“Nope, not even a little. You proved me wrong, though.”
I looked around, awareness returning to me. “We’re…”
“Underneath the falls,” he confirmed.
I wasn’t sure where exactly I’d fallen—maybe directly in the stream—but he’d drifted us behind the falls. There was a large cavern here between the curtain of water and the rockface that held them up. A steady stream of water pattered on my face, loose spray from the falls.
I became aware of his body, too. The weight of him, the heft as he supported me in the water. The hands that clasped my waist. Neither of us had removed our clothing and though my light sundress was comfortable enough for swimming, he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt.
“You’re a little bit crazy, you know that?”
He grinned. “Just a little? I’ll have to work harder.”
His words tumbled into place in my mind, solving a riddle I already understood. He wanted to be this way, crazy and mean and awful. But he wasn’t really. It was a struggle for him as much as I had struggled to be a good little girl in that house. A role we had to fill to keep someone else happy, except what made him think he should be this way? Someone, somewhere had forged Hunter in fire and although it didn’t absolve him of his sins, I was more than ever curious about who.
Droplets hung on his eyelashes, on the coarse, stubble-covered skin of his face.
Just enjoy this.
I leaned forward and kissed him—right on his nose. A little silly maybe, but he didn’t laugh. He looked startled first, then his eyes darkened. He held me still, steadily kicking to keep us afloat. But he made no move to pull away or to initiate another kiss. Just holding steady for my exploration, if I wished to continue, and I did.
His eyelids, his forehead, the rough cheeks and much softer lips. I stayed there, sending small kisses along his mouth, from one corner to the other and then back again. It was a thank you for bringing me here, for convincing me to do this. More than that, the jump had given me permission to do this thing I’d wanted, to kiss a beautiful man who held me. One who seemed to want me but was unable to express it except in the harshest of ways.
“What next?” I whispered, expecting him to do something obscene and maybe painful. For the first time, I thought I’d welcome it. It was crazy, but so was this.
His lips curved knowingly, as if he guessed the direction of my thoughts.
He raised his eyebrow. “Wanna jump again?”
And I did. We jumped five more times until we were both exhausted from the swimming and the climb. Still in our wet clothes, we sprawled out under a tree at the base of the waterfall, letting the steady hum of it lull us into a half-sleep.
“One question,” he murmured. “I see them in your eyes all the time. I’ll answer one question.”
A million sprang to mind. What made you this way? When will you let me go? But one stood out.
“How many others?” I asked.
Beside me, he tensed.
Minutes passed and lengthened. I might have drifted off and then returned.
Finally he said, “You were the first. The only one.”
I sat up. “What about your conviction?”
“You asked me once if I did it. I didn’t.” He shrugged where he lay, eyes on the sky. “Believe me or not. It’s your choice.”
I had no reason to believe him, and we both knew it. A court of law had found him guilty. And I knew how he’d been with me, so it stood to reason he could have done this to another girl—countless girls. Sometimes that bothered me more than what he’d done to me. I really had nowhere better to be. I was already broken in countless ways. And after today? I felt a strange and twisted kind of gratitude for what he’d done. But to imagine another girl made helpless turned my stomach.
And he said it had never happened. I was the first. I was the only.
I believed him.
He laughed, so bitterly that goose bumps raised on my chilled skin. “I told myself I was getting what I’d already paid for. They locked me up for it, so I might as well do the crime, right?”
I was silent.
He spoke in a raw kind of horror, like a man desperate, a man divided. “But the truth was, I just wanted you. I saw you looking at the sunrise, and I wanted to have that. To have you. So I took you. I knew full well how wrong it was, and I did it anyway. And the most fucked up part about it all is that I still don’t regret it. No remorse. Really fucking crazy, right?”