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“This is a lovely place,” I said, trying for a more neutral topic to start with. “Do you come here often?”
“Shush,” he said, still not looking at me. “You’re going to scare the fish away with all your talking.”
Had that man actually just shushed me?
You know what? Fuck neutral topics.
“Why the f**k do you care more about fish than about the company?” I snapped.
His hand clenched tighter around the oar. “I think the bigger mystery is why you’re acting as if you care at all. After all, you told Chuck I wasn’t fit to lead, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t mean it like that!” I burst out, furious and impatient and ashamed all at once. “I mean—God, Hunter, I was so drunk and I was jealous and he was egging me on and even then I didn’t say the things the way he said I did, he twisted them all around—you have to believe me, Hunter, he was playing me, he’s playing both of us right now—”
For a second I thought I saw something soften in his posture, as if he were about to turn toward me. Then he went stiff again. “I’m really not interested in all that,” he said coolly. “You say he twisted things? Fine. I believe you. He did it, and it’s done, and I don’t really care. It’s not my company anymore.”
Impossible. Hunter cared about the company so much. It was in his blood. He couldn’t just turn that off like a faucet.
He couldn’t turn off his feelings for me like that, either—could he?
“How can you not care? We were—we were—”
I fumbled for the words. What had we been to each other? Surely we had been something.
“We were barely anything.” Hunter’s voice seemed to answer my very thoughts. “And then it ended. Now, can you please be quiet? This conversation is putting me to sleep.”
And then that bastard stowed his oars, leaned back against the side of the boat, and pulled his cap down over his face, all set to fall straight to sleep.
He wasn’t actually going to go to sleep on me, was—
He was already snoring.
Unbe-fucking-lievable. I stared at him, so frustrated I was sure there must be smoke coming out of my ears.
Who was this man? It couldn’t be Hunter Knox. Hunter Knox would never be so beat down and defeated, hiding out in a shack and pretending not to care—he was pretending not to care, wasn’t he? It was just an act?
It had to just be an act. The alternative was too terrible to contemplate.
As I stared at Hunter I set my jaw, molding my frustration into determination. This business was his family heritage, his whole world; I needed to get him back up on his feet and engaged in the company—and life—well, and maybe me, too?—again.
If only I had one single idea how to do that.
#
“Um, Hunter?”
From the other end of the boat, he gave a lazy groan.
“Hunter!” I said more urgently.
He raised his cap just high enough to glare at me through half-lidded eyes. “I knew this silence was too good to be true.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m a bitch, whatever,” I snapped. “You can go back to your sweet dreams in a second, but first, tell me: is the sky supposed to be doing that?”
Specifically, the sky was swirling in different shades of purple-black and grey, with faint lightning sparking off in the distance. It had also gone eerily quiet.
Hunter scrambled upright, his hat falling off behind him. “Shit, no. We got to get this boat in to land. Storm’s on the way.”
He grabbed the oars and started rowing back so quickly that I began to get even more nervous. I’d as**sumed that if Hunter had taken us out earlier, he must have known the forecast wasn’t supposed to get too bad. That he hadn’t was…worrying.
Almost as worrying as the way the wind was starting to whip the waves against us.
Still, Hunter was making good time, and we were almost halfway across the lake towards the cabin before I knew it. I counted the seconds between the lightning and the thunder as rain began to splatter down on my face; the body of the storm was still almost twenty miles away.
There was probably time.
Hunter swore. I glanced back over at him and saw him rubbing a weeping blister on his thumb. He was sweating and out of breath, which didn’t seem like him either; he must have gotten out of shape during this retreat.
“Can I help?” I offered.
“I think you’ve helped quite enough,” he said through gritted teeth.
It seemed like at some point I should be getting inured to the hurt, and yet each time he spoke like this to me, the pain lanced into my heart once more. Tears sprang to my eyes, but I managed to keep them from falling.
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