HUNTER (The Corbin Brothers Book 1) (11 page)

“We’re not going to be together, Eileen. I’m not interested anymore. I’ve moved on.”

She was silent for a beat. “But that’s not what you said last night.”

“You drugged me. Whatever I might’ve said last night is off the table.” Even as I said that, I did a panicked inventory of my brain. Had I spoken to her? What had I told her?

“But you said you forgave me for everything,” she said. It was her pouting voice. I could practically see that bottom lip protruding.

“I don’t forgive you for this. In what right mind would anyone tell you that slipping me a bunch of pills was acceptable behavior?”

“I just wanted you to listen to me,” she said, and I screwed my eyes shut. Everything that had felt like a fever dream last night had been real. Eileen astride me, Hadley watching from the door. I’d fucked up royally.

“You need to listen to me right now,” I said, doing my best to enunciate through gritted teeth. “We are over. Don’t hold out hope for getting back together with me. We’re through. We can never be together. I don’t want you. You are not a good person.”

“Hunter, please!”

“Don’t come back here ever again.”

I ended the call and paced, the prosthesis chafing against me. I wanted nothing more than to take it off and get back in bed, but there was too much to do, too much to unravel.

I exited the bathroom after splashing some water in my face, dreading the old itch of wanting more pills once the ones Eileen had fed me wore off officially, but Tucker was still waiting for me in my room.

“You could press charges, you know,” he said, looking down at the empty bottle still in his hands. “Serious charges.”

“Against Eileen?” I gave a short laugh. “She doesn’t even realize what she did was wrong. The judge would take pity on what an idiot she is and probably throw the case out.”

I tried to call Hadley again, but it went straight to voicemail. I had to resist the urge to launch my phone out through my window.

“What are you going to do?” Tucker asked.

“I have to make things right with Hadley,” I said. “She saw…she saw everything. She has no idea what happened. She probably thinks I was some asshole banging a blast from the past while she was away. Hadley is the real victim here, but how can I explain all this to her if she won’t answer her fucking phone?”

“Let’s see.” Tucker whipped out his own phone and hit a few buttons before holding it to his ear. “Hello, yes, I’m trying to reach Hadley Parsons on behalf of one of her patients. Oh, she’s not? We didn’t hear about that. That’s nice! Where is she from? Ah, I understand. Yes, that makes sense. Thank you so much.”

He ended the call, his mouth set in a straight line.

“Well?”

“She’s not in her office,” Tucker said. “The receptionist said she was taking time off to be with her family, but I couldn’t get where she was from. Do you know?”

I was forced to recall the day when we first kissed after that stupid bet. I’d won and lost that day, and everything had seemed like it was changing. How had things gone so terribly wrong? It was like a living nightmare.

“Hunter?”

“No, she never told me,” I said. “All I know is it’s in Texas, and it’s small.”

“Texas is a pretty big place, Hunter.”

“I know it is.”

I hobbled downstairs to at least have something to do, something to distract me from my rage and shock and utter despair. It struck me that I should be hungry, but the thought of food made my stomach turn. This was all so stupid. Eileen didn’t think she’d done anything wrong, and Hadley wasn’t talking to me. I placed a desperate call to her cell phone once again

This time, Hadley answered.

“What do you want, Hunter?” She sounded tired and harassed, but I was just so happy she’d finally picked up the phone I didn’t pay her tone any mind.

“I want to explain what happened.”

“No explanation necessary. I’m a very smart woman.”

“I—I know you’re smart. But what you saw wasn’t what really happened.”

“Oh really? So the skinny blonde in bed with you wasn’t jerking you off for all she was worth?”

Fucking Christ. “Everything about this is fucked up, Hadley, and I’m sorry. But I wasn’t in my right mind. I was tricked.”

“Oh, save it. Just fucking save it, Hunter. We’re over.”

“Not until you let me explain what happened.”

“You’ve done enough. Just stop.”

“Hadley, you don’t understand—”

“I understand perfectly. We’re not together anymore—if we ever were together. Everything got really complicated, and this situation sort of solves it, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t get what you’re saying.”

“I’m saying that I don’t want to see you anymore. I don’t want you to call me anymore. I just want you out of my life, and you have to respect that.”

“Because of this situation with Eileen?”

But Hadley had already ended the call.

I couldn’t accept this. This was bullshit. Hadley didn’t know the truth, and I had to give it to her. What we had…it couldn’t be replicated. Hadley had done so much for me, and I felt deep, deep things for her. I couldn’t let us end things like this. Not when there was so much on the line—like my heart.

