Chapter 27

“Oh, God,” Hunter said, his arms dropping to his sides.

“Daddy?” Clara’s voice chimed alarm, and she clutched for his hands. “Are you okay?” And then, when he didn’t—couldn’t—answer right away, “Daddy, are you okay?”

“He’s okay, hon’. Just a little freaked out.”

Nate was standing in the doorway, silhouetted there. Hunter had no idea how long he’d been there. Until he remembered the sharp intake of breath he’d heard when Clara had revealed the nature of her and Phoebe’s plot to lure Trina back. So he’d heard the whole conversation.

“Clara, honey,” Nate said. “Go on out to Jake and Griff. I want to talk to your dad for a minute.”

It took awhile before Clara would relinquish her grip on Hunter’s hands. He gave her one more kiss on the head and she ran out of the toolshed.

Nate came in and the two men stood there in the semidarkness. Hunter couldn’t even see Nate’s face, and that was fine.

“Trina’s gone,” Hunter said.

“I gathered,” Nate said dryly.

“It’s my fault. I let her go.”

“I know something about that.”

Hunter expected him to say more, but Nate stayed quiet, and Hunter was grateful, because it allowed him to gather the frayed scraps of his thoughts into something vaguely coherent.

“The day I lost my memory, there was a woman, trapped, and I flipped out—because that’s how Dee died. I’d been trying not to feel anything about her for so long, and then all of a sudden, it was all there. Everything. What I’d taken from her, how much I blamed myself. Not for not saving her, but for not loving her enough.”

Nate laughed then. A short laugh, full of sympathy and amusement. “That’s not a thing you get to choose, Hunter. I of all people should fucking know. You don’t get to choose who or how much. It chooses you. Actually, it runs you over like a fucking steamroller.”

Hunter thought of Trina, furious under the tree-house tree, raging at him. Don’t fucking tell me that, Hunter. Don’t tell me you can’t do it. Don’t tell me what you can and can’t give. I’ve seen you. I know you. And you fell in love with me. So if you’re not feeling it now, it’s not because you can’t. It’s because you won’t.

She’d been right, of course. About that. About everything.

Hunter. Those things weren’t in your control. That woman’s death. Dee’s death. How much you love someone.

“I couldn’t have saved Dee. Even if I’d loved her enough.”

Nate made a gruff, startled noise. “Of course you couldn’t.”

“And I couldn’t have saved that woman.”

Nate shook his head. “No.”

“My men knew I couldn’t. They all knew it was futile. They were telling me to stop. They were telling me to get out before—”

He touched the spot where his chest had been torn open. Where air had rushed out. Where his life had almost fled. But somehow he’d been given it back. Air. Life. The ability to breathe and live and choose.

The toolshed no longer seemed so dark. Light filtered through the partially open door and he could see Nate’s face clearly now, listening quietly, sympathetically. And he couldn’t stop gulping air, any more than he could stop feeling the press of guilt, the crush of grief, the overwhelming sense of anger at how goddamn unfair life could be, but underneath it all the swell of relief. Full breaths, his chest rising, air bright and clear and dust-free.

“It’s hard to be the one who survives.” Nate said it in an almost offhand manner. “You’re supposed to be grateful to be alive, but that doesn’t mean you are, and it sure as fuck doesn’t mean it’s easy.”

“You mean J.J.?” J.J. had been Nate’s best buddy, until he got blown up in the watchtower by an RPG. And that RPG had ended Nate’s fight, too, for different reasons.

“ ’Course I fucking mean J.J.,” Nate said. “And you can’t look the fact of it, your survival, the other person’s death, straight in the face, which makes it a thousand times worse, so it skulks around in your peripheral vision until something finally brings it into focus—”

“Like memory,” Hunter said.

And then he stopped for a moment, run over by memories. Not the lost ones, but the new ones. Trina in the airport, expectant and worried, the look on her face when he’d told her he didn’t remember, the feel of her mouth on his in the dark, something guiding him back toward the world of the living.

“Like love.” Hunter’s voice broke.

Eggs over hard, sand and scars, candlelight and chocolate, granola, kissing and kissing and kissing, and the feel of knowing her even though he didn’t.

“Like love,” Nate agreed, smiling.

Something was gathering in Hunter’s gut. Certainty. Resolve. “You said you don’t get to choose who you love. And I agree. I know that’s true. But you do—”

He took another of those deep breaths, and his ribs protested only the tiniest bit. “You do get to choose what you do about it.”

Nate cocked his head to the side. “And what, pray tell, are you going to do about it?”

In answer, Hunter reached into his pocket and pulled out the object he’d found on the closet shelf. A small, black velvet box. It could have contained earrings, but Hunter knew—deeper than memory—that it didn’t.

He opened the box. The ring, a single bright glitter of almost-but-not-quite forgotten faith, was unfamiliar, but the tightening of his chest with fear and excitement felt like an echo.

“I found it when I was looking for Clara. I must have bought it, before, and hidden it. I guess I knew even then what I wanted.”

“Yeah,” Nate said. If Hunter didn’t know him better, he would have said his friend’s eyes were shiny. “Don’t think there was ever much question along those lines, other than how long it would take you to figure it out. Nice ring, by the way.”

It was beautiful. A very wise man had obviously picked it out. Hunter was grateful to his previous self. He could get to be friends with that guy, given a little more time.

A chuckle from Nate recalled Hunter to himself and the jewelry balanced on his outstretched hand.

“You shouldn’t have. I like you a lot, but I just don’t have those kinds of feelings for you.”

Hunter raised his head to find Nate grinning at him.

“But if you want a ride to the airport, I’m your man.”