Chapter 17

“Hunter. Hunter!”

She was shaking him.

“I’m awake. I’m awake.” His mouth was dry, his heart pounding. In his mind’s eye, the dream was still sharp against all his senses. The oppressive, looming dark, the ache in his lungs from breathing the fine particles of dust, and—as he tried to clear his way through—those eyes peering from the blackness, shocked and accusing.

“Hunter, what is it?”

“I think I—I think I remember something.”

“You don’t think it was just a dream?”

“No. It was a memory.”

And, just beyond the dream, his mind knew there was something more to see and know, something crucial.

Something terrible.

What had the doctor said?

It’s also possible to have some retrograde amnesia even in response to psychological trauma. I’m sure you’ve heard of childhood abuse victims or even adult rape victims with no memory of the incident?

For all this time, since coming home to Trina, he’d wanted to remember the missing pieces. At first for his own benefit, because the lost time felt like a wounded place in his psyche. Then, last night, he’d wanted to remember so he could give himself back to her, whole. But now, suddenly, he wondered.

Did he want to know everything that was missing?

What if, in that gap between past and present, there was something he’d been so unable to grapple with that he’d chosen to elide it?

What would seeing it do to him?

What would it do to what lay between him and Trina?

“Hunter,” she whispered.

As his eyes adjusted to the light, he could see her a little bit, and the fear on her face reflected the fear that had suddenly sprung up in his heart.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “There was a building. It was supposed to be empty. But—it wasn’t empty. There was someone in it. And something terrible was about to happen.”

Her eyes were wide, startled. He’d frightened her. Not, he thought, with his words. He’d infected her with his own fear.

“But that could be any dream. Right? No reason to think it was a memory.”

He couldn’t explain why this felt different, why it felt—real. Why it felt like the truth, an unwanted truth. There was something, a dark shape, forming from the dread in his belly, like a golem forming out of riverbank mud, and it would rise and come for him. He knew that now. And—

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

If there was something there, and it was destined to surface, it would have the power to change who he was, just as he’d been changed by the discovery that he’d forgotten Trina and all she’d meant to him. And what men saw during war did, he knew that well.

If he remembered…if it changed who he was, changed what he believed—

“Hunter.”

She was calling to him. Trying to call him out of the dark place he’d slipped into. And God, he wanted to follow the sound of her voice.

“Talk to me.”

“What if—what if the thing I forgot is something I can’t live with?”

“Like what?” she asked.

“What if I did something, or didn’t do something, and someone died because of it?”

She closed her eyes. “That would be terrible,” she said. “But you would live with it. You would find a way to live with it.”

“What if you couldn’t live with it?”

“That wouldn’t happen.”

She sounded so certain. The same way she had when she’d told him his scars could never be ugly to her. He envied her certainty. The ground under his own feet was rutted, potholed, ready to trip him up. Things weren’t where he’d put them—neither real things in the real world nor his own thoughts.

“Shh,” she said, and kissed him. Her mouth was soft and warm, and that single kiss contained everything that had passed between them last night. God, she’d been amazing. Her mouth, her hands, her body against his. The sounds she made, how good she’d made him feel.

All he had to do was believe she was right. There was nothing in his head that would trip him up and bring him down. There was nothing ugly hidden in there, waiting to spring out of the dark. There was just Trina, beautiful in the light, and she was looking down at him patiently, waiting for him to come back from the nightmare so he could kiss her again.

He could believe her. He could.

He reached for her, then froze as a creak came from the hall. A door.

“Oh, shit,” she said. One of the girls was awake. His eyes found the clock. Six a.m. Probably too early for her to be up for good, but it was possible.

They lay still in the dark as the bathroom door opened and closed. The length of her, the heat of her—he was suddenly aware of his morning wood. He pressed himself against her and she giggled.

The toilet flushed, the bathroom door opened, footsteps receded down the hall, and the girls’ door creaked again.

