by Diana Gardin
Twelve
He’s going to hate us,” she said, running her fingers gently through his hair.
Every touch from her fingers to his body still sent a shiver of pleasure through him, still sent his heart off to those races only Ever could start.
“He might,” he replied.
She looked up at him, arching an eyebrow.
“Okay,” he agreed. “He will. But he’s starting a new life down there in South Carolina. And whether he realizes it yet or not, it doesn’t include you. I think my brother will land on his feet. We all need to be honest here. This is what’s meant to be.”
She nodded, lying back beside him in the bed, her head against his chest. She marveled at how perfect it felt. Like they’d done it a million times before. Like this spot in the crook of his arm and the warmth of his body had her name on it. He dropped a kiss on the top of her hair, and she snuggled closer into his side.
But this was still all wrong. Even when it was so very, very right.
“What the hell are we doing?” she asked.
“We’re…we’re…shit. I don’t know. Do you want me to go back to acting like you belong to someone else? I’m sorry. But I can’t do that, Ever. Don’t ask me to.”
She sat up and leaned forward, her forehead falling against her palms. Her hair formed a thick curtain around her face.
“I’m not going to ask you to pretend,” she said, her voice muffled by her makeshift cubby. “But we’ve already crossed a line here, Hunter. I don’t want to cross it again. I need to talk to Sam. I need to work through this with him.”
Hunter sighed, defeated. “Okay. If you want time, that’s what I’ll give you. I’ll wait. We see Sam next weekend. Until then…”
“Until then, you and I…”
She glanced over at him, and all of her resolve nearly crumbled into a pile of fine dust in her palms. Hunter’s face was a mixture of pain, and love, and determination. His face was a beautiful picture that was painted just for her, and the fact that she was going to put it away in its box until further notice made her chest feel like it was caving in.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
He pulled her into his bare chest, and his rapid heartbeat was pulsating through her entire body. “Don’t apologize. I shouldn’t have let this happen. Not until…I’m just sorry.”
She leaned her head into his chest and let the tears fall freely onto his skin.
He tilted her chin upward so she was staring into his face again. “Not sorry about being with you. Sorry about the timing. Sorry about not being as bold as Sam years ago. Sorry about not being honest with you about how I felt sooner than this. But not sorry for last night. No matter what happens after this, last night ruined me for any other experience that comes after. It was the best damn night of my life.”
She nodded, keeping her true response to herself. She couldn’t tell Hunter that spending the night in his arms had been the most blissful experience of her life, too. The guilt chipping away at a large portion of her heart kept the words locked tightly inside.
It was the slowest week of his life.
The days and the nights dragged on as if he were inside a sand timer that just kept flipping over and over again. The only way to escape it was to wait idly by for time to run out, and when it finally did, he couldn’t believe it had only been a week.
They both knocked off work early on Friday so that they’d be ready to drive south in the early afternoon. Hunter had spoken to Sam on the phone and assured him he’d have Ever there by evening. Sam seemed excited about their visit, about showing them everything there was to see about his new town and his new life.
Hunter tried hard not to feel bitter, but it wasn’t exactly working. It was going to hurt Ever, seeing what Sam had built down there without her.
But he planned on reminding her after this trip exactly what she could build here on her own.
And with him.
“Everything still been quiet on the Sheriff Lincoln front?” he asked as he loaded her suitcase into the back of the truck bed.
She nodded, wrinkling her nose. “Yeah. Freaks me out a little. I keep expecting him to show up again and again, drilling me with more questions. Short of giving me a lie detector test, he can’t prove that I know where Sam is. And you guys haven’t told me the name of the town he’s in, so technically I don’t. Not until today, that is.” She climbed into the passenger seat.
“Not today, either,” he said sheepishly when he slid into the driver’s seat and started the truck. “I’m gonna blindfold you when we get close. The less you know, the better.” He eased the truck out onto the bumpy road.
Her sigh was exaggerated. “Still protecting me? Both of you are ridiculous. I’m a big girl.”
Hunter was painfully aware of that. “You don’t need the stress.”
She glanced over at him as he guided the truck onto the interstate, then leaned her head back into her seat and took a deep breath.
“You know I’ve never been out of Virginia, right?” she said softly, staring out her window as the scenery rushed by in a blur of green and blue.
His hand stretched toward where hers was resting on the console. She glanced down at it and pulled hers quickly into her lap, looking back out the window again as she did so. It was such a quick, subtle move that he could have talked himself into believing it was a coincidence, that she wasn’t purposefully pulling her hand away from his.
Hunter had graduated from high school somewhere in the middle of his class. He wasn’t a scholar; he was never going to be the kind of guy who moved on to a higher education down the road. But none of that made him an idiot, and he wasn’t going to fool himself into believing things that weren’t actually there.
The sharp sting of rejection hit his rapidly beating heart more painfully than he’d expected, and he clenched his hand into a fist before bringing it back to the steering wheel.
“Yeah,” he finally said. Somehow, his voice remained level when what he really wanted to do was cry like a bitch.
