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“Heading back tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” she replies. “I’ll be back for the holidays, though.”
And I barely saw her while she was here.
“Sorry I got…kidnapped on you,” I tell her, not exactly forlorn at the time, considering the night ended amazingly, but now I’m pissed about it. She, Aro, and I were having fun at the rink.
But she says, “It’s okay. It’s been a good visit. My dad was happy to see Hunter last night. He actually smiled. Hunter, I mean.”
I nod, because I don’t know what else to do. “He went to your place too?” I ask. “After his Mom and Dad’s?”
“No, I was hanging with Jared. We drove to Madoc’s and ended up staying a while when Jax and Juliet showed up.” I can hear the smile in her voice. “Hunter and A.J. played hide and seek outside for like two hours, and then we all joined in, but it sort of fizzled out when Jax started making out with Juliet and forgot to seek the rest of us.”
I smile, picturing them all hiding behind rocks and in trees for half an hour.
“We were all up until midnight,” she continues. “It was like old times, except for you and Kade not being there.”
Midnight?
He was in the Falls until midnight?
“Kade wasn’t there either?” I ask her.
“I didn’t see him at all,” she tells me. “He went out after the game.”
I wander to the window, watching the rain drizzle down the glass and lightning flash across the sky. The rope up to my attic sways in the wind.
“Yeah,” I murmur.
And all at once, everything I already knew and shouldn’t have denied floods in.
I knew better.
And yes, I believed it so easily. Because it hurt. It made me sick to think of him not with me.
“We’ll catch up tomorrow,” I say. “I gotta go, okay?”
“’Night,” she chirps.
I hang up and slip my phone into my back pocket, gazing out the window.
He’s so stubborn. He’ll let me believe the worst of him, just like the time Gemma Ledger came out of his bedroom when we were sixteen.
Of course, I found out later that he was hiding her for Kade, but I didn’t understand why he would let himself be misunderstood like that.
Crossing the room, I peek my head out the door, seeing Mace coming out of the bathroom. She sticks her tongue out at me on her way back downstairs. I smile a little because she likes me. If she didn’t, she’d ignore me.
Music thumps below, howls and loud chatter filling the rooms, and I head down, seeing Hunter, Constin, and Farrow around a small table. Hunter rolls dice, then Farrow scoops them up to take his turn. Others stand or sit, filling the living room to the left and the dining room to the right. Hunter’s car keys sit on the table next to him, a scattering of cash piled in the center.
I stop at his side. “I want to go for a ride.”
I feel the others’ eyes on me, but Hunter just tosses more bills into the pile, rolling again. My bike is still down in the mill district, but I don’t really want to go for a ride on that. I want to get out of here for a little while with him.
He doesn’t look at me. “It’s raining.”
Farrow sees Hunter’s roll, chuckles, and snatches up all the cash.
“I’m bored,” I tell Hunter.