There had to be some way I could look Hadley up, figure out where she was. I walked back into the laundry room that also doubled as the ranch’s de facto office—at least, it was where we kept the laptop—and cursed wildly as I almost tripped over something, catching myself against the washing machine. I was dimly aware, in my rush, that Tucker lingered in the house, probably to make sure I didn’t do anything foolish like hunt around for things to take me away from these problems, and that made me even angrier. I wheeled around to strike out at whatever had made me almost fall…and stopped.

The obstacle had been a stack of phonebooks, good for nothing except holding doors and starting fires.

And figuring out where Hadley was from.

I was paging through the “P” section in the very next breath, running my finger down the tiny type in each column before finally finding the start of the Parsons. I whistled low and long. I didn’t think that last name was that common. With a sinking realization, I suddenly understood that I was only examining the Parsons in the Dallas area. What if Hadley’s folks weren’t even from this region?

There was only one way to find out. I kicked at the stack of phone books, realizing that—for whatever reason—Chance had collected one for all parts of Texas. You never knew when something from across the state had to be looked up, even amid the age of the internet. Chance was old school, though, and I was hoping it would pay off.

Thank God that Hadley was fairly uncommon though. I made it through all of the Dallas-area Parsons with nothing more than grunted questions about what kind of name was Hadley and started in on the next one. This phone book was for people residing in Houston and its surrounding communities.

“Hello?”

“Um, yes, hello,” I said after a string of calls that ended in answering machines. “I was wondering if there was a Hadley there.”

“Mister, there hasn’t been a Hadley here in a long time.”

I almost lost my place in the phone book with excitement.

“Thank you,” I blurted out, making sure I knew which number I was calling before ending the call. I looked up the phone number on the laptop and got an approximate address. It really was a small town, one I’d never heard of before.

I opened the map app on my phone and punched in the address listed on the computer, frowning at my display. A circle wheeled and wheeled, but no directions popped up. There had to be some kind of mistake. I had better luck when I entered the name of the town, but it was a whole eight hours away.

Well, what was eight hours when Hadley was involved? Eight hours was nothing. I could drive that, no problem, if I knew Hadley would be waiting on the other side.

I only hoped she would be willing to hear me out.

“So what’s up?” Tucker leaned in the doorway of the laundry room.

“I found her.” I held up my phone, and he winced at the length of the squiggly blue line on my map app.

“You’d better take my truck. It’s got gas.” He tossed the keys at me, and I barely caught them.

“Are you sure?”

“If you’re sure of Hadley, then I’m sure I should help you out.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Go out and get her back.”

I hoped it would be that easy—willing it to be so. I was pretty sure, though, that Hadley was going to put up a fight.

I wasn’t sure what I expected Hadley’s hometown to be like, but it wasn’t this. The place was just as remote as the ranch, but it somehow had more people. The nearest gas station I’d spotted on my way in was a dilapidated, two-pump number about twenty minutes down the road. People really had to plan their lives with fuel that far away, but it didn’t seem to bother the rash of RVs and trailers and ramshackle, steel-sided homes that sprouted up from the ground every other copse of trees. Where did they get their food? Was there a grocery store the next town over?

I expected Hadley to be a product of a wealthy suburb of Dallas or maybe even Austin, but this was a total surprise. She was better than the place she came from, or perhaps she’d made herself better as an act of defiance. I pumped the brakes on the truck and stared. Unless my eyes deceived me, a shed with a door flung wide open did little to camouflage a still for moonshine, its contents simmering on an open flame.

“Jesus,” I muttered, driving on. It was as if no one cared about this place. There were no cops and precious little infrastructure, I surmised, as the truck bounced from pothole to pothole. This would be a hell of a place to be a stranger and get a flat tire. I wondered if the nearest mechanic had been at that gas station, too.

The road grew even more rutted as the trees multiplied and the houses thinned. I checked my phone to make sure I was still on the right path, but it was little help. God only knew where the nearest cell phone tower was.

But the universe—or whoever—smiled on my efforts to put things right and gave me a sign I was in the right place in the form of Hadley Parsons herself, walking down the road, her back to me, long-legged and athletic in denim cutoffs and an old T-shirt, auburn hair piled messily atop her head. I’d know her backwards and forwards, from all angles, anywhere. She heard the truck’s engine and stepped off the road to let me pass, but I threw it in park and turned off the ignition.

“Bad idea, asshole,” she called over her shoulder, quickening her pace through the long weeds and heading for a tree line.

“Hadley, stop. It’s me.”

I couldn’t—and wouldn’t—chase her through the underbrush, even with the trust I gave my prosthetic.

She stopped though, her back straight, and turned slowly, as if she wasn’t sure what she heard.

“Hunter?”

