by Skye Warren
“I’m fine.”
One eyebrow raised. “You sure, ma’am?”
I blushed as my vulnerable position, splayed over Hunter’s lap, came to me. I must look ridiculous to him, helpless to him, and I was.
“Well, I am a bit embarrassed.”
The cop hid a smile. “Yes, ma’am. Just making sure.”
He headed back into the station.
I watched him go as a rush of exhilaration pumped through my veins. But when I turned back to Hunter, the air rushed from the space. His eyes were rimmed with red. His lips trembled.
“You honor me,” he said.
I swallowed. It wasn’t my fault if he went to prison, wasn’t my fault if someone there hurt him. But the truth was, it wasn’t mercy that kept me mute or stayed my hand.
I’d found in Hunter a kindred, broken soul. We didn’t fit in with the rest of society and never really would—but neither did we deserve to be locked away or abused for our issues. We hadn’t asked to be this way. All we wanted now was to live in peace.
In his own fucked up way, he’d honored me that day at the motel. He’d picked me instead of anyone, he’d plucked me out of my nothingness.
I rested my forehead against his.
“Let’s go,” I murmured.
His body released its tension, reveling and accepting. “Where to?”
“I have something to show you.”
Chapter Fifteen
Niagara Falls Ontario Canada is known as the Honeymoon Capital of the world.
Hunter found us a hotel that had an overflow lot for his truck, and we went back to Niagara Falls the next day. We covered the same ground, the same tours, the same boat ride, and I found it all the more exciting with Hunter’s sardonic presence.
As we disembarked from the Maiden, I asked the lady at the desk whether she knew of Sarah who worked there.
“She’d be new,” I explained. “Just hired.”
The woman shook her head. “I don’t think so. But I don’t run orientation, so I wouldn’t really know.”
I hoped Sarah had taken the car and gone home. The falls were beautiful, but I knew that any place could be a cage if you felt trapped.
Hunter surprised me by stepping forward. “Excuse me, do you have any trail maps for hiking in the national park?”
“Of course.” The woman slid a glance down his body. “I’m guessing you’re looking for the more advanced trail routes.”
I blinked. Was she flirting?
“You might say that. Just looking for a great view.” He pulled me close.
The woman eyed his hand around my waist then grinned. “Understood. You know, if you’re really hardcore, there’s a whole route mapped out. They call it a self-guided tour. You hike and camp on your own but the maps will guide you as you go. It takes you all around the whirlpool and the hotspots in the park.”
His eyes lit up. “That would be perfect.”
Hardcore? Oh yeah, that was him.
We wove through the crowds while Hunter started ticking off all the things we’d need for the trip. I was silent—speechless, really. Astonished at the easy way he donned a solicitous manner with her. That was him, I realized. The old Hunter who had gone to seminary school and counseled families. And maybe the true Hunter still underneath all those rough, jagged edges.
I was surprised, too, that the woman didn’t see what he was. I supposed he looked handsome and rugged in the waffle tee and faded jeans, with an ever-present layer of scruff on his jaw. If she sensed any of his wildness, it only gave him a more compelling edge. Something different from the dads who emerged from minivans in the parking lot around us in polos and khaki pants.
We found an outdoorsy store nearby and loaded up on new clothes and gear, trying on clothes and making faces at the ones we didn’t like. Hunter snagged me in one of the dressing rooms for a kiss. As if we were a couple. The idea of us as a normal couple was…quite frankly, terrifying. But also amazing, and I suspected the two always came as a pair.
The world looked different in the park. If the gorgeous view of the falls were the front parlor, then the park was the family room—less impressive but more relaxing. It was the same thing we’d done in the smaller waterfalls where we’d stood in the water and looked down, although this place was much more expansive and these rivers were miles away from the falls themselves.
The ground we covered turned orange, the skies grew vibrant.
