Finding Autumn (6 page)

“Yeah,” is all I can manage, because he’s right, it did. I haven’t been with tons of men, but certainly enough to know that this was different.

“Do you want to go shower?” he asks, and I don’t think I can move, never mind walk.

Smirking, I look over at him. “Um, no. I don’t think I can get up at the moment.”

“Oh.” He chuckles, recognition lighting his eyes. “I guess I worked you over pretty good.”

I bust out a laugh, clutching my belly. “Yeah, I guess you did,” I agree. I hear his cell phone chirping in the distance, but he doesn’t make any attempt to answer it.

“Aren’t you going to get that?”

He huffs out a breath, his response clipped. “No.”

It continues to ring until he hastily rises from the bed, muttering a curse. With irritated hands, he removes it from his briefcase, checking the screen before holding it up to his ear.

“What, Scott?” he snaps. “I told you I didn’t want to be disturbed this weekend. Uh-huh, yes. No. Okay, well handle it. That’s what I pay—” He peers over at me. “Just handle it.” He chucks the phone in his bag before coming back to bed.

“Everything okay?” I ask, deciding I definitely wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of his wrath.

“Yes, just something personal that I needed to handle. It’s fine.” He plasters a smile on his face, quickly changing gears. “Now, where were we?” He fluffs a pillow up, and then lies on his side, leaning on his elbow.

I shift to my side also, mirroring his position. “So, you said you had a brother in Boston?”

“Oh shit!” he clamors, his free hand hitting his head. “I forgot to call him. He was expecting me at his apartment. I need to send him a text so he doesn’t think I went missing.” With another hurried retreat, he flies off the bed to retrieve his cell phone. His hands get busy on the keypad and after a minute, he’s shaking his head and cackling.

“What?”

“Rex has some choice words for me. They all begin with A and end in hole.” He chuckles before dropping his phone on the bed.

“Are you guys close?” I ask, as he settles himself again, his fingers doing a light tap dance on my arm, a shiver skipping down my spine.

“Eh, kind of, in an oil and water sort of way. We’re very different.”

“How so?” I ask, his touch beginning to distract me from my line of questioning, wetness building between my legs.

“Well, I work for a software company and Rex is a tattoo artist here in Boston. He’s got tattoos, used to have some piercings. It’s not about that, though, I couldn’t care less how he looks. It’s just that our views on life are different. He’s a few years younger than I am. I mean, he’s a great kid, he’s just got a rough edge.” Something flashes in his eyes, but it’s gone before I have a chance to ask about it. “What about you? Brothers, sisters? Rabbits?”

“Two sisters. No rabbits.” I giggle, and he moves closer to drop a kiss on the corner of my mouth. “I miss them, actually. I took off and left them with my parents seven years ago. One of my sisters goes to a local university there, and my other sister works for a gas company. “Even though they’re older now, I still feel bad that I left.”

Pain lances the back of my throat, while guilt settles uncomfortably in my stomach. I feel as if I deserted them. I’m the oldest and they relied on me. I fought many battles for them over the years when they probably should’ve been standing on their own two feet.

“They wouldn’t take off?” he questions, and it takes me a second to figure out how to answer him.

“I don’t know if this is going to make any sense, but they don’t have a lot of vision. Even at a young age, I knew that I didn’t want to live my entire life in Wisconsin. It was boring and there was always something nagging at me, like I needed more. I wanted more.”

He nods in understanding. “I know exactly what you mean.” It seems as though he wants to add something else to his statement, but he doesn’t, and I’m left wondering.

“I gather from your comment on the train that you and your mom aren’t close?”

He laughs, but it holds nothing but bitterness. “No. My mother is very self-centered. She always has been. If the world doesn’t revolve around her, she’s not all that interested,” he declares acidly.

“I’m sorry.” I wrap my fingers loosely around his wrist. “I had the opposite, an overly involved mother who held on too tight.”

