and she begins to cry in earnest. Walking into the kitchen, she keeps her back to me as she sobs into her hands, and it hurts so much that I hate myself for all the damage I’ve done.
I can’t touch her. If I do, I’ll crumble. Right now, she needs me to be strong. “I’m doing this so I can be better for you. Both of you. I had no idea when I asked for what I did that it would come to this, but I can’t undo it and we can’t pretend it never happened. So either I can figure myself out and come back to give you both what you deserve, or we can keep going the way we are and you two end up being the ones hurt.”
She sobs again, grabbing a tissue from the counter and pressing it into her eyes. Drake is watching her, too, from the living room, and I give him one pleading glance. Which he immediately understands because, a moment later, he’s going to her. Placing a hand on her back, he comforts her. She doesn’t move into his arms or acknowledge him. She just cries.
“How long?” Drake asks.
“A couple months. Maggie said I could stay as long as I need to.”
Isabel cries louder.
There’s nothing else I can say. I’ve already said everything I need to, but now, I need to make good on my promise to fix this. Which means I need to leave.