We walked a hundred steps carved into rock to reach the peak of a mountain, and the view had stolen my breath. Or maybe that was because the air was thinner there, but I felt rooted to the spot, indelibly planted into the ground, connected to the earth in a startling and soulful bond. This was the Niagara I had dreamed about, the true wonder that hadn’t been commercialized.
Hunter was affected too. Some of the lines in his face had eased, the russet glow painting his face with wonder. But despite our auspicious beginning, he became increasingly distant as time passed. Considering Hunter was already so thoroughly contained, that was saying something.
He grew more pensive. Sadder with each passing day. The physical strain of the climbs and the harsh environment acted as buffers. It was hard for me to talk, much less convince him to open up, but with every step, it became clearer I would have to. We set up the tent and opened up the top. Sex beneath the stars, murmured conversation about the vistas or animals we’d come across, and then sleeping wrapped up in his arms. Bliss, if I wasn’t sure something dark brewed beneath the surface.
Now my whole body ached with newfound activity. My throat was dry. Hunter held out the canteen without looking over. I took a gulp and returned it to his outstretched hand. He insisted on carrying the bulk of the gear.
I covered my eyes with my hand and squinted at the trail ahead. As far as the eye could see, there were shades of orange and yellow, golden rock and a blinding sunset. Far in the distance I could see heavy clouds and the slanted stripes of rain. There were a hundred different climates here, flash floods beside a desert, but it had been a full day since we’d met the river.
Dizziness distorted my vision. My foot landed on loose pebbles, and I skidded down the incline a few feet before Hunter’s firm grasp caught me. He set me right again.
“You okay?” His voice was gruff, dry from the dusty air.
“Yeah, I’m good. Thanks.”
He grunted and continued ahead.
His head bent low, skin beaded with sweat. The start of a beard obscured his expression, but I knew his mouth would be drawn tight, lips parched. We were both at the ends of our endurance, though his physical strength far surpassed my own.
The little safety class we’d taken warned us that people still died here every year, and though I doubted it would come to that, neither did we need a case of acute exhaustion. We wouldn’t reach the basin with its shops and watered campgrounds before nightfall, which meant another night of camp.
We should bed down now so we didn’t lose too much water, but Hunter seemed hell-bent on going forward, like he was trying to get away from something. Or trying to drown the darkness in exhaustion.
He shortened his strides for me, but I still struggled to keep up. Unlike some of the other straggling groups we sometimes waved to in passing, he and I stayed close, within five feet at all times. It was a safety precaution, both physical and emotional. He was my ship in a tempestuous sea. I was the talisman he kissed before a storm. Even distracted and discontent, he always kept me close.
My breath began to come in pants, my vision blurry. He rounded a corner, and relieved to hide my weakness for a moment, I leaned back against the jagged rockface. As a testament to how bad off I was, the cool prodding of rock into my back felt relaxing, massaging out some of the kinks in my muscles. Even my skin felt tight—parched.
“Evie?”
I blinked and Hunter came into focus. He looked worried.
“Hi.”
“Shit,” he said. “God fucking damn it, why didn’t you tell me you were
dehydrated?”
I frowned. “I just had a drink.”
He wasn’t listening though. He steered me down from the small ledge we’d been walking and onto the dirt. I let him lead me beneath a tree and lay me down on one of the sleeping bags. Sitting down beside me, he lifted my head and helped me drink.
Nausea assailed me. I pushed the bottle away.
He produced a washcloth from our pack and poured water from the canteen.
“No,” I protested. “There won’t be enough.”
He shushed me, pressing the cloth gently on the overheated skin of my neck, cooling me down with every soft wipe. “Then I’ll be thirsty.”
I smiled weakly. “Sorry I’m a lightweight.”
He leaned down and kissed my forehead. “It was my fault. I never should have pushed you so hard.”
“I wanted to keep up.”
“You will. One day soon, you’ll run circles around me. It takes time to build up.”
