Chapter Three
Abby
I was eating dinner alone in The Shack. Again.
I didn’t mind eating alone. Not really. I’d got used to it over the last few years, but only because I hadn’t had a lot of choice in the matter. It was that or stay home and cook for myself again. At least in The Shack, surrounded by people, I felt marginally less lonely.
My mom and dad had moved to an island off the coast of South Carolina several years ago. My mom had been born near there and she’d always wanted to move back to the area when she retired. I could have gone with them, of course, but my life and my friends had been in Creede and I hadn’t wanted to leave everything behind.
However, a year or so after they moved, I got sick and while I spent three years battling cancer, my friends had all got married and had babies so they didn’t have a lot of time to go out anymore. I could understand that and it had been my choice to stay in Creede, after all. Still, at times, I wondered if I’d made the right choice in staying. It would have been nice to have had some help when the chemo made me too tired and too sick to do anything around the house, like cook and clean.
I glanced up from the menu just as Hunter walked into the bar. He strode through the room with all the confidence of a man who knew who he was and what he wanted. He headed for the table where Coop was seated. Cooper Brown was the owner of The Shack and the president of the MC club that Hunter was a member of. They were good friends, too. I often saw then sitting together though I was fairly confident that neither of them hadn’t ever noticed me.
I’d become adept at being invisible.
That might have been because of all the years I’d spent working at the library in Creede where I had to keep quiet or perhaps it was a more recent development. I’d lost a lot of weight during the time I had cancer both as a result of the cancer itself and because of the chemotherapy which had completely killed my appetite.
I hated the way my body looked now. I was way too skinny. I was starting to put the weight back on slowly, but I still hadn’t fully regained the appetite I’d had before and my weight gain was slow. Now, I buried myself under layers of clothes and hoped that nobody noticed how thin I was.
With all that in mind, it was hardly surprising that no one ever noticed me, but it was depressing sometimes, especially when I saw all the beautiful women that Coop and Hunter hung around. They looked like models and I was just…me.
Hunter and Coop’s friends were all in The Shack too, seated at a table near Coop’s. As they laughed and joked, it made me nostalgic for the time my friends and I used to hang out. I sighed and buried my head in the menu once more. It was pointless dwelling on things I couldn’t change.
When one of the wait staff arrived at my table, I snapped the menu shut and looked up to place my order.
Only it wasn’t the waitress standing there, it was Hunter.
My eyes widened. “Oh, it’s you.”
He chuckled. “Not the best welcome I’ve ever received, but I’ll roll with it. Mind if I sit down?”
He sat in the chair opposite before waiting for my answer so I didn’t bother giving one. I waited for him to say something, but he remained quiet. Instead, he leaned back in his chair then took a sip from the beer bottle he’d brought with him. I glanced around in confusion as if I could pluck the reason for his unexpected visit out of the air around me.
Finally, he leaned across the table and asked, “You waiting for someone?”
I frowned. “No.”
A lazy grin slid into place on his face. “Good.”
It was?
“Have you thought any more about that tattoo?”
I nodded. “I have.”
I’d been thinking about little else.
I liked that Hunter didn’t want to ink something generic on my skin. The fact that he wanted the tattoo he gave me to mean something somehow gave me more confidence in him as a tattoo artist, but I just wasn’t sure what meant something to me anymore. I’d spent so long doing little else but fighting cancer that I’d somehow lost myself in the process.
I didn’t have any hobbies or interests and other than losing myself in a good book, my life pretty much consisted of going to work, coming home and eating dinner. I’d read or watch some television for a couple of hours then go to bed.
I hadn’t realized how boring my life had become until Hunter had asked me to come up with something that was important to me. I didn’t want to admit to all of that to him either because he actually had a life.
What on earth would he think of mine?
He ran a hand through his shoulder length dark hair, getting it out of his eyes and the action sent a thrill of excitement through me. His hair looked as soft as a feather and I had the insane desire to run my fingers through it to find out.
What would it smell like?
I tore my gaze away from his hair and took a sip of my soda.
Hunter studied me over the top of his bottle then asked, “You plan on letting me in on what you decided on or are you going to keep it to yourself?”
Crap.
Now that the idea of getting something meaningful was firmly entrenched in my mind, I didn’t want to just blurt out the first thing that came into my head. I opened my mouth to give him some sort of answer when a tall, handsome biker arrived at the table and peered down at Hunter.
“Coop asked me to remind you that we’ve got church in the morning.”
Hunter frowned. “Tell him I haven’t forgotten.”
Church?
I was intrigued.
Hunter didn’t seem like the church-going type, although I’m not sure I knew what, exactly, the church-going type was.
The biker didn’t leave, just kept standing there, looking down at us.
Hunter sighed. “Anything else, Luke?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Violet wants to know if you and your,” he cleared his throat, “Lady friend, want to join us for dinner.”
Hunter looked over his shoulder. I followed his gaze. My eyes widened when I set eyes on the entire table full of people who were looking over at us expectantly.
Hunter heaved a sigh. “You ordered dinner yet?”
I shook my head. “Not yet, no.”
“You want to eat dinner with my friends?”
I blinked. “Um…”
Hunter glanced up at Luke. “Tell Violet we’ll be right over.”
Luke nodded then turned to leave.
“You mind?” Hunter asked belatedly.
I shrugged. “No, but won’t your friends think we’re together?”
Hunter looked between us with a frown. “We are together.”
“No, I mean together, together.”
The lazy grin that slid into place on his lips again made my stomach do some weird flipperty-flop thingy.
“That bother you?” he asked.
“Well, no, but, I just thought…”
“You thought what?”
“I just thought that it might bother you.”
“It don’t.”
“Oh. Well, okay then,” I mumbled.
“Because I was going to ask you out on a date anyway,” he said before taking a sip of beer from his bottle.
I stared at him blankly. “Excuse me?”
He chuckled. “I said, I was going to ask you out.”
“I see.”
This time my stomach lurched for a different reason entirely. I hadn’t thought about dating in a long time—I’d been too busy. And now that my body wasn’t the way I liked it, I wouldn’t feel comfortable showing it to someone—which was where a relationship would eventually lead.
Hunter’s eyes widened. “That it?”
I sighed. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“How about, ‘sure Hunter, I’d love to go on a date with you.’”
“Don’t you even want to know my name?”
“Why, has it changed from Abby?”
I stared at him. “How do you know that?”
I hadn’t told him my name when I’d gone into the tattoo shop the other day and he hadn’t asked for it either.
He shrugged. “I asked around.”
He had?
He got to his feet. “Come on, let’s join the others. Then, after dinner, you can give me your number so I can call you about that date.”
I didn’t reply because I didn’t want to let him down before we met with his friends, but I was going to have to tell him later that I wasn’t interested. It would be better that way. For the both of us.