Why did her face look that good when it was flushed with exertion? She was so beautiful when those cheeks were red, when sweat dotted her cheeks and hairline, and I wondered how long she’d been walking. I wondered whether she’d let me give her a ride to wherever she was going, whether she’d let me take her and lay her down in a bed somewhere and make all this hurt melt away again.

“Hadley…”

I held my arms out to her, but she blanched as if she’d seen a ghost before narrowing her eyes and backing away.

“What the hell are you doing here, Hunter?” she asked. “I thought I’d made it pretty clear what I expected from you.”

“We’re not done,” I said, but it was apparently the worst thing I could’ve possibly said.

Her face went from pale to red in a matter of seconds, and she lunged forward, walking quickly, her finger pointed and shaking in my face.

“We are more done than the history of things being done,” she spluttered, too angry to form her thoughts properly. That was probably for the best. If she could put all that education to use, she’d cut me in two with that sharp rage. “And lots of other things! Jesus! I’m so mad at you I can’t even—you know what? Here’s something I can say, something you’ll understand. Fuck you, Hunter.”

“Hey, there’s your accent.” I beamed at the sudden discovery of that Texas twang, something that she apparently couldn’t hide when she was angry enough. “You really are a Texan.”

She threw her hands up and then held them out to either side of her. “Welcome to my Texas, Hunter, even though I didn’t invite you and I don’t want you here and I have no idea how you even found the place. I don’t think it’s on a map.”

“I found it in the phone book,” I said. “Called every Parsons in it.”

“Of course it would be in the stupid phone book. This place is fifty years behind the rest of the world.”

“I also found it because we need to talk, Hadley.”

“There’s not one thing I want to talk to you about.”

“You have to talk to me,” I said. “I have to tell you what happened with Eileen.”

“I was there when Eileen happened, or don’t you remember?” she sneered, sarcastic and wounded…and it was all my fault.

“Can we please just sit down somewhere and talk?” I asked, swatting at my neck. “How are you not getting eaten alive by mosquitos?”

“They’re used to me,” she said. “You’re the fresh blood.”

“I wanted to explain to you what you saw,” I tried again, but Hadley laughed me silent.

“You are just adorable,” she said, pinching my cheek almost painfully. I’d have let her punch me right in the nose if I’d thought it would make things better, but she probably wouldn’t see it that way. “You think that you can explain to me what was happening when I walked in on your ex-girlfriend—or are you two back together now?—riding you for all she was worth?”

“I couldn’t have gotten hard if I’d tried.”

Hadley threw her head back and howled with laughter. She sounded a little unhinged, but I held my ground. She need to know the truth of what had happened, and I’d come all this way to give it to her no matter what happened in the end.

“You think I give a shit whether you were hard or not, whether your cock was in her or not?” she demanded. “It was a betrayal of trust, Hunter, a betrayal of what we—oh, fuck me. Fuck this. Fuck all of this. I’m done. I’m fucking done with this, Hunter, so get back in your fucking truck and just go.”

“I haven’t heard you ever say ‘fuck’ that many times since I’ve met you,” I said quietly, as her chest heaved up and down and pressed the heels of her hands into her forehead. “Would it make you mad if I said it was kind of a turn-on?”

“Dammit, Hunter, you don’t get to try to be charming, okay? Just stop.”

“I wasn’t trying to be charming, I was just being honest.” I reached my hand out to touch her shoulder, but she slapped it away as if it was one of the mosquitos feasting on me. “Hadley, Eileen drugged me. I didn’t want to be with her. I don’t understand why she just showed up again like that, but she was always pretty jealous. She probably caught wind of you being at the house or, I don’t know. I didn’t stick around for an explanation from her. As soon as I figured out what she’d done, I kicked her out.”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth right now?” Hadley demanded, wrapping her arms around herself as if she was desperate for some sort of comfort or contact. If I thought she’d let me, I’d hold her tight and never let her go, but I didn’t want her to shove me away again.

“I’m tell you that this is the truth,” I said. “I found the empty bottle in the trash. That’s how I know.”

“How do I know you’re not just back to your old habits?” She studied me as she chewed on a fingernail, and I noticed that the rest of her cuticles were raw and red.

“I’m not into the pill scene anymore, but I wouldn’t say no to a beer,” I said. “But looks like you’re back into a bad habit of yours now.”

Hadley spit in the grass and wiped her finger off on her shorts. “What was I supposed to believe, Hunter, walking in that room and seeing you like that?”

“You’re supposed to believe me, and believe what I’m telling you now.”

“Why?”

“Because you can trust me.” I felt an ugliness in my belly toward Eileen, but I sucked in a deep breath and it passed. “I’m sorry this happened. If there was a way I could’ve seen it coming, I would’ve stepped aside for that speeding train to hit someone else. Don’t let Eileen win this thing, Hadley. Fight for us.”

