Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 86073 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 430(@200wpm)___ 344(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86073 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 430(@200wpm)___ 344(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
His voice wavers, just barely.
“The current was strong that day. Fast. We’d had a lot of rain that spring. I saw him bobbing . . . going under and coming back up. Flailing. Screaming.”
He swallows hard, voice tightening.
“I kicked off my boots and jumped in. My girlfriend ran for help. But the water . . . it was too fast. Too damn fast. I couldn’t get to him.”
His eyes turn glassy and he goes quiet, too quiet.
I remain in this silence with him, my chest tight, my pulse hammering.
“We didn’t find his body until the next day,” he finally says, barely above a whisper. “Five miles downstream. Washed up on some riverbank.”
I swipe at my eyes, tears I didn’t even realize were spilling over.
“Hunter,” I say, my voice breaking. “I . . . I can’t imagine how horrific that must’ve been.”
I think about the day he pulled my son from that river. The fury in his eyes, the way he snapped at me, the way his hands shook. It all makes sense now. Every piece of it.
“My mom couldn’t bear to stay here after,” he says, staring blankly ahead. “Too many memories. Too much tragedy. Every time she looked at the river, it reminded her of what it stole from her. Wasn’t long before my parents sold the place to Rich Sanders for dirt cheap, and we moved to the other side of town. Away from the river.”
He shakes his head like he’s still pissed about it, all these years later.
Knowing what I now know about Hunter and the kind of man he is, I imagine this is why he owns all the riverfront land in the county . . . he wanted to do what he could to keep that water from stealing another life.
“I always told myself I’d buy it back. Despite everything . . . this land, this house—it reminds me of Ben. Every inch of it. It’s all I have left of him.” His voice is soft, reverent. “It’s sacred ground to me.”
I press my lips tight, willing myself not to cry harder.
“Before my mother passed, she told me she regretted selling it. She said she was too heartbroken to think straight at the time. But she wished she’d never let it go. I promised her I’d get it back someday.” He turns to me then, eyes heavy but kind. “Then you showed up.”
My heart aches at the way he says it.
“I didn’t know,” I whisper.
He nods, a faint, sad smile pulling at his mouth. “I know you didn’t.”
Without thinking, I throw my arms around him, holding him tight, burying my face in his neck. He smells like skin and warmth and something distinctly him.
For a while, neither of us says a word. We just hold each other, the weight of the past sitting with us while the comfort of the present wraps itself around us like a warm blanket.
In this moment, he doesn’t feel like a friend with benefits or the moody farmer next door.
He feels like a complicated, misunderstood, beautiful man who’s trying everything in his power to win me over . . . and I fear it’s starting to work.
43
Hunter
The Jasperville County Fair’s in full swing by the time we get there, and Atticus looks like his brain might explode from the sheer number of food stalls, lights, and rides spinning in the distance.
“Can I get that? And that? And that?” he asks, pointing at everything.
“Whatever you want, kid,” I tell him.
By the time we’ve made one lap around the fairgrounds, I’ve got him loaded up with a corn dog in one hand, cotton candy in the other, a deep-fried Oreo stuffed in his pocket, and a giant cheese curd on a stick that his mother’s graciously carrying.
“Gonna need to roll him out of here by the end of the night,” Wren jokes, shaking her head.
We pass the midway games, and I let him play every single one—basketball, ring toss, that rigged game where you shoot water into the clown’s mouth. Fifty bucks later, he wins a neon-green stuffed frog that’s almost as big as he is.
“You’re spoiling him,” Wren says as I pay for a midway ride pass so he can go on anything he wants.
“He’s having the time of his life,” I say, watching Atticus run toward the Ferris wheel. “He’ll be fine.”
“If he throws up in your truck on the way home, I’m not cleaning it up.”
I laugh. “You haven’t lived until you’ve puked up corn dogs on the way home from the fair.”
We wander a bit, watching Atticus from a distance as he bounces from one ride to the next, his face lit up like the Rockefeller Plaza tree at Christmastime. Wren stays close to my side, her arm brushing mine now and then, and every time she does, it sparks something warm beneath my skin.