“Have you?” she asked.
He nodded. “Just a couple of times. Cross and I took a road trip down to Asheville last winter. Skied for the first time. And once, my mom took me with her to West Virginia to meet up with her sister. That whole trip pissed me off, though, because she left Sam here with a neighbor. I hated how she treated him different from how she treated me. It burned me up inside every time I saw it.”
“And now you can’t even stand to be around her, can you?” asked Ever gently.
“Nope. I know Sam gives her money—at least he used to when he was still here. His heart has always been a little bigger than mine, I guess. I can’t forgive the way she raised us. Or lack thereof.”
So quickly he thought he’d imagined it, he felt the fiery contact of her skin on his leg through his jeans. She squeezed reassuringly just once, but when he looked down, her hand was back in her lap. He gritted his teeth.
“Your heart is plenty big,” she said, her voice pensive and soft. “I wish you knew that, Hunter. Sam is an amazing person, and he’s good at a lot of things. But so are you. You’re smart—smarter than you give yourself credit for. Just ask all the guys who work under you at the lumberyard. And you’re strong. Strong enough to hold up a friend when they aren’t able to stand on their own two feet.”
Despite the fact that his heart was growing larger and fuller with each word that exited her mouth, he didn’t miss the magical f word she included in that sentence. That hurt. That shit hurt bad.
“Your heart is plenty big,” she stated again, finally turning her head to meet his eyes. He wished he could lose himself in hers, but he had to turn swiftly back to the road.
“You think you can’t forgive your mom for the way she brought you two up, and for the way she made Sam feel inadequate because of the way his father hurt her. But one day, you will forgive her, Hunter. It won’t be the same way Sam did, because you two are different. I want you to stop trying to hold
yourself to some Sam standard, because he’s not better than you. He’s just different. And you’re not lacking in any way compared to your brother.”
The meaning behind her words socked him in the gut as he continued to drive them closer to his waiting brother. She was saying that he was good enough. He was good enough for her.
Even though he had always wanted Ever, a part of him always knew that Sam was a wiser choice. Sam was more outgoing; Sam was sweeter. He had a bigger capacity for forgiveness and love, and Sam was a blatant hero of huge proportions. Ever deserved all of that and more.
Maybe, on some level, he’d just allowed Sam to swoop in and scoop Ever up off her feet when they were teenagers because he knew Sam deserved her love so much more than he did. When Ever had chosen Sam, it had sliced him up inside, but he’d also felt relieved. Because finally, Sam had been given the love he deserved.
And after all these years, here Ever was telling him flat out that he was wrong.
He wanted to wrench the truck over to the side of the road and throw it into park. He wanted to pull her over the console and into his lap. He wanted his lips to land on hers and he wanted his hands to creep up her body until he was showing her with his lips and his fingers and his heart exactly how much her words meant to him.
Instead, he drove her a little further into his brother’s waiting arms.
He could lose her, taking her to see Sam in a beautiful beach town somewhere on the coast, where his brother had begun forging a new life for both Ever and himself.
He could definitely lose her to his brother all over again this weekend.
God, he hoped with his entire being that this time, she’d choose him.
Thirteen
As they arrived at their destination, Ever wanted to see everything at once, soak it all in, but she also missed her mountains and valleys and her creek back home. Driving over the bridge from the mainland to the island was terrifying. All of that blue expanse beneath her, the great big sky spreading out above her made her feel very, very small and inconsequential.
It scared her.
Hunter continued to glance over at her with increasing frequency as he drove.
“You okay?” he finally asked.
She nodded. “No.”
Then she shook her head. “Yes.”
He laughed. “Me, too.”
She groaned. “This is all just too much. I haven’t seen Sam in so long. My stomach is tied up in knots. What if…”
She couldn’t bear to finish the thought. Someone was going to get hurt. Everyone already was. All because of her.
“Never mind,” she muttered. Instead, she stared out the window at the lush greenery surrounding her. They’d driven a little ways away from the ocean and were heading up a state road toward the address Sam had given them.
The turned onto an obscure gravel drive that lay almost invisible within the cover of the tall trees surrounding it, and Ever gripped the side of her seat until her knuckles were white. The shit was about to hit the fan, big time.
The truck came to a stop, but they were clearly nowhere near the home.
“What?” she asked, looking over at Hunter.
He leaned over the console, getting into her personal space and eyeing her closely. The deepness of his gaze and the seriousness of his expression was stoic, and the blood in her veins froze up for a split second before she realized what he was up to.
“Go,” he said.
They stared. They stared at each other, neither blinking nor allowing their eyes to wander anywhere else. But she couldn’t deny the fact that her eyes desperately wanted to take in every inch of his face. She wanted to bring her fingers up to rub against his rough jawline; she needed to feel the softness of his lips against hers again before this weekend began.
But she just stared.
Finally, he cursed and blinked the moisture back into his eyes.
“I win!” she said triumphantly.
“I know,” he sighed. “You ready, now that we got that out of the way?”
