Present day
“Do you remember what I said to you the first time you let me have you?” Hunter asks before the sun had barely risen. I’d only just woken so I wasn’t sure if he was speaking with himself or if he knew that I was awake.
Truth was, I hadn’t wanted to move, I was enjoying the feel of him behind me, his arm banded around me in the way he always used to do. I could let myself enjoy it, just for a minute.
I stay quiet.
“I told you I’d always be yours. I meant that, Snow. I would always be yours. I was yours then, I am now, and I will be forever. Do you understand?”
He sighs and then takes his arm away, climbing from the bed.
I close my eyes quickly, letting him believe I was still sleeping.
I hear him leave quietly, the door clicking closed as he exits. I blow out a long breath.
I remembered everything from that night and every night after that. I remembered the way he cared for me, how he made me forget the nightmares that kept me awake at night and the terrors that haunted my days. He made everything better. Or he did.
Rolling over, I look towards the door.
He ruined everything.
He ruined me.
How would I ever forgive him for that? For what he did to me. What he caused.
I often wonder if I would be different if none of the lies he spilled were real, if he was real to begin with. Would I have somehow made that life for myself if he hadn’t broken me?
I would never know.
My stomach growls loudly and I wouldn’t be able to avoid him forever. I pad from the room, heading to the stairs where I can hear him in the kitchen. I’m quiet as I go down, eyes never leaving the area of the kitchen and when I get there, I find him cooking over the stove, the sizzle of bacon in the pan loud in the otherwise quiet house.
“Sit,” he commands without turning.
I do as he says, taking a chair at the table, watching him. He’s shirtless and the muscles in his back flex and ripple as he moves around the kitchen, the scars silver against his tanned skin. Beyond him, I see a thick sheet of snow falling, the sky a deep grey. His sweats hang low enough that the band of his boxers is showing, and he has these perfectly sexy dimples in the base of his spine, ones that drove me crazy when I first saw them all those years ago and apparently still like to drool over.
He turns to me, and I only just manage to put my tongue back in my mouth. Hunter was carved to perfection, all hard lines and rolling muscles that begged to be explored. He wore a new gauze over the wound on his shoulder to match the one on his abdomen.
His glasses are on his nose today, thick black rims that always throw me off. I never knew he wore glasses until recently. He places the plate of bacon and scrambled eggs in front of me along with a hot, white coffee.
“Thank you,” I mumble.
“You’re welcome.”
He joins me at the table with his own plate of food, “Do I have to worry about wearing any of this?” He asks casually.
I narrow my eyes, “No, but only because I’m hungry,” I angrily shove a scalding hot mouthful of eggs into my mouth, the regret instant as it burns my tongue and then my throat as I try to hastily swallow without chewing. My eyes water and he just smirks.
“Did you enjoy the wine?”
“I did.”
He nods, “I’ll get you some more.”
I scoff, “I won’t be staying long enough for you to get me more.”
His eyes bounce up to mine immediately and his jaw flexes, “You think you’re leaving me again?”
“I didn’t leave the first time,” I tell him, my stomach twisting, “you did.”
His eyes narrow, “For good reason.”
I laugh for real this time, “Yes, so you could continue to make your money from the people who hurt me for six fucking years.”
“That’s not what I was doing.”
“Did they not pay you, Hunter?” I snap, my appetite gone, “Did you not profit off of them?”
“They paid me.”
“There’s my point.”
“Do you honestly believe, after everything we did, after what I told you, I would willingly work for the same people who I had to save you from?”
I shrug as if it doesn’t hurt. This conversation, the memories, all of it hurt. All the damn time.
“I love you, Snow.” He tells me, “I always have.”
I shove up from the table so fast my chair falls back and slams against the floor. “Don’t fucking say that!”
He slowly rises, “Why not?”
“You don’t get to say that!” Tears sting my eyes, “You don’t fucking deserve it!”
“We are made for each other!”
“I will fucking kill you!” I charge around the table and throw a fist, slamming it into his jaw. He doesn’t try to stop me as I throw another, hitting him in the same spot. Blood trickles from the corner of his mouth. “I will fucking end you.”
On the third punch he grabs my hand, “Stop it.” The quiet order in his tone chills my blood.
I try to lash out again, but he blocks and then I’m slammed against the table and pinned by his body, hands restrained above my head by one of his, “I said stop it.”
“I. Hate. You.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, Hunter, I do.”
“I’m going to show you something, Snow.”
“I don’t want to see it.”
“You’ll want to see this, trust me.”
“We’ve already been there once, Hunter, I trusted you and you betrayed me.”
“I lied, but I never betrayed you, Snow. Not once. Not ever.”
“You’re a liar.”
“Am I?”