Hadley shook her head, and it broke my heart.

“What is it?” I asked her. “Don’t you think you can trust me?”

I knew I was asking a lot of her. Hadley was an educated woman, and she’d seen exactly what Eileen had wanted her to see. I was the jerk trying to talk her out of unseeing it, but goddammit, I didn’t know what I’d do if Eileen scuttled what Hadley and I had shared. Hadley meant too much to me for me to give up on things now. We’d come a long way together.

“I’m pretty sure I can trust you, Hunter,” she said, and my heart raced and soared. “I just don’t trust myself.”

I blinked, too happy to be afraid that my heart was going to come crashing down to the ground again. “What does that mean?”

Hadley heaved a sigh. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“To my folks’ place. You’ll give me a ride, won’t you?”

“I’ll give you a ride to anywhere you want to go.”

“What about to places I don’t want to go?”

“Only to places that make you happy.”

“Then take me a million miles away from here.”

“Buckle up.”

“No, no, stop. Don’t turn around. I have to go to my folks’ place, and you’re going to take me there.”

I was a little confused. “I thought you wanted to leave.”

“It isn’t really about what I want, is it?” Hadley mused, and I wondered to whom she was talking and what, exactly, she was talking about. “My folks are having a cookout tonight and the whole town is showing up to take a gander at old Hadley Parsons, a girl who thought she was too good for this place and still ended up coming back. My people love a good tragedy.”

I’d started to drive forward, but I braked hard enough to give her a jolt in the passenger seat.

“Hadley, you’re going to need to explain to me what’s going on, and you’re going to need to use small words.” I took her hand cautiously, afraid she’d pull it away, but she didn’t. I grunted when I saw her fingernails, all bitten to the quick, and kissed each rosy tip.

“I just don’t want to be back here,” she said dully, watching me as I left her fingers at my lips. “I don’t know why I came back. I could’ve gone back to my apartment in the city; I could’ve gotten a hotel room if that wasn’t where I wanted to go. Hell, I could’ve taken myself on a really nice vacation and gotten away from all of this bullshit.”

“I bet your parents were really happy to see you,” I said as diplomatically as I could, hating Eileen for what she’d done to us, hating myself for being the reason behind Hadley’s pain and irrationality.

“I guess.” She didn’t sound too convinced.

“Well, I get to meet them now, you know?” I said, trying for an upbeat tone. “Might not have ever happened otherwise, right?”

“That you’d come running after me after you broke my stupid little heart?” She laughed mirthlessly. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Hadley, would you just…”

“Enough.” She sounded tired, and I wondered again just how long she’d been walking out in the heat and humidity and mosquitos, whether she’d slept at all since she left the ranch. “We’re already late. Just drive. You’ll know it when you see it. It’s where the big party is.”

There was something wrong, something beyond Hadley’s hatred for her hometown and what had transpired between Eileen and me, but I couldn’t get it out of her. It was my fault for being so stupid, my fault for making her feel like this in the first place. I just wished Hadley would trust me enough to open up to me, to show me what was making her so unhappy—even if she had to spell it out for me, draw pictures, whatever it was to help me understand. Then again, she probably didn’t feel like she could trust me, and that hurt.

It was probably supposed to hurt. It was what I deserved for letting Eileen get the best of me.

The trees thickened and, in the last light of day, I had to slow down. The road got even crappier, and on top of that, cars lined either side. The majority of them were trucks, but clunkers, things that hadn’t been new in a decade or more. I crept along, wondering if this was some kind of wilderness parking lot, until the trees briefly parted and we entered a clearing with a small trailer and a huge yard with dozens of people.

“Home, sweet home,” Hadley said sarcastically. “Park wherever you want.”

She took advantage of the stopped truck and hopped out, walking listlessly through the people, many of whom openly stared. I cursed a blue streak and parked where I was, not giving a damn if I restricted access to the party. I couldn’t lose her in this mess of people, not with the way we’d left things undone, not with how she was feeling right now.

I ignored the customary spike of panic at a bunch of faces I didn’t know, wading into the party after her, catching up with her without tripping or falling on crushed beer cans and plastic cups and mole hills. I probably wouldn’t have caught her if she hadn’t stopped short, in front of a heavier but jolly-faced woman.

“You’re late,” the woman was fussing at her, not noticing me approach.

“I’m here, aren’t I, Mom?” Hadley asked, her voice bored. I knew that she was anxious, that this was the last place in the world she wanted to be, that her apathy was just a front for the emotions raging inside of her, but I couldn’t do anything or say anything to make her feel better.

I was meeting the parents, like it or not, and I was probably just as nervous as Hadley was.