She nodded. “Ready.”
“Let’s go see my brother.”
When the house came into view, all the breath Hunter had just put back into her lungs whooshed right back out again.
“It’s enormous!” And when she said enormous, she meant enormous.
“Mother of Jesus Christ,” gasped Hunter as he slowly drove around the circular stone driveway.
“What you said.” Ever couldn’t believe it. “Sam lives here?”
He did, apparently, because there he was, his lanky six-four frame loping out to meet them.
She was frozen as Hunter stepped out and said something glib about parking the dusty truck in front of such a house, and Sam answered him just before they hugged.
Then he was beside her door.
Said door was wrenched open, and then she was in his arms for the first time in three months.
His sheer size enveloped her completely, and she was thrust right back into the life they shared what now seemed like ages ago.
Lifetimes ago.
She’d hugged Sam like this so many times before; they clung to each other for hours in his bed at night, in the woods beside the creek, in the school parking lot. And in Sam’s embrace, she’d always felt just a little less desperate, just a little less scared, just a little less broken.
His embrace did none of that anymore.
Because she was no longer desperate. She was no longer scared. She was no longer broken.
Okay, maybe she was still a little broken. But she was no longer certain that Sam was going to be the one to fix her. He’d been gone for three months, and she was less broken because she’d been fixing herself.
All those thoughts crossed into her brain, circled it madly, and ran out again in the span of the few seconds she was scooped into Sam’s arms. He released her and held her at arm’s length.
“Ever,” he breathed. “You look good.”
She stared down at herself and then back into his warm brown eyes. Eyes that were so familiar but now seemed so far away. How could she find her way back to him again?
“This is where you’ve been living?” she asked. She tried, and failed miserably, to keep the awe out of her voice.
“I told you it was big,” said Sam. “But I don’t live in there. I can take you guys down to the tack house where I’ve been staying.”
“Oh, that sounds more like it,” Hunter said. “They put the help in the outhouse.”
Sam laughed. “Wait until you see it. It’s far from an outhouse.”
Her eyes darted to Hunter’s. She and Sam had been exchanging letters and she’d spoken to him on the phone a few times. But the sheer happiness in Sam’s voice was seriously throwing her off her game. It wasn’t that she didn’t want him to be happy. She wanted that for him with every single cell in her body. But the fact that he’d found such happiness here, in this kind of place that she could never see herself in a million years, was utterly perplexing.
He led them around the stupidly large main house and down a dirt path leading through the gorgeous property to a smaller guesthouse a quarter of a mile away. She couldn’t keep from staring around her in wonder.
“It’s beautiful here,” she said softly.
“It’s a nice vacation spot,” mumbled Hunter behind her.
He was right, of course. This would be an amazing vacation spot. But it sure wasn’t home.
The inside of Sam’s little house was even more perplexing. It was considered a tack house. But it was nicer than the very nicest hotel Duck Creek could boast. He was definitely living larger here than he’d ever lived, and she realized as she studied him that it agreed with him.
Sam had always been a big, strong guy, but his frame somehow seemed even more muscular now than when he’d left. His short brown hair was actually styled, and his clothes were much trendier than any she’d ever seen him wear.
He looked like an even better version of himself, and that terrified Ever.
Did she look like a better version of herself to him? When she met his questioning gaze, she knew he was thinking the exact same thoughts. And then his gaze moved to Hunter and her stomach dropped down past her knees. She sank onto the leather couch.
Sam explained that they’d be staying at home tonight, and her insides cringed when he said the word home. They ordered dinner, and while they were waiting for it to arrive, she grabbed her suitcase and announced that she wanted to get ready for bed.
Sam stood. “Hunt, I’ll make up the couch for you to sleep. This place isn’t big enough for a guestroom.”
A knot formed in Ever’s stomach as Hunter replied, “What about Ever?”
Glancing at Ever, Sam frowned. “We’ve slept together a lot of nights. I’m sure we’ll make it.”
Ever turned and slipped into Sam’s room. Sam joined her after a couple of minutes, shutting the door quietly behind him.
Feeling the strange knot of unease growing in her stomach, she padded into the bathroom to brush her teeth. She really had slept in the same bed as Sam, numerous times. But now, everything was different. Awkward. And eventually, she would have to explain to Sam the reason why.
“Feeling the effects of the long trip?” he asked her when she exited the bathroom.
Nodding, she squeezed past him and climbed up onto the big four-poster bed. She watched as Sam inspected her from head to toe. Frowning, he reached up and tugged on his earlobe. She couldn’t help smiling at the familiar gesture. It was the first smile she’d given him since she arrived.
“Still got your nervous tic, I see,” she said.
Reaching up to pull his shirt over his head, he smirked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m never nervous.”
Sam climbed into bed with his sweatpants still on. He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, his hands clasped behind his head.
“Ever,” he said. His voice was soft, pleading, and it tugged at a place in her heart. “Are we going to be okay?”
“One way or another, yeah. We’ll both be okay, Sam.”