We ate dinner while James regaled us with tales of fishing with Billy at the nearby river. Apparently this house butted up against an area popular for camping and inlaid with trails.
I ended up telling them about all the places we had been. We’d ended up going through Little Rock after all, though I left out the fact that Hunter had bribed the owner of the bath house so we could have a private room in the hot springs, which was technically against the rules. I told them about digging for quartz crystals and showed them the necklace Hunter had ordered made from the pink-tinted gem I’d pulled from the earth with my own hand. I told them about rock climbing and fly fishing and then ran out of time and breath before I’d even gotten to tell them all the things we’d done.
Hunter had been very true to his word when he’d promised to show me new things.
Strangely enough, we’d come closer to my end goal. I had mapped the route enough times to know that I would probably have passed through here on my own if I had made it this far. Kind of weird that Hunter had been going the same direction. Or had he driven this way just for me? I knew he’d looked through my things, which would include the picture of the dam.
The idea that he could have done something that nice for me was too much. It expanded my chest so I couldn’t breathe. It was easier to ignore the good along with the bad, and pretend we were just a regular couple on a little road trip to nowhere. A couple of wild explorers with no bond at all.
I laughed alongside them during dinner, included like we were some sort of extended family on holiday…or at least how I imagined that would be. I didn’t have a large family—only my mother, and I doubted I would even see her again. Even though our relationship had eroded to almost nothing, I missed her. I especially missed her when Billy grinned at his mother and told her he loved her with his mouth full.
We finished dinner with some frosty chocolate pudding, the perfect conclusion to an idyllic day. It was made of plastic, this day, pretty to look at but an imitation nonetheless.
After dinner we cleared the table and continued quiet conversation until James whisked Billy upstairs for his bath. Laura mentioned something about fresh towels for us and disappeared, leaving Hunter and me at the table. I wondered if Laura had engineered this so we would be alone, but that didn’t make much sense as we’d be alone together all night. She’d already told us which room was ours—the bedroom downstairs in the basement. One bedroom, one bed.
Hunter toyed with his mug from after-dinner coffee, apparently lost in thought. I should have been nervous, wondering what would come next, but somehow I wasn’t. We’d have sex tonight, probably. And it wouldn’t really hurt, would it? It wasn’t like Hunter could be rough with me while the family was just upstairs. It would be regular sex in a regular house…exactly what I’d always wanted and all of it made in sand, destined to melt away with the next salty wave.
“Hunter,” I said.
He grunted softly, though his eyes remained fixed on an unseen destination in the distance.
“How did you meet Laura?”
His gaze met mine. Turbulent. Pained. “Why do you ask that?”
“She seems to trust you.” And I want to trust you. But how can I do that? Help me.
“She came to me in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
His smile was sad but tinged with something sharper—something like hatred. “There are men out there who would hurt a woman. Emotionally. Physically. Can you believe that?”
I didn’t answer. My heart thumped in my chest.
“I couldn’t, at one time. Couldn’t imagine what would make someone be cruel like that. It didn’t seem human.”
“And then?” I whispered. What changed that you are the way you are?
“And then I realized we aren’t all human, at least not the way we were supposed to be. Sometimes our soul dies and then we’re just…muscle and bone walking around, with no purpose, no morals to contain us.”
I remembered the way I had felt in that motel room: only skin, no heart. Only a body, no feelings.
“What made you that way?”
Something glittered in his eyes, something that made my breath hitch in my throat. “You know, don’t you?” he asked. “You know what would make a person like this. What might take away their power, their consent.”
He spat the last word, as if it were vile. What was he saying, that he had been raped? It didn’t seem possible. And yet, I knew it was true. It was as much a confession as I could ever hope to get. It was a crucial piece of the puzzle even if I couldn’t yet step back and see the whole.
I wanted to cry but my eyes were dry as bone, wide and shocked. He was strength and vitality, how could someone…? How could anyone…? But they had. He’d fought off three men at the diner, but somehow one man, or maybe more than one, had overpowered him enough to do that. How helpless he must have felt, how worthless.
“I’m sorry.”
He sucked in a breath. “You would apologize to me? After what I…”
My insides twisted at the few words of admission, the small sign of his guilt. “I let you.”
“Don’t fool yourself. I made you do it. You aren’t responsible for any of this. I absolve you.”