CHAPTER 11
Hunter took one look at Mackenzie in the produce section and knew this was a bad idea.
Stiff posture. Plastic smile. Nose so high in the air he was surprised she wasn’t suffering from oxygen depletion. Mackenzie was working overtime to keep a brave face while navigating her way through the swarm of people. Sure, Muttley was taking the lead, and Hunter was close at her back, but people still managed to bump into her. Like the douche in the designer loafers who was too busy perusing the wine selection to notice Mackenzie. It was as if he didn’t bother to look where he was going.
Normally Hunter would say, “Hello? What part of a lady with a Seeing Eye dog are you missing?” and then give the guy a little bump of his own, until he got the fucking point. But he didn’t think that would inspire Mackenzie’s confidence in his teaching abilities.
This “quick” shopping excursion had pushed past suppertime—and there were only ten items on the list. Three in the bag.
The sun had disappeared, the crowd was multiplying by the second, and Hunter was pretty sure the girl working checkout stand threerecognized him. Based on the not-so-stealthy glances and lightning-quick swipes to her phone, she was likely posting, tweeting, and snapping Hunter Kane’s current location.
Pulling his ball cap even lower, he stood back and watched as Mackenzie took her time selecting a cantaloupe. She’d squeeze one, lift it for a quick sniff, then place it back. On the fourth one in, her nose crinkled. “Does this smell ripe to you?”
“Are you asking me to smell your melons?” he asked, loving how her cheeks flushed.
“I’m asking you to be my eyes,” she said, holding it out. “If I get one, I want it to be ripe. Firm but not too firm. Oh, and more tan than green.”
“Firm but not too firm. Got it.” Hunter took the melon and gave it a little squeeze, then casually broached the subject of her limitations. He’d done some reading online, researching her condition and ways to make her life a little easier. Give her some of her independence back. “I read about an app online that helps visually impaired people with shopping.”
“They have an app for everything. Before I left rehab they showed me some technology for the blind,” she said, but he noticed she didn’t reach for her phone. “Like I have an app that tells me what an item is, another that tells me what color something is, and even one that reads the ingredients or price tag to me. But three apps to find the perfect melon feels like overkill.”
It’s probably frustrating as well,he thought.
She gave a shrug. “At some point it just became easier to order online and let someone else do the picking for me.”
“But now you’re interested in venturing out?”
“My sponsor reminded me that there won’t always be someone around, and the more I master on my own, the faster my recovery process will go,” she admitted, and damn if that didn’t make his chest pinch a little.
“It wasn’t until I knew I could stand on my own that I finally left home and moved in with Big Daddy.” The words left his lips as if of their own accord. Hunter never talked about his dad. Ever. Yet there he was, standing in the produce aisle, squeezing melons and talking about the one topic he avoided at all costs.
“You never told me how old you were when you ran away.”
“Eleven,” he said, and then because he couldn’t seem to shut the fuck up, he went on. “I’d spent the entire summer mowing lawns around town. Managed to squirrel away a hundred and seventy-three bucks without my dad knowing. The day before school started, I went to my uncle and asked him how much he’d charge to rent out the room above his garage.”
Hunter remembered standing outside his uncle’s bar with nothing more than a sleeping bag, a backpack full of worn clothes, a wad of ones in his boots. His hands had been shaking so badly he was afraid he’d drop the money, so he’d stuffed the bills into his cowboy boots.
He knew that if Big Daddy turned him away, he didn’t have anywhere else to go. He also knew that anywhere had to be better than going back to Buddy and admitting failure.
Hunter knew his uncle’s rules: no boys allowed in the bar during working hours. But Hunter wasn’t going to him as a boy—he was a man with a job looking for boarding. Jesus, he’d been scared. Had thrown up twice before getting the balls to enter the bar. But eventually he had, and he’d said he’d like a meeting with the owner.
Big Daddy took one look at the pack on his slim shoulders and told someone to cover the bar, that he had business to conduct in his office. Then he’d walked Hunter back.
“He sat down behind that big desk of his, and I sat across from him as he made a big deal out of scribbling some numbers down, before he told me he’d take twenty bucks a month for the room in the attic, but nightly suppers would cost extra.”
“He charged you for meals?” she asked, sounding horrified.
Hunter laughed. “You sound exactly like my aunt did. She said Big Daddy was talking nonsense, and that I could stay for free and she’d feed me all the food I wanted. But Big Daddy stayed firm on his offer.”
“You were eleven!”
He’d also been a head shorter and a leg lighter than other kids his age, but what he’d lacked in size, he made up for in spit. Then again, one had to be tough as nails to make it eleven years with Buddy Kane as his father.
Not thatfatheradequately described Buddy. One had to be sober enough to hold down a job to be considered a father. And since Hunter did most of the parenting in their relationship, he worked hard to keep what was left of his tattered family together—which meant hiding the worst of it from his aunt and uncle.
“I needed to know I could be my own man, that I could handle alone whatever came my way, because there was always the fear that’s where I’d end up. And he knew that.”
“Hunter,” she said, placing a hand on his arm, and he had a better sense of how she felt when people offered her sympathy. It didn’t feel like understanding. It felt more like a sentence. “Did he really make you pay him for the room?”
