Bury the Hatchet (28 page)

Then her eyes strayed over to where we’d left Hunter with her son, indecision making her tap her fingers on her crossed forearms. I followed her gaze to find Hunter’s suit now covered with the same Thunderbirds stickers I was wearing. He didn’t seem to mind too much.

Might as well bring Dana’s son into the equation. “If you really believed he had hurt me or anyone else, would you have left Ryan with him?” I pointed out. “I mean, like you said, you’ve known him a long time. You never thought he was dangerous before now, huh?”

“No.” She gave me a half smile. “Not a chance.”

“Exactly.”

“Have you at least called the police?” she asked, finally starting to relent. “Filed a report? Gotten a restraining order against whoever did this?”

“Not yet,” I hedged.

Going to the police hadn’t been in my plans. That was why I’d been so worried about telling Hunter what had happened, because I had no doubt it would be one of many things on his to-do list, right after hunting down Lance and rearranging a few of my former guru’s features. But going to the police would only lead to the wrong sort of exposure, just like allowing Hunter to go full caveman on Lance would end up being. Either of those things would be counterproductive in terms of getting the public to see the pair of us in a different light.

“Well”—Dana gave me another thorough once-over—“if Hunter doesn’t go with you before practice tomorrow, you call me and I will. You can’t let whoever did this to you get away with it. All right?”

I agreed more to get her to let me leave than because I had any intention of calling her for a girl’s day at police headquarters. Once she’d collected her son from Hunter—an exercise requiring all three of the adults involved prying his sticky fingers free from my husband’s hair—Hunter and I headed out to the car, peeling stickers off as we went.

He didn’t say a word until we were halfway home, and my guts were tied up into a knot the size of a bowling ball. There was so much emotion roiling off him. It poured over me and filled every crevice in the car until I thought I would choke on it. I wanted to roll down the window so I could breathe, but I couldn’t bring myself to even move a finger toward the control panel. I needed to get a sense of where Hunter stood on things so I knew what direction to go in.

“So Dana thinks I’m beating you?” he finally spit out.

I drew in a deep breath, releasing it slowly as I weighed my words. “That was her initial gut reaction, yes, but she never really thought that or she wouldn’t have left Ryan with you. I told her it wasn’t you.”

“And you think that’s going to be enough, do you? Women deny their boyfriends and husbands are beating them all the time, especially when there’s something they think they need to hide.”

“But you haven’t ever laid a finger on me, and you wouldn’t, so there’s nothing to worry about there.”

“You think she’s going to take your word for it?” he asked, his tone loaded with sarcasm.

“Lord willing and the creeks don’t rise. Is there any reason she shouldn’t?” I shot back, quickly losing any semblance of patience. If I wasn’t careful, a big dose of Southern sass was liable to work its way out of my mouth, and that was the last thing I needed right now. When I lost control of my filter, all sorts of things came out of my mouth without me thinking through them first. That was what had happened the day we’d first met, and I’d been doing everything I could to keep it in check since then. Mama always told me it wasn’t fitting for a lady to speak like that.

Hunter grunted. “Did you happen to tell her who it was?” he asked after a tense silence.

“No.” I studied my fingernails in my lap, determined to put a lid on my sass before it boiled over.

“You planning on telling me who it was?” His tone was softer now but no less strained.

“I think you already know.”

Hunter turned into our driveway and stopped to wait for the garage door to open. I lifted my head to find his jaw working overtime, the muscles in his neck tense. He kept a grip on the steering wheel, flexing his hands over the leather repeatedly. “You weren’t gone long enough to have filed a police report,” he finally said.

“No.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I thought it was for the best not to.”

The garage was open, but he didn’t pull in. He put the car in park and left the engine idling, then turned to stare at me. “In what world could it possibly be better to let that slug of a human put his hands on you and not do a damned thing about it?”

“In our world!” I snapped.

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning in this world where every single move we make is reported all over the media, publically scrutinized, and dissected to the nth degree. The last thing either one of us needs is for them to have something else they can latch on to about us that’s anything less than a happy-ever-after ending. Not right now.”

“You’re giving public opinion too much fucking weight in this.”

“Or maybe you’re not giving it enough!”

“I don’t give a flying fuck what anyone says about me,” he ground out. “Or you. Or us.”

“Well, it’s high time you started caring, then.”

“Oh, I care plenty, just not about things that don’t matter.”

“It matters to some people.”

“Who?” Hunter demanded. “Who does it matter to?”

“Your team. My family. All the people who’ve been supporting me for all these years.”

“But not you?” he pointed out.

I opened my mouth to deliver another saucy retort and quickly shut it again. Because he was right. I didn’t really care what anyone had to say about the two of us. I was only worried about it because I’d been told to worry about it.

“Exactly,” he said after a moment of silence. “You don’t give a rat’s ass. Not really. And I don’t, either. I haven’t ever before, and I’m not going to start now.”

“What the heck
do
you care about, then?”

“
You
, all right?” Hunter roared. “I care about you.” Then he whipped his head around to stare straight ahead out the windshield.

