The bus shudders to a stop and I scramble down, still clutching my useless portfolio. I want to head home and collapse with a drink and a hot bath, but something pushes me on up the winding road towards the ranch. Anger, still coiled tightly in my veins—all my rejection pushed into a sharp point of bitterness.
He had no right to do this to me.
The sun is setting by the time I make it up the hill to the ranch, making the red paint on the barn glow, warm against the dusk light. There are a couple of horses in the paddock, and hay baled outside the stables, but everything is freshly-painted, quiet and still. This is Hunter’s life right here: picture-perfect and serene. I feel a tight clench in my chest, thinking of the places I grew up, just a few miles away. Run-down bungalows with old cars rusting in the yard; the years living out of a trailer park; late-payment warnings like confetti in the hall. He has no idea what I’ve been through, but still, Hunter thinks he can make everything right.
“Brit!”
I hear my name called and look up to find Hunter riding towards me from the fields on a large bay mare. He pulls up the horse and slides down, barely pausing to loop the reins over a fence post before striding towards me. His face is stormy, jaw clenched tight. “Where the hell have you been?” He grips me by both my arms, holding me tight, surprising me with his anger. “I called your cell like a million times. I’ve been worried sick!”
“I shut it off.” I say, trying not to feel a ripple of guilt at his panic. You don’t owe him anything, I remind myself. This is his fault.
“Are you OK?” Hunter demands, his blue eyes blazing down into mine. “What happened? How did you get home?”
“I’m fine.” I wrench away from him. “I took the bus. You shouldn’t have worried.”
Hunter’s mouth drops open. “Of course I worried!” he yells, his voice rising. “I even went back to the office to try and find you, but Alicia said you left ages ago. I was driving around the city for hours, just looking for you!”
“Well, the search is over.” I snap, sarcastic. “I’m here!”
“I don’t understand what’s wrong with you, to just go running off like this. Is this about the interview?” Hunter demands, his blue eyes still dark with anger.
I turn to ice. “What do you know about that?”
“Nothing,” Hunter says, “Alicia just told me it didn’t go so great.”
I give a bitter laugh. “That’s the understatement of the year.”
“So you freak the f**k out and go AWOL?” Hunter’s voice rises. He’s breathing heavy, his whole body taut with tension. “Did you even think about me for a second, what I was imagining? You could have been in an accident, you could have been dead!”
I finally snap. I take a step back, glaring. “This has nothing to do with you!” I yell. “Why can’t you see that? This is my life! I wouldn’t even have been there if it wasn’t for you!”
“What are you talking about?” Hunter looks confused.
“The interview!” I yell. “The whole f**king ambush. You had no right to interfere like that, but you had to try and play the hero!”
“I was trying to help!” Hunter protests.
“Well, I don’t need it,” I shoot back. “I don’t need anything from you!”
“Dammit, Brit, won’t you let me do one thing for you?” His voice rises. “Why do you have to keep everyone at arm’s length like this? Why do you have to make everything so hard?”
There’s a sound behind us. Hunter looks over my head. One of the stable hands is lurking in the doorway of the barn, watching us fight.
Hunter turns back. “Let’s take this inside,” he tells me through a clenched jaw.
“I’m not staying.” I tell him, but he grabs my arm again.
“Just get inside the damn house, Brit!”
Hunter propels me up the steps and into the main house, his hand firm on my arm. I feel a familiar rush of heat at his touch, burning through my shirt, but I pull away the minute we’re inside. I can’t let my body betray me now, not after everything, not with all this violent emotion whirling in me, the anger I know is right.
Hunter doesn’t seem to notice the charge. He ignores me, striding over to the kitchen area, and running water from the faucet. He rinses his hands then bends to duck his whole head under the tap. He stays under for a moment, so I catch my breath and look around the space. Wooden beams, full-length windows, a living area with cracked leather couches, a staircase leading up to the loft bedroom. Rustic and homey, clean lines and wide open spaces. It’s all so damn Hunter, I can’t take it.