They were undiscovered. For now.

“I should go back downstairs,” she said.

“Do you have to?”

“I think—I should, right?”

“Probably. Before the girls wake up.”

It was hard to think straight, with his mind still cloudy from sleep and the nightmare, with her thigh exerting enough pressure against his cock that he didn’t think it was accidental. She was leaving Saturday. Or—

Or he would ask her to stay longer.

But he couldn’t do that, could he? Couldn’t ask her to give up the opportunity to do what she’d always wanted to do. That thing that lit her up when she talked about it. Couldn’t ask her to bait-and-switch Phoebe again. Couldn’t ask her, not when he literally didn’t know his own mind.

She drew away from him, taking the caress of her leg, the heat of her body, with her.

She hesitated with her hand on the edge of the bed, her fingers close enough that if he’d moved his hand just a little, he could grab them.

And then she was gone.

It was hard for her to fall back to sleep. Her bed in the guest room was cold. A hard knot of anxiety formed in her chest. This was exactly what she wasn’t supposed to have let happen. She wasn’t supposed to let herself want and hope and have.

It could be so much worse now. Because he’d done it knowingly and willingly, and so if he took it away, that would be knowing and willing, too. And it would hurt that much more. And that sure as hell looked like what was happening. Last night, everything between them had been pure, easy, beautiful. And then this morning, he’d been panicked, ready to run away from her.

What the hell was she supposed to do? With two days to go, what the hell made sense? Nothing.

She didn’t know which man she’d find when she went downstairs, the one who’d begged for stories and then brought her new, better fantasies to life—or the one who’d woken up panicked.

And she didn’t know which man she wanted to find. Maybe it would be easiest if he turned away from her, refused to acknowledge what had happened. Pushed her away and let her go without drawing her in further.

God knew, the further in she got, the harder it would be to walk away.

And she had to walk away. Right?

Unless—

Unless he could give her some certainty. Something like a promise. And she couldn’t expect that from a man who was hurt and confused.

Fuck.

She got up, pulled on her clothes, and went out to the kitchen. He was there, frying eggs on an electric griddle. The girls were nowhere in sight.

He raised his gaze and smiled.

Oh, hell, she thought, because she’d almost fainted from relief, and that told her how doomed she was. She could lie to herself all she wanted, tell herself it would be better if he pushed her away, but deep down, at the fifty-second level, she knew what she wanted.

“Hello, sleepyhead. Something keep you up late?”

She wanted to glare at him, but all she could do was grin like a schoolgirl.

He looked her over, his eyes lingering over her breasts, where she could feel her nipples tightening under the soft knit. She should have put a bra on. Or not. She liked the color rising in his cheeks. And the way his gaze wouldn’t let hers go.

“How do you like your eggs?”

“Over hard.”

“I would have said just hard enough. Didn’t hear you complaining.”

She shot him a glance and found him smirking at her. “Have you been waiting for me to show up so you could make that joke?”

“Just thought of it, actually.”

“What would you have said if I’d said ‘over easy’?”

He flipped an egg and tipped his head, thinking. “Probably, ‘Mmm. Yeah. That’s the way I like it, too.’ ” He loaded the words with innuendo.

She shivered. He probably could have said just about anything in that voice and had the same effect on her. “ ‘Sunny side?’ ”

He laughed. “ ‘Honey, both sides are your sunny side.’ ”

“You would not have.”

And yet, as utterly ridiculous as the words were, the way he was running his eyes over her, the rough edge in his voice—that probably would have worked, too.

“No,” he admitted. “I wouldn’t have. You just happen to have served me up the best straight line ever.” He tossed two pieces of thick-cut ham onto the griddle. “Come here.”

She rested her cheek against his chest, loving the hardness of his body under the softness of the knit shirt. She put her arms around him and stroked his back, pressing her hips against him until she felt him harden.

