HUNTER (The Corbin Brothers Book 1) (12 page)

“Why, hello, there,” her mother called, waving at me with the dishtowel she was toting. “Thanks for giving our daughter a ride back here. We were afraid she’d miss her own party! Now, I don’t think I recognize you.”

Hadley didn’t turn to look at me, didn’t acknowledge me in any way, but I took a couple of steps forward in spite of the feeling of foreboding I couldn’t quite shake.

“Hello, Mrs. Parsons,” I said, holding my hand out and shaking hers when she gave it to me. “I’m so pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Well, how about that, Hadley?” her mother asked her, beaming. “There are still men with manners in the world today. Your parents must’ve raised you right. How do you know my daughter?”

Hadley stiffened beside me, but still didn’t say anything. What was I supposed to do? I knew she didn’t like the question, but if she wasn’t going to jump in here and save us, I had to say something if only for the sake of politeness.

“Well, Hadley helped me walk again,” I said, patting my thigh a little too heartily. Get it together, Hunter. No need to be an awkward idiot. The truth of the situation was that I was meeting Hadley’s folks right now—even if I hadn’t meant to, even if this was excruciating, even though I had no idea where things stood between the two of us. I wanted to make a good impression, dammit.

“That’s wonderful,” Mrs. Parsons said. “Hadley’s never let us meet one of her patients before.”

“He’s not a patient anymore,” Hadley said, sullen. “And he invited himself.”

Her mother only paused for half a beat before smiling again. “Well, the more the merrier, I always said. Can I be honest here? You’re so handsome. I’d kind of hoped Hadley was bringing us a boyfriend of hers to meet—better yet, a fiancé.”

“Really, Mom?” Hadley spat, then stalked away toward the wildly diverse grouping of coolers on the other side of the grilling station.

“Sorry to report that isn’t the case,” I said, giving a grim but apologetic smile to Mrs. Parsons.

“A mother can hope,” she sighed. “Hadley’s been through a lot, and all we want is to see her happy.”

I nodded and stepped carefully around. There were enough divots and clods on the ground to keep me from rushing after Hadley. There was that prophetic twinge again. Whether Hadley believed me or not about the situation with Eileen, there was something else at play here. She had some side to her life’s story that she hadn’t bothered to show me yet, and that hurt. If the woman I loved was hurting, then I was an idiot and an asshole for not figuring out why yet.

I was detained at the grilling station just as I saw Hadley lift a pint of whiskey directly to her lips. She was a “do as I say, not as I do” type of girl, it looked like, but I was surprised that the promise of whiskey pulling a blanket over the toughest things I was feeling didn’t have a hold on me. I wanted a beer because it was humid as hell and as a social lubricant to a bevy of strangers, but that was about it.

“You’re walking like you stepped in dog shit,” a grizzled old man said conversationally, turning a rack of ribs over on a grill before shutting the cover.

“No, sir,” I said, a little taken aback. “That’s just how I walk these days, short a leg.”

“Is that a fact?” His interest piqued, he set aside the blackened set of tongs and cocked his head at me. “Let’s see it.”

I refused to be a sideshow; I refused to entertain and amaze anyone with my disability. Six months ago, those would’ve been fighting words. Three months ago, I would’ve just walked away. But now, not only was I interacting with a crowd of people I didn’t know, I wasn’t that upset about missing my leg. I was still standing, wasn’t I? Let people look and be amazed—that was just how amazing my progress was. I knew that vein of thinking was a direct benefit of how much time I’d spent with Hadley, rehabbing both my body and mind.

“Here it is,” I said, lifting the cuff to my jeans and revealing the prosthesis. The man whistled.

“What’s that made from? Steel?”

“That’d be a hell of a thing,” I said, turning my foot this way and that so he could see. “This is carbon fiber. Light and strong. I’m no man of steel.”

“Ain’t you hot in those jeans?”

I shrugged and let the cuff drop back down to my sneaker. “I’ve been hotter. Besides, the leg kind of makes people uncomfortable. I don’t want to cause a stir.”