My heart thundered. I needed to touch him in order to ground myself, to remember that this was truly happening in the here and now. He’d said it in the heat of the moment, but that didn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t true. Maybe the way he felt about me was keeping pace with the way I felt about him. I couldn’t help myself. I reached across the center console and placed my hand on the back of his forearm.

He glanced down at where I was touching him before turning to face me, his eyes green pools of need. Then he closed his eyes and ground his teeth. “What happened?” he asked. “Explain it to me.”

I tried to take my hand away, but he put his over the top of it, preventing me.

My tongue was thick with dread that tasted like bile, but I swallowed it down. “Can we go inside first?” The last thing I wanted was to give him all the details, only to have him put the car in reverse and try to find Lance. That wasn’t what either of us needed, and I was almost positive that Hunter knew it even if he didn’t want to acknowledge it.

In lieu of answering, he put the car in gear and drove into the garage. He shut off the engine and hit the button to close the garage door.

I’d bought myself another minute or so, but that wasn’t much. I only hoped it was enough to help me get through the telling without breaking down so much that he decided to act, anyway.

“SO TELL ME
why I shouldn’t go to wherever that son of a bitch is right this second and bash his face in,” I said as we headed inside. The second we stepped through the door, I removed my jacket and tie and tossed them on the counter alongside her purse. That still wasn’t enough, though. I undid the top couple of buttons on my shirt, trying to get as comfortable as I could for a conversation I knew would be anything
but
comfortable. She toed off her shoes, meticulously placing them just so in a corner of the kitchen, near the garage but out of the way so we wouldn’t trip on them, taking her time about it. When she shot her gaze over to me, eyes as expressive as I’d ever seen them, I kept myself as calm as I could. But given the circumstances, that wasn’t saying a hell of a lot. “Tell me why I shouldn’t wring his neck the next time I see him, because that’s what will happen if you don’t give me a damn good reason not to.”

Tallie didn’t answer immediately. She went into the living room and took a seat. I followed and sat next to her, not close enough to touch her even though I absolutely wanted to wrap her in my arms and try to forget everything we needed to talk about.

She looked so fucking fragile, sitting on the couch with one leg tucked underneath her, the other foot swaying forward and backward, constantly in motion. I couldn’t help but notice her perfectly painted toenails. Even her feet were pretty. That either meant I was falling for her harder than I wanted to acknowledge or I had a foot fetish. Either way, every bone in my body was screaming to draw her into my lap, as if that would make anything better besides potentially lowering my blood pressure. But I couldn’t protect her in reverse. I couldn’t go back in time and keep that fucking bastard from laying his hands on her.

“Talk to me,” I said. My voice cracked. I was going crazy not knowing exactly what he’d done to her and how I could fix it.

She rubbed the back of her neck, nodding slowly. “I went to Horizons in time to see Kade during visitation hours,” she finally began, her voice surprisingly steady despite the fact that she was staring at the floor instead of looking at me. “Only I never made it inside.”

I wished that spark of fire she’d shown a few minutes ago would come back. She’d been right on the verge of plopping her hands on her hips and delivering me a talking-to like she’d done once before, but then she’d stopped herself. Even though I wasn’t on board with why she was trying to stand up to me, I fucking loved the fact that she put her foot down. She was growing a spine, standing up for herself at least some of the time, and it was sexy as all hell. I could acknowledge that much once I forced myself to step back and separate from the heat of the moment, once I could see her without vision clouded by my anger and fear.

“Why didn’t you make it inside?” I asked.

“Because Lance was there waiting for me.”

A couple of tears filled her eyes but didn’t spill over. I was desperate to brush them away, but I forced my hands to stay where they were so I wouldn’t interrupt her in the telling. It was hard enough for her to get it out at all. No need for me to do anything that might cause her to slam on the brakes again.

She glanced up at me for a moment before returning her gaze to her lap. “Apparently, there had been some cameraman following me yesterday, only I didn’t pay any attention to him. The fact that I’d gone to visit Kade in rehab was all over the local gossip sites. But since we’ve been actively avoiding looking to see what they’ve been saying about us, neither of us realized it. Lance did, though. It seems they want to tell the world that I’m having an affair with Kade, that apparently I’m in love with him regardless of how in love with each other you and I have been acting. Supposedly that’s the reason he overdosed at the wedding and every time since then. That he can’t handle seeing me with you all over the place when he and I are really in love. Don’t ask me why they think I married you if I loved him. Maybe we’re in a love triangle or something else equally ridiculous, but that’s beside the point.”

Now I wished we’d been paying closer attention to everything they’d been reporting about us, monitoring how our efforts were paying off instead of letting others do that for us and report back with suggestions as to what we could do better. I inched closer to her. She kept fidgeting and twisting the ring around her finger, drawing my attention back to the bandages on her burned hand.

Slowly, cautiously, I put an arm around her shoulders. I wasn’t sure if he’d hurt her anywhere other than her upper arms. She leaned into me, though, nestling her head against my shoulder. A wave of warmth flooded me, filling my chest, because she was allowing herself to lean on me. Letting me comfort her. I was in deep, and it was too fucking late to do anything about it. Not only that, but I didn’t want to find my way out.