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“No you’re not. You’re pale and your hands are shaking,” Hunter cut in. “How far along are you?”
“Who the hell are you?” Edward demanded.
“Hunter Coleman. Who the hell areyou?” Hunter threw back.
“This is her asshole husband, Edward Foster,” Nico told him.
Fearing this was all going to escalate into a scene that Frank would definitely disapprove of, I turned to face Edward and put on my best smile.
“We should get back to the police chief and his wife,” I suggested. “Your father is headed their way.” I nodded behind him to his father who was stalking across the room, and that got him moving, thankfully. His father would be outraged if the police chief told him we had abandoned them mid conversation, and Edward knew it.
I chanced one glance back to Hunter as we moved away from him. His eyes were fixed on me, all of the intensity I remembered him having focused on me.
I had waited and wished for so long to see him and the others one day, and now there he stood. I looked around a little, hoping the others were with him, but saw no sign of them.
I knew I was supposed to hate him for leaving me. And I had, for a long time. I had hated all of them for abandoning me that day. But that hatred had never stopped me from missing them all and it had never fixed the huge void left inside of me the day I lost them. Nothing ever would.
CHAPTER 2
HUNTER
“That motherfucker is Maddie’s husband?” I growled as I glared at the back of the fucker who was dragging Maddie away from me. The way he had spoken to her was one thing, but I hadn’t missed the way he had grabbed and squeezed her wrist painfully. She had tried hard to hide her flinch of pain, but I knew her too well.
“Yeah. He’s a prick, but she won’t leave him. How do you know her?” Nico asked. I knew the guy pretty well. We had worked together on a couple of overseas ops when we were serving, and I trusted him almost as much as I trusted my brothers.
“We knew each other when we were kids. She was like our little sister for a few years, but we left her behind when we had to split,” I explained. It was the biggest mistake we had ever made and we all regretted it. We had tried to track her down in the years since, but we had never found her. Now here she was. And she hated me, it seemed.
“Well maybe you should try and reconnect. God knows she needs someone to get her the hell away from that motherfucker,” Nico said bitterly.
“He hurts her?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I think so. I’ve seen bruises on her and he’s a real piece of work. When I pushed her though, she said she’d quit and I didn’t want that. At least I can keep an eye on her and be close if she needs someone as long as she works at Milite,” Nico explained.
“Who is he?”
“D.A.’s son, Edward Foster. He’s an attorney. They’ve been married for years. They’ve got a little girl too, Willow. She’s about three or four now I think, real little sweetheart,” Nico went on, but all I heard was the name.
“Willow?” I repeated.
“Yeah. Maddie brings her into the office occasionally. Such a smart little thing. My sister, Mia, adores her.”
“Willow,” I repeated. That couldn’t be a coincidence. Had Maddie named her daughter after our tree? Was she holding onto some memory of us, just as we had all been for her?
“What’s wrong with you, Hunt?” Nico asked.
“Sorry. It’s just a shock seeing Maddie. Me and the guys have been looking for her for years. We always regretted leaving her behind. As soon as we got settled we started searching for her. I can’t believe she’s actually here,” I explained.
“You think you might be able to get through to her? I hate her being with that fucker,” Nico asked.
“I hope so, but I need to talk to the others. It would be better if we could all speak to her and apologize for all that happened together,” I replied. “I’m flying home tomorrow morning. I’ll talk to them and we’ll come back together as soon as we can. Can you look out for her? Let me know if anything goes down with her bastard of a husband? We’ll get back as soon as we can and try to set up a meeting with her.”
She hated us all, and with good reason. We had abandoned her after promising we wouldn’t leave her, but we had a good reason for it, and she needed to know.
I didn’t expect it to be easy to get her trust again, but we needed to try. We had been searching for her for years and now we had our opportunity to make up for all we’d done. We had to try. Being apart from her had only reinforced just how much she meant to all of us, and we had already lost too much. We couldn’t lose her too.
She was so beautiful as she stood across the room laughing with another, slightly older woman. She had changed so much since we last saw her. She was a woman now, curves and all. Her body was thin, but there was the hint of a curvy ass in that spectacular dress she wore. Her hair was still the same fiery shade of red, but now it hung down her back in glistening curls, the various shades of red shining in the lights of the ball room. Her eyes had been just as I remembered them when she stood right before me, glaring with anger, that beautiful pale brown, almost like caramel. She was everything the guys and I had imagined, and so much more.
We needed to get her the hell away from that no-good sonofabitch she was married to. The idea that he was hurting her had my blood boiling and I was fighting not to storm over there and take the piece of shit out.
