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Hunter nodded, then stepped into the heart of her kitchen. His shoulders rippled with tension, and when he turned to her again, strain pulled at the corners of his eyes.
“Is Nathan okay?” Rising concern filtered in her voice.
“Yeah.” He rubbed the top of his head. “It sounds like it’s going to be a long recovery, but he’s okay.”
“Thank God you were there.” Janie stepped nearer, the sizzle of her initial response fading into the reality of what had happened. What if Hunter hadn’t heard the boy’s cry? By Hazel’s quick account, she and Bennett were looking for him in the opposite direction. They wouldn’t have found him.
Then what? Broken, bleeding leg, high altitude, temperatures diving below freezing. Not a recipe for a city boy lasting through a mountain night.
Hunter’s lack of response intrigued her. “Hey—you okay?”
He nodded. Then his lips trembled, and he pressed them tight.
“What is it, Hunt?”
“I shouldn’t have heard him.” Brows raised, he settled a serious look on her. “Honestly, Janie. The wind was going the other way. The stand of pine and aspen between us . . . I really shouldn’t have heard him. I hadn’t even really been listening for him until that exact moment—I had been too lost in my head about some other things.”
Other things . . . Did that mean her? Was it pure arrogance that she guessed it did?
She’d seen him at Bennett’s house before he’d skedaddled out of there. His jaw had clenched hard, and he’d itched behind his right ear, then claimed he had some other things he needed to do.
Geez, Janie. The world isn’t all about you—focus on the matter at hand.
“You stopped and listened, and suddenly you heard him?”
“I stopped and prayed, and it was like his cry for help came to me. I think I heard him, but every time I hit rewind and replay that moment, it seems . . . beyond me.”
He’dprayed? In all the years that they’d been friends and then dated, Hunter never once had claimed that he’d prayed. Even though Mama had taken Hunter and Hazel to church as often as they would cooperate—which wasn’t much—God hadn’t meant much to the Wallaces. They were too self-sufficient. Or maybe too jaded by brokenness. Either way neither sibling had been interested in faith.
Hunter’s penetrating study felt like a message in the silence. One Janie wasn’t certain how to decipher. Rather than dissecting it, she returned to the part about thanking God Hunter had recovered Nathan.
“Thank God you heard him, however it happened.”
“Yeah. It’s just . . . stunning. This faith, this trusting God is new to me, and I’m stunned to discover that He really doesact.”
Whoa. That was a whole lot of big news to take in at once! When . . . how . . . why?
“Is church still at nine tomorrow?”
Speechless, Janie merely nodded. Hunter mirrored that wordless response. And then . . . more palpable silence.
Was he going to tell her what happened? Why, after all these years, he was crying out to God for help, and now he wanted to go to church? Maybe he was waiting for her to pry . . .
“How’s Gemma?”
Just when Janie was ready to take the deep dive into those profound questions, Hunter switched gears. She worked to mentally change tracks with him. “She’s trying to be sunshine and rainbows.”
He shook his head. “She’s gonna crash, isn’t she?” His words sank in with an unspoken acknowledgment—you would know. I know you would know.
“Yeah.” Janie leaned back against the counter, feeling both known and exposed at the reality that Hunter understood her so deeply.
Would another man ever understand her the way he did? The things she’d wrestled with her whole life? The things that had broken her heart? Could Grady?
If she let him. That was the question though—if.
But there was Hunter . . .
Janie tried to ignore the painful, sweet stirring in her heart.Friendship. That was what she was willing to try for with Hunter. Just friendship.
