Chapter Thirty
HUNTER SPENT HALF the night listening to Clark and Nina’s newest battle, which he still wasn’t sure he understood. It sounded to him like they were going around and around about the same issues without any resolution. Nina felt like she was a single parent, and Clark felt like he was undervalued. Hunter had witnessed many happy marriages: his parents, Pete and Jenna, and all their friends at Seaside. They made Clark and Nina’s troubles seem out of the ordinary. But he wasn’t dumb enough to believe that every couple wasn’t fighting their own private battles.
He left his house early to head down to his father’s hardware store. Some guys turned to alcohol when things got tough, as his father had after they’d lost his mother. Hunter usually turned to his work, but after spending so many hours working on the sculpture for which Jana was his muse, he knew the shop would only further confuse him. The next best thing to working with his hands was being around power tools—and his father. A double dose of calming influences.
Hunter had grown up in the small town of Brewster where, thankfully, not much ever changed. He parked beside the hardware store and headed around front. His phone rang as he reached for the door, and he smiled when he saw Jana’s beautiful face on the screen. But his mind zipped back to last night, to their argument over the key and her sexy dancing, tempering his emotions.
Running a hand over his closely shorn hair, he paced the sidewalk as he answered. “Hey.”
“Hi.”
Silence stretched uncomfortably between them.
“I just got a call from Brock. The girl who was fighting in the exhibition match today got food poisoning, and he needs me to fill in for my weight class, so…”
Hunter’s gut clenched.
“I know your competition is today, and I hate to miss it, but he’s really in a bind, and I kinda thought—”
He hadn’t made a big deal about the competition because they’d been dealing with Jana’s studio, but it was important to him. He debated asking her not to go to the fight, but that didn’t feel right, either. Especially after he’d given her a hard time about the way she’d danced last night. Everything he was saying lately came out wrong. Everything he did pushed her further away. Hunter never claimed to know how to handle women or relationships, but with Jana, together they’d somehow figured it out. He had faith that this, too, would somehow work out.
“Sure, good luck.”
“I guess we’ll catch up later?” she asked tentatively. “I’ll try to make it after the fight. I just never know how late they’ll run.”
“Yeah, whatever.” His biting tone surprised him, but he couldn’t have covered the sting of her missing his competition if his life depended on it.
He ended the call before his voice could shoot any more darts, then headed inside. How many times had he and his siblings walked into their father’s shop on their mother’s heels? Running up and down the aisles as his parents talked or kissed or whatever adults did when their kids were busy terrorizing a store.
He thought about his childhood. He’d had a good one, and as he’d grown into a man, no one had ever questioned his playing around with women. No one had ever held him accountable, either. Men were lucky like that. He thought of Jana and all that she’d been through, and an empathetic ache weighed heavily inside him.
She’d poured her heart out to him, and he’d made it even worse by judging one of the very things that drew him to her. Her dancing. His heart ached at how stupid he’d been. She’d become vital to him. Essential.
As he opened the door to his father’s shop, he realized that he’d always thought there were four essential elements to life: earth, wind, fire, and water. But he’d been so very wrong. There were five, at least for him, and he had a feeling Jana was the only element he needed.
His father looked up from behind the counter. A wide smile graced his handsome face as he came around the counter with open arms.
“Hunt. How’re you doing, son?”
Hunter welcomed his father’s warm embrace. Neil Lacroux had hair the color of sand after a harsh rain. When he’d been drinking, his belly had gone soft and his face had aged, but now that he’d been sober for a few years, he’d lost the weight. Losing his wife had stolen a piece of his spirit and left behind a shadow of emptiness that Hunter assumed would always be there. But he was glad his father had climbed out of the bottle and gotten back to the business of living his life.
“I’m okay, Pop. I thought I’d come down and walk the aisles for a bit.” He smiled, knowing his father would laugh at the reminder of what he’d said to his son so often in his youth when Hunter had had a bad day. Come on down to the shop with me. Walk the aisles. We’ll talk tools and you’ll feel better.
“Gotchya.” His father’s large hand landed on Hunter’s shoulder and squeezed gently. “What’s on your mind?” He picked up a can of paint from the counter and placed it on the shelves beside the others. “Is it the competition? I’ve got Mira, the young gal I hired last month, coming in later so I can be there.”
“Thanks, Pop.” Thinking of Jana and the sculpture he’d created in her image, he said, “It’s not that. I’m pretty sure we’ve got that nailed.”
“That’s what Grayson said, too. He said you’d finally found your muse.”
“Yeah, you could say that.” Was there such thing as a life muse? Because that’s what he felt like Jana had become. She inspired so much more than his creativity.
They walked up and down the aisles. His father pointed out a few new tools and a new brand of electric screwdriver he carried. Normally the distraction would be enough to ease Hunter’s mind no matter what he was dealing with, but today he couldn’t shake the churning in his gut.
His father looked at him with an assessing gaze and tilted his head toward his office. “Come see what I found last week.”
Hunter followed him into the small office just beyond the counter. Neil waved to a chair, and Hunter sat down, watching his father push aside stacks of papers. The wall in front of his desk was littered with pictures of Hunter and their family.
