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I chuckle. “That’s what Mandy, my sister, would say. She’s a glass-half-empty kind of person. I’m the opposite.” I sigh. “At least I was.”
“You still are. One bad experience doesn’t change who you are.”
I lift my eyebrows. “Oh? It doesn’t?”
Hunter doesn’t take my bait—not that I’m surprised.
“Do you think Penn would have left you at the altar if it had gone that far?” he asks.
Great. We’re still talking about Penn. “I don’t know. He said he’d been cheating on me for a year, so why did he stay with me? Why did he continue the charade of being with me? Why did he finally set a wedding date? He was obviously already cheating on me at that point.”
“I don’t know. Maybe he got cold feet.”
“No. Penn only does things if there’s something in it for him. I would have made the right kind of wife for him. Young, professional, you know.”
“And, of course, gorgeous.”
My cheeks warm. “If you say so.”
“I say so.” He takes another sip. “There must be some reason why he decided to level with you before the wedding.”
I shrug. “Maybe he fell in love with somebody else? One of his partners at the club?”
“Or maybe… Maybe someone saw him… Told him he’d better tell you.”
“Who could’ve seen him? It would have to be someone who knew him and who knew me.”
“And you don’t know anyone who goes to the club.”
“Besides you? I sure don’t.”
“Why do you think you don’t?”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying someone must have seen him there. Someone who knows you. Given what you’ve told me, it’s the only explanation that makes sense.”
My curiosity is piqued. Who do I know who goes to the club? Only Isabella, and I don’t know if she was at that particular club. Besides, if she were the one, she’d have leveled with me when she admitted to being in the lifestyle.
Doesn’t really matter.
I already know what Hunter’s doing. He’s deflected the conversation to me when we were supposed to be talking about him. How he got burned, not how I got burned.
“Nice try,” I say.
“What do you mean?”
“Getting me to talk about Penn instead of you talking about who burned you.”
Another sip of wine. “I don’t talk about that.”
“You just said you wanted to get to know me.”
“I do. And damn, that bugs the hell out of me.”
I can’t help chuckling. “You know what? I think you got burned badly. Really badly.”
He says nothing.
“You know what else? I bet it happened more than once.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I did an article a year or so ago for the magazine, all about the psychology of people who get burned by someone they care about. I recognize the signs. You could be the poster child.”
He raises his eyebrows. “So now you’re a psychologist.”
“No. I’m a magazine writer and editor who did a lot of research on this particular subject. That’s what I am, Hunter.”
“I see.”
“And you’re a professor. A learned man. A teacher. A scholar. A student of language. A student of love.”
He sets his glass down on my coffee table. “A student of love?”
“You teach literature, Hunter. What is the greatest theme in all of literature?”
He smiles, then—a big, beautiful smile.
My God, he’s handsome.
“I suppose you’re right,” he says.
I smirk. “You suppose?”
“You’re absolutely right, Frankie.”
“So you understand love, and you’ve been burned.”
“As have you.”
“We have that in common. And I still say you’ve been burned more than once.”
“All right. I’ll bite. You’re correct. I have been burned more than once. But the first one wasn’t her fault.”
“What happened?”
He clears his throat. “She died, Frankie. She died.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Hunter
I don’t talk about Allison. Not ever. It was ten years ago now, and at the time I thought she was the love of my life. I didn’t think I’d ever feel anything again.
Until I met Teresa.
She turned out to be…
Well, I don’t like to use those words.
“Tell me,” Frankie prods.
And I want to.
I want to tell her the whole damned story. Want to pour out my soul to this woman I hardly know. This woman who somehow managed to crawl under my skin and start to chip away at the cement around my heart.
And I don’t even know her. I don’t get it. This is so not me.
“Her name was Allison,” I say. “We met our first year at Mellville. Our first week, actually. We lived in the same dorm, and our eyes met during orientation.”
“Love at first sight?” she asks.
“No. More like lust at first sight. Kind of like…”
“Like you felt with me,” she says.
“Yes.”
She places her hand on my forearm. “That explains why you’re fighting it so hard. Go on.”
I close my eyes, but the images flash before me. Allison, with her reddish blond hair and light brown eyes, the spray of freckles across her nose. She wasn’t classically beautiful like Frankie is, but she had a girl-next-door quality that men found irresistible. She was pursued by several upperclassmen, but for some reason, she chose me.