“You could get one that looks like it’s real, can’t you?”

I laughed. “I’m not that vain.”

The man nodded. “You’re one of Hadley’s projects, ain’t you?”

“That makes her sound like Dr. Frankenstein or something.”

“We knew she’d be a doctor or something, her mama and me. Hadley was always bringing home animals to nurse back to health.” He took his tongs back up and opened another grill cover, jostling around long links of crackling sausages.

“You’re Hadley’s father.” The statement came out surprised, and I was instantly embarrassed. The man had just accepted me and my fake leg, and just because he was old and weathered and didn’t bear an ounce of resemblance to his daughter didn’t mean that I could judge him.

“Thank the good Lord she doesn’t take after me, right?” he said, laughing at my shocked expression.

“I didn’t mean any offense, sir.”

“None taken.” He flipped some burgers on the next grill before flipping that cover down.

“Isn’t anyone helping you, sir?” I asked, eyeing the long line of grills.

He waved my concern away. “I wouldn’t trust them if they tried. Half of them can’t cook meth, and the other half can’t cook moonshine. How do you think your dinner would come out if I wasn’t here?”

“Well, thank you for that,” I said. “It smells delicious. Won’t you let me know if you need a hand? I can’t say I’ve ever cooked moonshine or … or, whatever, but I have cooked a steak or two in my time.”

“Careful with Hadley,” he said instead of acknowledging my cooking prowess. “She’s drinking whiskey tonight. She gets mean.”

“I know how that goes,” I said ruefully. “Thanks for the tip.”

“You seem like a nice fellow.”

“I—thanks, I guess. I’m trying to be, but it’s mostly her.”

“We’ve never understood our daughter,” Mr. Parsons said, looking over his shoulder, tracking her trek across the yard, lightning bugs drifting out of the thickets as the sky grew darker. “We didn’t understand how we could raise anything as good as her. She flummoxed us with her looks and her brains, and maybe because she got it so good in those departments, God thought she could handle some other parts taken away.”

“What happened?” Hadley’s father seemed like a direct man, one who’d give me the truth if I was courageous enough to ask for it, but he just shook his head.

“That’s for Hadley to tell you, if she hasn’t already,” he said. “You probably ought to talk to her before she gets much more of that liquor into her. I guess that’s one way she’s our daughter, one thing that makes her familiar.”

“Thank you.”

I walked away from the grills, detoured by the coolers, and grabbed a pair of beers that used to serve as my breakfast. Now, I was just trying to break the ice between Hadley and me, figure out where we stood with each other, delve into her past to try and figure out what was tearing her up in the present.

She’d probably like that about as much as I had.

Hadley didn’t stop me as I sat cautiously on the stump beside her folding chair. She took the beer I offered her wordlessly, slipping the pint of whiskey into the patch of tall grass on the other side of her chair.

I didn’t know what to say or where to start. Hadley hadn’t been big on words since we’d left the truck, and I didn’t know what I could say to make anything better, to help her lighten whatever load that was weighing on her heart.

“What can I tell you about Eileen?” I asked her. “What do you want to know?”

Hadley shook her head, took a long pull from her beer, and watched a posse of screaming children wheel by, some of them dangerously close to a bonfire burning in the middle of the circle of chairs. I winced, but she didn’t react.

“Let them get burned,” she said, her voice sounding far away. “That’s the only way they learn to stay away from the fire.” She laughed. “Well, some of them.”

“There’s nothing between Eileen and me,” I said. “She was…cruel to me. When I arrived back stateside she wouldn’t see me. Didn’t like that her toy had gotten broken. She was the one who made me feel like my life was over, like there was nothing more to live for, like I’d be a burden for the remainder of my days.”

Hadley didn’t say anything. She just watched the kids swarm around a table for a moment, coming away with faces sticky from sweet sodas, a refueling of energy.