I blinked up at him in the waning light. All along, I’d thought Hunter was the hermit in the story, but as I watched him at ease against the earth, his silhouette a sleek extension of the ground and sky, I realized it had been me all along. I’d been the one cut off from society, dangling off a ledge on a waterfall just to feel alive. I wasn’t used to this activity…but I would be. He would see to that, and so would I.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, concerned. “I can go ahead and bring back help.”
“No, I swear I feel better.”
It was true. Like a colt standing for the first time, I was wobbly. It would take time and practice before I could walk and run and gallop on my own.
“I’ll rest tonight and we’ll go back in the morning. And I’ll be more careful from now on, let you know if you’re going too fast.”
At that, he smiled with remorse. “Not that I’ve done a great job at listening so far.”
“You will,” I mocked him gently. “One day soon you’ll be the most sensitive guy around.”
He laughed, squeezing some of the water from the compress onto my face. I shrieked and laughed too, drinking down the drops that fell into my mouth.
He wouldn’t let me help put up the tent, but that was okay. I was learning my limits, what they were and how to respect them. He needed to be kind and I needed to receive kindness.
That night he pulled back the top of the tent, and we lay in the jumble of sleeping bags and pillows staring up at the stars. I rested my face on his chest, feeling the steady rise and fall while the crinkly hair tickled my nose.
“Tell me,” I said softly.
Beating beneath me was a strong heart, one that had started off pure but tainted now. Poisoned when no one had believed in him, poisoned when the men in jail had hurt him.
There was poison inside me too. Because of what had happened to me with Allen, because of the guilt from my mother. Neither of us could purge ourselves of it completely, but we could help each other. Like the way I’d read the old settlers of this place would deal with snake bites, lancing the wound and sucking out the venom.
And so the words began to flow.
“He was my mentor in seminary school. The man who gave me that rosary. Norman had already graduated but while he was working as a missionary, he’d had a crisis of faith. Some of the things he’d seen…the atrocities that men will commit on other men. On women.”
My heart swelled with sadness for him—that man, but mostly for Hunter.
“We became friends though. I was starry-eyed, naïve. Idealistic in the extreme. He started off jaded, but he seemed to calm over the years I was there. Norm taught me what he knew, and he told me later it felt like he was relearning it. Neither of us questioned that it was God who had brought us together as the best of friends.”
He went silent.
“What happened?” I whispered.
I already knew the way this story ended, but I wanted to hear it. And maybe he needed to tell it.
“We were lucky. When I graduated, two positions opened up in the same parish. We loved that place, the church, the community. At night we would talk over dinner, debating the same passages over again. It was…” I felt him swallow. “It was everything I had dreamed of having.”
“And then?”
“There was one family there with a teenaged daughter. The parents were wealthy but both very busy. The daughter had come to our Sunday school, she joined the choir. She started having trouble in school. Nothing too alarming, skipping school and hanging with the wrong crowd, but they wanted counseling for her.”
This time even I fell silent, reluctant to hear how his peace was shattered. Nervous to learn of the woman I’d reminded him of, at least at first.
“She told me…She said she’d been waiting until she was of age, she said. It wasn’t the first time a parishioner had confessed to a crush, but it was the first time she wouldn’t take no for an answer. I was uncomfortable… embarrassed. I told her I couldn’t speak to her one-on-one anymore. I considered talking to her parents, but then she was nineteen and living on her own. She started having regular sessions with Norm, and I figured the problem was solved.”
He pulled me tighter, so tight I couldn’t breathe. I stroked him, running my fingers over the goose-bumped skin on his chest.
“I didn’t realize it, but she was saying the same things to him. Earning his trust. He thought she loved him. He loved her back. And then she told him that I’d taken advantage of her. That I’d touched her even though I hadn’t. Not ever.”
“I know,” I said quietly, though I was sure he wasn’t listening. He was tense, sweating, back in the past that hurt him.