What the hell am I even doing here? This is what being impulsive gets me. I wanted to just unload my anger and disappear, but now I’m stranded out here with him. Alone. And he’s looking so damn good. “Take me home now.” I tell him, clenching my hands into fists at my sides. My heart pounds, my body still wired with angry adrenalin.
Hunter finally lifts his head from the sink and turns back to me. “No.”
“Dammit, Hunter—”
“Not until you calm down.” He cuts me off. He pushes his wet hair back, clearly trying to get his temper under control. Water trickles down the planes of his face; his shirt now dark and wet in patches, clinging to his chest.
He’s so f**king beautiful. And he just doesn’t understand.
Hunter takes a ragged breath. “The last time I saw you, we were great, and now you’re spitting mad and screaming at me. The least you can do is tell me why. What happened?” He exhales. “What did they say at the interview?”
I feel a flush of shame. I didn’t want him to see this side of me, the messy f**king failure, but now I’m laid bare, raw and hurting right in front of him. “The same thing everyone’s been telling me, my entire f**king life!” I slam the portfolio down on the rough-hewn table, watching as loose-leaf pages slip out the side. A freeze-frame photograph of all my stupid ambitions.
“I’m a joke,” I tell him, my voice twisting. “He didn’t even look at my stuff for more than a second. Why would he? I’m nothing. It’s all a joke!”
Hunter’s face changes. “Brit, that’s not true!” He moves closer, but I can’t listen to any more of his lies. I grab my sketchbook, the drawings I labored over so carefully, sketching and shading long into the night. I open the book and start ripping, tearing the heavy pages from the seam. “What are you doing?” he cries, reaching for me, but I pull back.
“You didn’t see the way they all looked at me!” I cry, ripping at the book again and throwing the torn piece to the floor. “He’s right, I was stupid, stupid to even think—”
“Brit!”
Hunter grabs me by the arms, crushing me against him.
“Let go of me!” I struggle, trying to push him away, but he holds tight, solid and strong, and I’m trapped in the warmth of his embrace. “Let me go!” I feel a sob rising in me, and I try to bite it back. I can’t be the girl who cries all over the damn place, I’ve got to keep it together, the way I always do.
“Shhh,” Hunter holds me to his chest as I gasp for air. “It’ll be OK, I promise you. I’ll make it OK. Just tell me what to do.”
He’s trying to calm me, I know, but his words are like salt, rubbing raw in my open wounds.
Trusting him is what got me into this mess; believing even for a second I could rely on someone else. “I knew this would happen,” I wrench away. “God, I knew it.”
“This is just one setback,” Hunter promises me. “You’ll see, we can try again, send out more applications—”
“There is no ‘we’!” I yell. “You think I haven’t done this before? Haven’t applied to all these places, tried my hardest to make it work? I’ve been sending out letters for months now. Nobody wants me!”
Hunter catches his breath. “You didn’t tell me.”
“Because I didn’t want to see that look on your face!” My voice twists.
“What look? Brit, what are you talking about?” He’s so confused, he doesn’t even realize.
“That one,” I tell him, feeling it like a punch to my gut. “Right there, in your eyes, when you realize what a mess I am. What a f**king joke.”
“That’s not true, Brit.” Hunter takes a step towards me.
“You said I wasn’t broken,” I accuse him angrily. “That I was perfect.”
“You are!”
“Then why are you trying to fix me?” My shout rings out in the darkening room.
Hunter stares at me, realization dawning in his eyes. “Is that what you think this is about?”
“Do you know what it feels like, being told you’re nothing?” I challenge him. “No, of course you don’t. You’ve never failed at anything in your life.”
Something flashes across Hunter’s face. He clenches his hands into fists at his side. “This isn’t about me. This is you, trying to find some excuse to push me away again.”