“I was digging around in your mother’s sewing room, looking for something I’d misplaced.” He opened his file drawer and withdrew a green hanging file folder. “And I found these.” He set the folder on his desk and opened it, revealing Hunter’s original drawings of his very first sculpture.
“She kept them?” The image of his parents standing across from Wellfleet Harbor came rushing back, the smell of the bay, the glimmer of love in his mother’s eyes. Man, he missed her. He reached for the drawings, poring over the notes he’d written in the margins. Remember her fingers. His arm.
“She kept everything,” his father said. “Those drawings were the catalyst for what you’ve become, Hunter. I saw it as kind of a sign, seeing as how your work is going to be judged in the very spot where you saw us standing.”
Hunter nodded, smiling to himself with the memory of that afternoon. “You know, Pop, there was a time when my work was everything. I lived for it. I craved the feel of the cold metal in my hands. Knowing that whatever I had inside me would come out in what I created.” He gazed into his father’s deep-set eyes. Eyes he’d looked into his whole life and seen endless support.
“And now?” his father asked.
“Now I still feel the same love of my work. I could never stand in front of a class and teach, like Matt, or tattoo people’s skin, like Sky. And the way you and Pete refinish boats is incredible, but it’s also too regimented for me. I need the freedom my work offers. I need to be able to visualize what I want and turn those visions into reality.” He inhaled and blew it out slowly. “But for the first time in my life, I found something else that fulfills me in ways I never imagined possible, someone else. She challenges me, Pop, and makes me want to be a better person. More caring. Stronger, but in a different sort of way.”
“Sounds like me when I met your mother.”
He smiled, thinking of his mother. “The funny thing is, with her it’s not about fulfilling my hopes and dreams. It’s about fulfilling hers.”
Hunter pushed to his feet, filled with purpose and determination. “Pop, I have an idea.”
“You usually do,” his father mumbled as he got to his feet. “You know, you don’t always have to act on your impulses, Hunter. You could contemplate, let things settle for a little while, and then make a decision with a level head.”
He smiled and draped an arm over his father’s shoulder. “Wasn’t it you who told me that levelheaded decisions have no place where women are concerned?”
His father laughed. “Probably so.”
“Well, then, you should say ‘I told you so.’ Because it’s definitely true where my woman is concerned.”
WHY DID EXHIBITION matches always run late? The match was supposed to begin at two o’clock, and by four o’clock they were just finishing the third weight class. Jana was up next, and she was a nervous wreck. She was running on no sleep, too much coffee, too little training, and a heart that felt like it had been filled up like a helium balloon that soared to cloud nine, only to find it had a pinhole leak and was making a slow descent back down to earth.
“Ready, sis?” Brock helped her put on her gloves while he spoke. “Whatever’s got you more jittery than a coke addict, kick it to the curb, because, baby, you’ve got this. You’re fierce, determined, and you’ve got a harder punch than any woman in your weight class. Focus, Jana.”
How could she focus when she felt like her world was careening out of control again? She should be at the competition with Hunter, not fighting in a match she didn’t really care about.
She held up her boxing gloves. “Can you just check my texts for me quickly? Hunter had his competition today for a sculpture he was making, and I was supposed to go. I just want to know if he won.”
“That’s what you’re stewing over? Jana, we could have forfeited this match.” Brock grabbed her cell phone and checked her text messages. “You’ve got, like, a zillion messages from Sky and one from Hunter. Which do you want first?”
“Sky.” Because Hunter’s might not be as nice.
Brock began reading Sky’s message. “‘OMG. Hunter is a finalist. SQUEE! He is one of three finalists, fingers crossed.’” He arched a brow. “Squee?”
Jana smiled, too happy to respond to his question. “He’s a finalist. That’s amazing.”
“There’s more. Do I really have to read them all? You go up in seven minutes—”
“Read them!” Her happiness was layered in guilt. Hunter had placed as a finalist, but she’d missed it. He never asked her for a thing, and here she was, fighting instead of going to the event he’d been working toward for weeks. She really did suck as a girlfriend. She made a decision right then and there that from now on she would focus on Hunter. No matter what else was going on in her life, she was going to make sure she was there for him. And if he needed her to modify her sexy dancing in order to feel more comfortable, then she’d do that, too. It was a small concession, wasn’t it? He’d done so much for her.
Brock sighed and continued reading Sky’s texts. “‘He looks so nervous. And OMG if you could see the guy he’s up against. He’s such a nerd LOL.’” He lifted his eyes. “Jana. I’m not doing this.”
“Fine, just skip to the last message from her and read that.” She waited, hoping Hunter had won the competition.
“‘They’re not doing the final judging until later. Maybe you can still make it.’”
“Good,” Jana said. “Everyone’s late today. Maybe I can make it.”
The announcer called for Jana and her competitor.
“You’re up, sis.” Brock set her phone in her bag and took her by the shoulders. “I want you to use that feel-good energy to win this fight, you got it?”
Jana nodded. “Just tell me what Hunter’s text says.”
“Come on, Jana. That’s not focusing.” He grabbed the phone with a huff, swiped the screen, and read, “‘We need to talk.’”