“Over medium,” she said, and his laugh rumbled under her cheek. She could have stayed there all day, but he stepped away to slip the spatula under his eggs and deposit them on plates.

She shivered and wanted him back.

They sat across from each other at the kitchen table. Sunlight streamed in.

“Let’s go to Dungeness Spit today,” he said.

She laughed.

“No. Don’t tell me we did that last time, too.”

She nodded.

“Huh,” he said. “You know what’s crazy? I feel like he—the old me—is a different guy completely. Like he’s your ex. And I’m—well, I’m trying to one-up him.”

“Um,” she said, “you’re jealous? Of your old self?”

She was teasing him, but the truth was, she loved the heck out of that. He was jealous. Of the last guy who’d had her. Even if he was his own usurper.

That felt big. Real.

Maybe—maybe this would be okay. Maybe they would spend the day together and it would all become clear—to both of them. Maybe they’d get to a place of certainty and at least half-promises, enough that she could call Stefan and tell him she’d changed her mind, she wasn’t coming. That’s what she’d do: she’d give it today to play out, and then she’d make a decision.

“Yeah. Crazy. Told you. And not exactly jealous. But—I want you to be thinking about this me. Not that me—”

His voice had softened, and she realized it was a real confession. On the same scale as the one he’d made last night, that he wanted to feel that way about her again.

The man she’d fallen in love with had been amazing in so many ways. She had admired him and wanted him and imagined a life with him. But this man—

This man was letting her in in a way that man hadn’t.

She’d thought she’d opened her heart to the old Hunter, but the new Hunter made her want to lay herself open. Peel back her skin and let him slip inside with her, draw him down deep.

“Oh, that guy,” she said, putting some flippancy in her voice. “He’s totally old news.”

She’d caught him off guard and made him smile again, and God, that smile—the lines at the corners of his eyes, the creases in his cheeks that were almost, but not quite, dimples.

Her heart felt like it was going to burst. Yes, she had a really tough decision to make. But not right this second. Right this second, she just wanted to be here. In this kitchen, him asking her to spend the day in the sunshine with him.

“I’d love to go to Dungeness Spit with you.”

“In anticipation of your ‘yes,’ I made sandwiches.”

She laughed out loud at that, and he ducked his head. “Let me guess. Not a surprise?”

She shook her head, and he gave her a wry smile in return. It was one of the things she’d fallen for about him. That he didn’t assume the care and feeding of the girls was her responsibility. On their Lakeshore Park outing, he’d bought them all lunch at the snack shack. And before, he’d often taken responsibility for packing a picnic lunch. She didn’t have much of a history of relationships, but she’d heard enough women bitching about their husbands to know that wasn’t a thing you could take for granted. And hell, after a lifetime of being a single mom, she didn’t take much of anything for granted, and he’d been almost too much to absorb. A guy who cooked breakfast. A guy who made sandwiches.

A towering, built, gorgeous guy who could rock her world in bed and do all that.

She looked up to find him watching her.

“What are you thinking about, beautiful?”

“You’ve—you’ve never called me that before.”

“I knew that other guy was a fucking idiot.” He set his fork down and reached across the table to push a strand of hair behind her ear. “You’re crazy beautiful.”

She lost her breath, the way he was looking at her.

Hey, man. So glad you’re okay. We were a little freaked out. And sorry it took me so long to get back to you. Shit’s crazy right now. But we’ll be home soon! Can’t wait to see you and hear about what’s been going on. Yeah, I know what happened. I can’t believe no one told you. I guess things got chaotic and they were just trying to save your sorry-ass life. Anyway, gist is, we went into a building that was supposed to be empty, it wasn’t (goat fuck), full of T-men, brief firefight. A grenade took out a corner of the building and there was a haji woman trapped under some rubble. She probably had been using the building for shelter before the insurgents went in and then was too terrified to show herself. You tried to get her out, we tried to talk you out of it, but you were a crazy man, H. No one could get you to stop digging. I mean, you were like in there, fingernails bloody, the whole nine yards. And then there was another explosion. Probably another grenade. She was killed, you took that piece of rebar in the chest. I’m sorry to be brief, but I gotta run now. Feel free to ask questions if you want. I might not get your email before we’re outta here but I’ll try to get back to you if I can. Stay safe. Guess that’s easier now, huh?

