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Do we have to talk about it?
It’s been a long time coming, don’t you think?
I don’t know how to tell Hunter.
Just tell him.
His heart thumped wildly against his chest, and he chucked the phone across the room. It slammed against the wall. He felt like he was standing on a ship that had been bombed and was sinking. He couldn’t turn anywhere without the water lapping at his feet.
What were they talking about? He had to find out.
Chapter 8
Cheryse didn’t mind the little routine she and Hunter had gotten into. In fact, she liked it. It felt good, and she had fallen easily into sharing things with Hunter and reliving everything they had done in their lives.
Ever since their blowup, Hunter had let go of the whole Roger thing. It was a silent standoff between them, and she made sure not to talk to Roger or text him when Hunter was around. Which was a lot. Not that she was upset about that, but she found herself floundering.
So many things confused her after Trent had died so suddenly and she and Hunter had grown closer. Especially since Roger was gone and it felt so easy to spend time with Hunter. She’d just had an appointment with her therapist and had told her maybe she shouldn’t even consider having relationships. Because she could easily like Hunter, but she was in a relationship with Roger.
One of her favorite things about Hunter was that he often brought his guitar over in the evenings and tinkered with songs he was writing. Of course, he’d play mainstream country songs too, and she would sing with him to The Beatles. Everything felt so easy with him at times and so strained at other times.
One night, she was shocked out of sleep when she heard banging at her door in the middle of the night. To say it was like a grenade going off would be putting it far too mildly.
“Reese,” Hunter's voice said from outside.
Cheryse threw the blankets off, grabbed her light robe, and ran to the front door. Something must be seriously wrong if he was waking her up at—she glanced at the clock on the wall—one in the morning. She threw open the door.
He looked out of sorts, and his hair was all tousled. It reminded her of the way he’d looked when they’d gone back to the inn after the funeral and she had kissed him. Why was she thinking about that?
“What’s wrong?” she asked him.
Hunter sucked in a long breath. “Can I come in?”
Under different circumstances, she would’ve teased him about how he sounded like a vampire. Surely, if he was asking for permission to come into her home in the middle of the night, he wanted to suck her blood. But now wasn’t the time for teasing.
“Are you okay?” She backed up and gestured him inside. “Come in.”
Hunter moved toward her table and placed a phone on it. “I’m fine. I just need to ask you something.”
Her heart hammered at the seriousness in his voice. This felt like one of those times when Hunter was about to explode. It was just like when he had been angry at her for dating Roger.
“This is Trent’s,” Hunter said, turning on the phone. “I should just tell you I was reading through all of his text threads, and I read all the ones between you and him.”
“Okay…?” She wracked her brain for something in the text threads that would make Hunter come over to her house at one o’clock in the morning, but she couldn’t think of anything.
He tapped on the phone and pulled up some texts. “Do you need to reread them? Because there’s some stuff in here that we might want to talk about.”
Confused, she took the phone and scrolled through the messages. Once she got to the part about telling Hunter, she knew exactly why he was so upset. “This isn’t what you think.”
“Seems like you guys were going to tell me something. What were you gonna tell me? Wait,” he said, putting up his hand as if to brace himself.
“It doesn’t matter.” If this were a movie, Cheryse would’ve thought this was a funny scene. It was ridiculous that Hunter was getting this upset over a few texts.
Hunter’s finger jabbed toward the phone. “It matters to me. If my brother thought you should tell me, then I need to know.”
“Hunter, calm down.” One of Cheryse’s gifts was her ability to be in tune with people’s feelings. While it had caused a lot of problems in her relationship with her first husband, it was useful for her at the salon, as she could tune into customers’ needs and anticipate how to help them. She hoped her gift would be useful and not problematic this time.
Hunter ran a hand through his hair and looked around wildly, like someone was hiding nearby and spying on them. “I need to know what you guys were hiding from me. I need to know.”