“Well, be grateful,” he hastily replies, and in a twisted sort of a way, I am. He turns his head and picks up his watch from the side table. It glitters in the lamplight, and it dawns on me that it looks very expensive. The thought leaves me quickly when he speaks. “I should probably get going. It’s after midnight.”

Disappointment swallows me up, along with something else. I don’t know if it’s longing or loneliness, but I want him to stay. Apprehension brews inside of me and I chew on my lip. Of course, he notices immediately.

“What is it? You’re biting that sexy lip again, sweetheart.”

“You don’t have to go. You can stay and just leave in the morning.” My reply is quiet, nervous.

“Yeah?” he asks, surprise deepening the brown in his eyes.

“Yeah,” I mumble, looking up at him sheepishly.

“I’d like that,” he admits, snuggling close and drawing me into his chest. “I’d like that, a lot,” he whispers, kissing my hair softly, a bright smile warming my face before I drift off to sleep.

Something stirs me awake, my eyes fluttering open to darkness, and I reach over for Hunter beside me, discovering he’s not there. I squint, trying to make out his figure in the room, but can’t locate him. For a split second, I think he’s gone. A hint of sadness pinches me, but I shake it off.

My ears pick up the sound of running water so I scoot off the bed, groping around for my panties on the carpet but finding Hunter’s t-shirt instead. I let out a wide yawn, before sliding it over my head, willing my sluggish legs to move forward.

I call out Hunter’s name as I get closer, but there’s no response. He probably can’t hear me over the shower. The bright light stings my eyes when I enter the bathroom and I blink, tenting a hand over them. When I remove it, I’m stunned to see him sitting on the tile floor of the shower. His legs are crossed, arms surrounding his upper body. Opening the glass door, I gasp. His skin is raw, limbs quaking.

“Hunter?”

He doesn’t answer me, and when I lean forward to touch my hand to his shoulder, he’s freezing cold, the arctic water blasting his skin.

“Jesus.” Immediately, I turn it off, spinning around and grabbing two towels from the rack then covering him up. “Hunter!” I holler, raising my voice to get his attention.

When his head finally turns, his eyes are glassy and unfocused, cheeks beet red from the frigid temperature of the water.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” I ask frantically, because I have no idea what to do for him. “Hunter, come on, I want to get you out of here and into bed. You’re freezing.”

He’s still staring past me when I put my hands under his arms in an attempt to lift him, but he’s too heavy.

“Hunter?” I snap my fingers in front of his face. “Hunter, I need you to help me. You need to try to stand so I can get you to the bed. Then I’m calling a doctor.”

“No,” he finally responds, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

“Okay, fine,” I agree, “but let’s get you back out to the other room.” When he finally stands, I put my arm around his waist, walking him slowly over to the bed. “Here, let me dry you off a bit.” Taking the towels, I run them gently across his chest, his legs, his arms, and his hair, removing the excess water before helping him get back on the bed. “You’re still so cold,” I comment, before taking the duvet and draping it around his torso. I flick the switch on the lamp then take a seat in front of him, rubbing his arms up and down in a continued motion, trying to instill some warmth back into his body.

“Tell me what’s wrong. Why were you sitting in an ice cold shower?” He stares at me blankly but doesn’t answer.

“Hunter,” I repeat, “how long were you in there?” I ask, taking his hands in mine.

“I don’t know,” he finally replies, his voice hollow of emotion.

“Listen,” I whisper, my voice is gentle, “I want to help you, but I can’t do that if I don’t know what’s wrong. Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Okay, I know we don’t know each other that well. But you seem off, and I feel like I need to call someone. Should I call your brother?”

“No… please don’t.”

I exhale a frustrated breath, wanting to understand what’s making him this cold, knowing it wasn’t only the temperature of the water. While I’m certainly not going to force him to talk to me, I feel desperate to help him.

“Okay.” I take his hands that are already in mine, holding them under my chin. “If you feel like talking, I’m here, okay? I want to listen.”