“Hunter?”

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been staring at the screen. Just—staring. He’d stopped to check his email before they left for the spit, and here he was, some number of minutes or hours, or for all he knew, days later.

“What is it?” Trina came up behind him and touched his hair. His whole body leapt to life at the touch, despite how wired the email had made him feel.

He pushed his chair back a little, gesturing to her that she should read the screen.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, Hunter.”

“I still feel like it’s something that happened to someone else, though. I mean, I see the story. I get that she was probably scared, crying. But—the way he described me—I’m not that guy. I’m the weigh-the-consequences, think-it-through, figure-out-a-plan guy. Not the guy who starts digging in the rubble like a madman when his men are telling him to get the hell out.”

“You could write back to him. Ask him.”

“Do you think he knows?”

“He might.”

The pain of it was, he knew. Somewhere down in the depths of his mind, he knew what had happened that day. But he couldn’t get to it. It was locked behind a wall.

“God,” he said quietly. “I hate it. That there’s all this stuff in there. Buried. That I can’t see. Like it’s waiting for me.”

“Isn’t that kind of true of all of us?” Trina asked. She put her arms around him, pressed her breasts against his back. For a brief moment, the pain and darkness in his head receded.

“What’s buried in your head?” he asked.

“Well, I don’t know, do I?”

“You know some of it. You must have things you push down.”

“I try not to.”

“No buried anger?”

She laughed. “Well, plenty of hostility toward Stefan and his limited contributions toward Phoebe’s well-being. Twenty-three chromosomes—I guess I should be glad that it was the right number, right? Expensive Christmas gifts that mainly serve to make her notice how not expensive most of mine are. And cash when I beg nicely. But that’s hardly buried.”

“You don’t act bitter.”

“I don’t want to be bitter. And I don’t want her to hear me being bitter. If we’re going to make this thing work, we have to go into it with a good attitude.”

“Are you excited about it? The job?”

He turned in his chair so he could see her face. He wasn’t sure, not anymore, what he wanted her to say.

She bit her lip. “Yes. Of course.”

That heavy feeling in his chest—that was disappointment.

“But—there’s a part of me that’s not sure, either. Whether this is the right thing.”

And that was fear.

He didn’t want to let her go, but he was terrified of the alternative. Of her staying.

What if—

What if he couldn’t—

What if he disappointed her the way he’d—

“I’m afraid he’ll let her down. I don’t think he’ll be very involved. I think she’ll be sort of a trophy daughter to him.”

So it wasn’t that she didn’t want to leave him. It was that she didn’t trust Stefan Spencer with Phoebe.

“How could anyone make Phoebe just a trophy?” he demanded. “She’s terrific.” For the last week, he’d been teaching Phoebe to use the power tools. She was fearless and full of ideas, wanting to know why things had to be done a certain way, suggesting out-of-the-box alternatives, and then listening intently as he explained why her ideas could—or might not—work. If she were his daughter—

If he’d gotten Trina pregnant, instead of Dee?

Impossible to imagine, of course. Impossible to imagine the world without either Clara or Phoebe. But if he’d gotten Trina pregnant, he would have done the right thing by her, just as he had by Dee. And if Phoebe had been his daughter, he never would have let her out of his sight, up and left to live a thousand miles away. And as for the token gifts and making Trina ask for money…

He would never have let them go. Never have let them find family in another man.

If he’d been her real father.

If he’d been a man who knew himself capable of love.

“Phoebe is terrific.” She smirked. “It’s my genes.”

He laughed, and it snapped him, once again, out of the dark place he’d been tempted to go.