My mouth drops open in amazement. How can he try and turn around and put this on me, after everything? “This is all you!” I cry, “Trying to play the hero, to fix the fucked-up girl no-one else can love! And you want to know the worst part?” I demand, “For a moment there, I believed you. I believed in us. I thought we could just put all the bullshit and the real world aside, just be us. Be Susie and Bob, on that beach again. You and me.”
“We can be.” Hunter comes forwards, catching my hands in his. “Listen to me Brit, the things you’re saying, you’ve got it all wrong.”
“No!” I cry, furious at myself for believing in him. I snatch my hands away, even as his touch rolls through me, a glimpse of treacherous sweetness I can’t let myself surrender to.
“This is crazy!” Hunter yells back, his frustration boiling over. “You keep pushing me away. I don’t understand what’s going on in your head.”
“You can’t.” The space between us is a chasm, bigger than he’ll ever know. “You can’t ever understand what it’s like for me. You’re the golden boy, remember?” I look at him, golden and gorgeous even in a damp shirt with water dripping down his face. I shake my head, turning away from his glow. “God, why did you have to be so f**king perfect?”
Hunter’s face changes. “You keep saying that.” His voice is like ice.
“It’s the truth, isn’t it? Your perfect face, and your perfect family, and your perfect life.”
Hunter’s eyes meet mine, so full of bitter fury, I catch my breath. “You want to know what kind of man I really am?” he demands, his voice rasping with tension. He crosses the space between us, grabbing my shoulders. “You want to know the truth?”
“Hunter,” I gasp. His face is dark, like a stranger’s, and his fingers dig painfully into my shoulders. I try to shake loose. “Hunter, you’re hurting me!”
“You keep saying I’m perfect, but it’s all a lie!” His eyes blaze into mine, tortured and bleak. “Every day, I have to pretend. Well, I’m sick of pretending, I can’t do it anymore, not with you!”
“Hunter…”
“Jace is gone,” he confesses, his voice broken.
I gasp.
“He’s dead, Brit, and it’s all my fault.”
I watch her face change as my words sink in. Brit furrows her brow, confused.
“Hunter?” she whispers. “What do you mean?”
Brit blinks, staring at me with those beautiful dark eyes. A moment ago they were aching with anger and hurt, I would have done anything to make it go away. Even telling her my darkest secret. But now, I wish I could take it all back, have her look at me like a hero again, no matter what the price.
“I killed him.” I say it again, letting the words falls to the floor between us: the dark bitter truth I’ve been hiding so long. “My brother is dead, Brit, he’s been dead three years now. Jace is gone.”
I sag back against the wall, feeling the fight drain out of my body. A moment ago, we were screaming and yelling, consumed with passionate anger. Now, everything’s changed.
Nothing will ever be the same.
“What happened?” Brit finally asks. She sinks down into the nearest chair—halfway across the room from me, I notice through the dull ache already blossoming in my skull.
She can’t wait to get away from me.
But it’s too late to take it back now. She wanted the truth, and now I’m going to give it to her. I take a deep breath and brace myself.
“It was Christmas break,” I start, my voice hoarse with the words I’ve kept inside for so long. “A few months after that summer here. I was back from college, and Jace was working with Dad at the firm. We all went out to Aspen for the holidays. My parents rent a big house there every year,” I explain, feeling numb. “All their friends have places too. It’s one big parade of cocktail parties and lunches, but, me and Jace would always have a good time. Go skiing, hit the bars...”
My voice falters. I look up, over at Brit, trying to see a sign in her expression, some kind of understanding, but instead her face is blank. Empty. Waiting.
I clench my jaw, and force myself to keep talking. “So one night we were out, meeting some other kids in town. Jace knew some people from college. Everyone was drinking, having a good time.” The words stick in my throat, and I have to catch my breath. “Except, I wasn’t supposed to be drinking.” I force the confession out. “It was my turn to drive, and Jace wanted to cut loose. He’d only been at the firm a few months, but already, Dad was piling on the pressure, long hours, too much responsibility. But Jace never complained,” I remember quietly. “That wasn’t his style. He just took it all, he wanted to make Dad proud.”