“He called the police. They showed up to take me away in handcuffs while he watched from the curb. He wouldn’t listen to me, refused to talk about me or see me. I was convicted without ever hearing him speak another word to me.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He laughed. “He left the cloth for her. I don’t know why, maybe he got suspicious or she just needed to confess, but somehow she ended up telling him the truth. Did she think he would stay with her anyway? He got proof to my lawyer, and they overturned the sentence. In a way, it was too late for me. I was already so fucked up. So many fights…those nights in the ER…I didn’t want to be like this. I had to survive. I couldn’t…”
“I know. I understand. You couldn’t let them.”
“The craziest part of the whole thing was when I was released from prison. I got it into my head that he’d be there waiting for me. He would apologize, and I’d already forgiven him. I knew I could never go back to the priesthood, but at least I’d have a friend.”
I pulled myself up to face him. “You have a friend.”
He tucked a strand of hair behind my head. “I don’t deserve one. You, least of all.”
“I know I’m pretty great,” I said blithely.
He grinned. “A saint.”
I rested my forehead against his the way I had in his truck. It brought me closer to him, like I could pull the pain from him and take it into my own body. He did the same for me, really, and we were both conduits for the pain, the currents between us grounding us together. He was the god of thunder, retreating from the world that had rejected him. I was the maiden he’d caught going over the edge, who he’d secreted away in his lair beneath the falls.
“Sometimes I think Norm was a bastard. A stupid, horrible person,” he continued, “and I curse him to Hell. Then other days…I knew my friend too well. He believed her. Maybe he was blindsided by her looks or interest in him. Or maybe he was too messed up by what he’d already seen. But either way, he truly believed it of me and that hurt the worst. He’s been out there, somewhere, feeling like shit, and I can’t stop it. I don’t even want to care about that, but I do.”
I knew the feeling exactly. My mother wasn’t the best, but she hadn’t wanted me hurt. She hadn’t realized what Allen was doing to me until it was too late. Like Hunter, too late.
And yet, he
re we both were. Two second chances. Almost a miracle.
“Forgive yourself. It’s the only way we can be together.”
His lip quirked. “Are you preaching to me, Evie?”
“You know what they say. Those who can, do. Those who can’t, preach.”
“Do they say that?”
“I have no idea. I’ve spoken to approximately five people my whole life.”
He grinned and kissed me, his lips curved as they pressed against mine.
It was the first time we had really kissed. His tongue met mine in a sensual meeting, a languid caress followed by another and another. He explored me there as thoroughly as he knew the rest of my body, learning each contour and sweetly sensitive shadow.
Though I felt the usual heat flaring between us, there was no urgency, no expectation that it would turn into more. It touched me that he would spare me sex now when he thought I was weak, but he still didn’t quite realize that sex with him strengthened me. It was the most intimate of embraces, a show of support and desire unequaled.
Anticipation warm in my belly, I began to kiss my way down his neck, his chest, and lower, lower, but he stopped me.
Glancing up, I asked, “No?”
He shook his head. “You don’t need the added salt intake when you’re already dehydrated.”
I snorted, then licked the curve of his abs. “You’re not that salty.”
“Not yet.”
My laugh was cut short by the shock of cool water on my belly. He had found that damned washcloth again and he used it to full advantage this time, rubbing it along my body and limbs, over my hardened nipples and down into the soft, damp valley below. He teased me through the rough cloth, dragging me higher to a sharp-sweet crescendo.
I shook in his arms, until he released me and moved downward.
His tongue replaced the cloth, a caress infused with the absolution we needed in the past, a prayer spoken against tender, swollen skin. He took me to heaven and then pulled me back down again with the sharp, swift thrust of him inside me.
It would always be this way, the ecstasy and the pain. They twined together in a path we would walk, unknowing and unseeing, each glad to have found a friend. All I wanted was to be with Hunter wherever his rig should take us. Across the country, around the world.