Several minutes of silence pass between us. I grant him emotional distance, but take his hand and press it to my cheek, hoping to calm him in some way, bring him back from wherever he is. I want to see him smile again, hear him call me sweetheart. My thoughts are confusing to me, but there’s no time to ponder them now.

“I had a nightmare,” Hunter mumbles, and my eyes fly up to his. “I haven’t had one in a very long time. I don’t understand why now.”

I remain quiet and patient, hoping he’ll continue. And he does.

“My mother. She left us a lot growing up. Shopping sprees, her various boyfriends that she thought we knew nothing about….” He wrenches his hands away, wringing them together, a snarl curling his lips. “She just
had
to go out. Couldn’t stay home. I-I had to go, you know? I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know.”

I cup his cheek with my palm. “What didn’t you know, Hunter? I don’t understand.”

“I had orchestra practice for a concert at our school, and my brother Rex wasn’t home. My mother called the babysitter and my baby brother Tyler kept saying he didn’t want her to come over, he pleaded with me to stay home with him instead,” he continues, and I’m completely confused because he said he only had one brother.

“I thought he was being silly so… I didn’t listen, and I left….” He pauses, teeth gritted, and when I look down, his hands are trembling. “Later that night when I went up to say goodnight to Tyler, he was in the corner of his room curled up in a ball, sobbing. I asked him what was wrong and he wouldn’t tell me. He was so distraught. Our dad died a year before and I thought maybe it had something to do with missing him, but he said no.” His jaw tics, fists clenching and unclenching in front of him. “Asking my mother for help was pointless so I told him I would take him to the doctor and that’s when it all spilled out.”

Hunter takes a hard swallow, putting his hand to his chest as if in pain. “He told me that the babysitter had been touching him and made him do things that he didn’t like… and-and that she’d been doing it for a while.” His shoulders slump and he lets out a heavy sigh. “My heart cracked in half when he told me. He was ten years old for Christ’s sake, I was supposed to protect him, you know? I didn’t protect him.”

“Hunter—”

He puts his hand up to stop me. “I couldn’t even tell our mother because she was so incompetent, so I found a counselor at a nearby crisis center and we went together. I thought he was getting better, but little by little, he began to withdraw. Four years later,” he goes on, the skin bunching around his eyes, voice so low I hardly hear his words, “he committed suicide. He took some of my mother’s pills.”

His anguished eyes make their way to mine, my insides shattering when I see the pain residing there. Wetness pools on my skin and without another moment of hesitation, I climb onto his lap, loop my arms around his neck, holding him. His arms surround my waist with such a tight grip that it’s almost painful. “Fuck, I just miss my brother,” he bites out as tears gather again in the corners of my eyes, my heart breaking for him, for the weight of guilt he’s carried all these years. Even though it wasn’t his fault.

Several long minutes go by as I continue to embrace him, his memories, his guilt. Devastation and pent-up rage seep from his pores and I’d do anything to take it from him. I pull back, reaching out to caress his cheeks, anger etched like pencil lines across his skin.

“I’m so sorry, Hunter. It wasn’t your fault, though. It’s not your fault.” I gaze into his shattered eyes, determination to make him understand winding through my veins. “You were his big brother and he looked up to you and loved you with all of his heart. I’m sure he never blamed you. If anything, you were the one who was there for him, who got him help, who cared for him. You have to remember that. It’s. Not. Your. Fault.”

He leans forward, pressing his forehead to mine. “I’ve never told anyone else, except Rex. It weighs me down every day: the guilt, the anger, the pain. It never goes away. He would’ve been twenty-three years old next month. I miss him every God damn day.”

“I know you do,” I whisper. “But you know what?” I smile against his cheek. “I bet he’s looking down on you from heaven and he’s smiling, because he knows how much you loved him, that you were there for him, that you carry him with you every day… in your heart.”