“I don’t know why she came back to the ranch,” I said. “I don’t know why she did what she did. But I hate her for it, goddammit. I hate her for making you feel the way you’re feeling right now. You’ve been … you’ve been cheated on before, haven’t you? Is that what’s wrong? You’re afraid of being with someone because you’ve been hurt before?”

Hadley seemed to chew on that one for a while, still looking toward the table with half-empty cans of soda even though the children had long since migrated away from it. She opened her mouth to say something and I leaned forward, but she was interrupted.

“Hey, mister. Why you got a metal leg?”

Both of us turned, surprised, to see that one of the children had detached from the pack and circled back around to us. He had a red soda mustache coating his upper lip, a shock of dark hair that didn’t seem like it had ever been introduced to a comb, and wide brown eyes that studied the ground with intense curiosity. I looked down and realized that my jeans had ridden up when I’d sat on the stump, revealing the prosthesis in question.

“Toby, that isn’t very polite,” Hadley said, her voice uncertain. I realized the uncertainty stemmed from her not knowing how I would react to such an intrusion, but I put my hand on her forearm to reassure her.

“That’s all right, Toby,” I said, smiling encouragingly at the little boy. “You’re very observant, and that’s a wonderful thing for a person to be. I bet you love learning new things at school.”

“I don’t go to school yet,” he said. “Mama says next year.”

“Well, I bet you’ll do just great,” I said. “I lost my old leg. That’s why I have a metal leg…well, it’s closer to plastic.”

“Plastic?” The little boy put his hands on his knees and bent closer to examine it. “Like a plastic bag? How do you stand up?”

“No, not like a plastic bag,” I said, amused at the image that conjured up—a prosthetic leg blowing around in the wind. “This is a special kind of plastic. It’s light, like a plastic bag, but strong, like metal. That’s how I can stand up and walk and do everything else.”

I yanked my cuff up higher so he could examine it.

“What happened to your old leg?” Toby asked.

“That’s not a nice question,” Hadley said, but I patted her arm again.

“It’s a perfectly logical question,” I said. “There was an explosion, a bomb, and my leg was hurt too bad for the doctors to save it.”

“Did it hurt?” Those big eyes shimmered as he asked the question, then held out his arm, showing me a bruise. “This hurt.”

“That looks like it hurt,” I said. “My leg hurt, too, but not anymore. Would you like to touch my new leg?”

That had apparently been the question the little boy had been waiting to hear, and he nodded eagerly, crouching down to knock on the carbon fiber as if he expected it to ring or something.

“Toby, what the hell are you doing?”

A woman had practically flown over to our side, as the boy continued his observations and experimentations on my prosthesis.

“That’s all right, ma’am,” I said politely, even though she couldn’t have been much older than me. She had the same dark hair and big eyes as Toby, and I assumed she was his mother. “Your son is a smart little boy—very curious.”

“I am so sorry,” she said, brushing her hair back from her eyes. “He doesn’t mind his manners yet.”

I felt Hadley start at my side, and I realized that the firelight hadn’t just been casting a shadow on this woman’s face—it was bruised. Someone had beaten the shit out of her, and I swallowed slowly, wondering if that same somebody had given Toby the matching bruise on his arm.

The woman lowered her eyes immediately once she saw whatever was in my face—the sudden understanding that she was a battered woman, that someone had hurt her and maybe her son, and I felt indignant that she’d been made to feel whatever she was feeling.

“It’s really not a problem,” I said, ruffling the boy’s hair for good measure. “Toby here is a fine gentleman with an inquisitive mind. You’re lucky to have such a bright boy.”

“Well, thank you,” she said, still looking at the ground, scuffing at it with her shoes a bit. “We won’t bother you any longer.”

“Not a bother at all,” I said, smiling at her. “Toby, it was a pleasure meeting you. I hope you aren’t ever afraid to ask questions about what you want to know. It’s the only way to learn.”

The boy grinned at me, gap-toothed, and scampered off beside his mother.

“Jesus,” Hadley murmured.

My beer had gone warm I’d forgotten about it for so long. “You can say that again. You know them?”