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Chapter 1
Hunter
My suit clung to my damp skin and I couldn’t wait to take it off and lay naked in an air-conditioned room.
The lush, green mountains of Hawaii filled the horizon and a welcomed light gray cloud blocked out the harsh rays of the sun. A mistiness hung in the air as the crowd mingled and laughed beneath the swaying palm trees, Wade and Ray, my friends, beaming for the wedding photographer.
Cocktail hour was swiftly coming to a close. Music hummed softly from the speakers as I clutched my icy glass of the fruity cocktail Ray had decided on for their signature beverage. It was too warm and humid to drink anything that wasn’t chilled.
I should have brought a guest.
I didn’t know many of the attendees. Men and women flitted about in their weather-appropriate gowns or linen suits, their faces new and vanishing in my mind within seconds. Wade and Ray—the bride and groom—were the only two I knew fairly well. Wade’s step-brother had been a close friend of mine for years until becoming the dumpster fire that kicked off almost a year ago, incinerating anyone he got close to.
After the photographer finally lowered her camera that had been trained on the bride and groom for what felt like hours, I decided I’d take the chance to speak to Ray and Wade.
Pushing myself up straight from the too-high cocktail table, I plucked a peeled shrimp from the centerpiece and popped it into my mouth before walking toward the happy couple. Their son, Alex, was somewhere in the crowd of people with Ray’s mom. If I didn’t get to them first, lord knows they’d go straight to their kid.
I was bored as hell and needed some interaction.
“Guys!” I called out, my dress shoes crossing the threshold from solid concrete to mushy, plush grass. I had no idea how Ray was standing on it in her heels, but she never failed to impress me.
Ray’s smile grew as I stepped closer. “Hunter! I’m sorry we didn’t get the chance to see you before the ceremony,” she said. Her fingers fisted the lace of her dress, lifting it above the grass so it wouldn’t drag as she and Wade met me halfway.
“No, no, don’t worry about it.” I scooped her up in my arms, her happy giggles filling the air. A year ago, Wade would’ve punched me square in the jaw for that, but now he looked at us with a warmth that even I could feel. Ray and I had a connection—one that wasn’t romantic—though I’ll admit, I initially mistook it for that. We’d met at Wade’s sister’s wedding back in Colorado, and the next thing I knew, she was crashing her car in front of my property.
There are times when my mind’s eye still sees her with a bloody nose and one hand clutched against her stomach when I look at her.
“We’re so glad you could make it,” Wade chimed in as I set Ray carefully back on the ground. He grabbed me by the shoulder, his black suit jacket taut with the movement. “And thank you for keeping Zane as far away as possible.”
Laughter crept up my throat, hanging thick in the air around us. The carnage he’d caused at the beginning of their relationship was enough of a reason to keep him at least a state away at any given moment. He’d made it his primary goal to ruin Wade’s life and had employed every tactic he could think of—from breaking down the trust between the two of them to trying to obliterate Wade’s potential investment in the land adjacent to his ski resort. Thankfully, that land investment boomed, and the off-season was filled with mountain bikers. “You guys weren’t the only ones that didn’t want him around. Don’t worry about it.”
Don’t worry about it. I’d forced myself to stay in contact with the fucker during the two weeks leading up to their wedding day, insisting that they were getting married in Italy. Considering the rest of Wade’s family was in attendance, it was a miracle Zane believed me. I could only assume he hadn’t been in contact with other family members.
Ray’s pristinely styled curls bounced in the warm wind as she looked me up and down. “You know, there’s plenty of single girls here,” she joked, one eye closing in a wink. “And Oahu is such a romantic place to meet someone.”
“Are you trying to get me to hook up with somebody at your wedding?” I chuckled.
Wade shrugged. “It’s not entirely unlike you.”
“Didn’t you sleep with that one girl the night of Chloe’s wedding?” Ray asked, her fingers snapping. That had been the night I’d met her, the night Wade had stormed over in a huff because we were simply talking and Ray was smiling at me. “Zarah, was it?”
I breathed out a laugh and rubbed the back of my neck, the memory too blurry to make sense of. I’d definitely been drunk off my ass by that point. “Maybe? I don’t really remember.”
Ray’s eyes rolled before they noticed something behind me, causing a little smile to break out. I knew that meant my little moment of socialization was coming to a close. It was their wedding, after all, and everyone wanted to speak to them, to congratulate them, to hug them.
I was fine on my own. Always had been.
————
The table I’d been assigned was empty. Wade’s family’s names littered the little cards in front of each seat, but all of them were either up and about talking to people I’d never seen or dancing happy and drunk on the dance floor, not a care in the world for who could see them.
They’d kept the number of attendees small. There were only a hundred people or so, but in my efforts to draw lines between how everyone knew everyone else, I’d come up mostly empty. There were those that I knew, although not well: Wade’s sister Chloe, Wade’s mother and her husband, Wade’s father, and Ray’s mother. I knew that their close friends, Jackson and Mandy, had to be around somewhere.
The two lovebirds made their way around the room throughout the first hour of the reception, making sure to stop and thank every single person for coming. At one point, Wade carried Alex on his hip, the five-month-old unable to resist tugging on his father’s tie or playing with his pocket square. I’ll admit it was cute, but seeing that made me acutely aware that part of me felt so far removed from everyone else.
The hanging wisteria, the love songs, the intimate glances and long kisses; it all felt unattainable, or rather, unwanted. I suppose there was once a part of me that longed for that deep down, though it had been buried beneath years of fallen rubble and extinguished flames. I wouldn’t be human if there hadn’t been. But everything that came along with it—the vulnerability and the trust that one needed to have—wasn’t on the table for me. I’d built my walls in my early twenties for a reason, painstakingly laying every brick, and I’d either need to meet someone capable of climbing over them or be willing to tear them down myself.
Neither seemed attainable for me.
