1. Hunter

My suit clung to my damp skin and I couldn't wait to take it off and lay naked in an air-conditioned room.

The lush, green mountains of Hawaii filled the horizon and a welcomed light gray cloud blocked out the harsh rays of the sun. A mistiness hung in the air as the crowd mingled and laughed beneath the swaying palm trees, Wade and Ray, my friends, beaming for the wedding photographer.

Cocktail hour was swiftly coming to a close. Music hummed softly from the speakers as I clutched my icy glass of the fruity cocktail Ray had decided on for their signature beverage. It was too warm and humid to drink anything that wasn't chilled.

I should have brought a guest.

I didn't know many of the attendees. Men and women flitted about in their weather-appropriate gowns or linen suits, their faces new and vanishing in my mind within seconds. Wade and Ray—the bride and groom—were the only two I knew fairly well. Wade's step-brother had been a close friend of mine for years until becoming the dumpster fire that kicked off almost a year ago, incinerating anyone he got close to.

After the photographer finally lowered her camera that had been trained on the bride and groom for what felt like hours, I decided I'd take the chance to speak to Ray and Wade.

Pushing myself up straight from the too-high cocktail table, I plucked a peeled shrimp from the centerpiece and popped it into my mouth before walking toward the happy couple. Their son, Alex, was somewhere in the crowd of people with Ray's mom. If I didn't get to them first, lord knows they'd go straight to their kid.

I was bored as hell and needed some interaction.

"Guys!" I called out, my dress shoes crossing the threshold from solid concrete to mushy, plush grass. I had no idea how Ray was standing on it in her heels, but she never failed to impress me.

Ray's smile grew as I stepped closer. "Hunter! I'm sorry we didn't get the chance to see you before the ceremony," she said. Her fingers fisted the lace of her dress, lifting it above the grass so it wouldn't drag as she and Wade met me halfway.

"No, no, don't worry about it." I scooped her up in my arms, her happy giggles filling the air. A year ago, Wade would've punched me square in the jaw for that, but now he looked at us with a warmth that even I could feel. Ray and I had a connection—one that wasn't romantic—though I'll admit, I initially mistook it for that. We'd met at Wade's sister's wedding back in Colorado, and the next thing I knew, she was crashing her car in front of my property.

There are times when my mind's eye still sees her with a bloody nose and one hand clutched against her stomach when I look at her.

"We're so glad you could make it," Wade chimed in as I set Ray carefully back on the ground. He grabbed me by the shoulder, his black suit jacket taut with the movement. "And thank you for keeping Zane as far away as possible."

Laughter crept up my throat, hanging thick in the air around us. The carnage he'd caused at the beginning of their relationship was enough of a reason to keep him at least a state away at any given moment. He'd made it his primary goal to ruin Wade's life and had employed every tactic he could think of—from breaking down the trust between the two of them to trying to obliterate Wade's potential investment in the land adjacent to his ski resort. Thankfully, that land investment boomed, and the off-season was filled with mountain bikers. "You guys weren't the only ones that didn't want him around. Don't worry about it."

Don't worry about it. I'd forced myself to stay in contact with the fucker during the two weeks leading up to their wedding day, insisting that they were getting married in Italy. Considering the rest of Wade's family was in attendance, it was a miracle Zane believed me. I could only assume he hadn't been in contact with other family members.

Ray's pristinely styled curls bounced in the warm wind as she looked me up and down. "You know, there's plenty of single girls here," she joked, one eye closing in a wink. "And Oahu is sucha romantic place to meet someone."

"Are you trying to get me to hook up with somebody at your wedding?" I chuckled.

Wade shrugged. "It's not entirely unlike you."

"Didn't you sleep with that one girl the night of Chloe's wedding?" Ray asked, her fingers snapping. That had been the night I'd met her, the night Wade had stormed over in a huff because we were simply talking and Ray was smiling at me. "Zarah, was it?"

I breathed out a laugh and rubbed the back of my neck, the memory too blurry to make sense of. I'd definitely been drunk off my ass by that point. "Maybe? I don't really remember."

Ray's eyes rolled before they noticed something behind me, causing a little smile to break out. I knew that meant my little moment of socialization was coming to a close. It was their wedding, after all, and everyone wanted to speak to them, to congratulate them, to hug them.

I was fine on my own. Always had been.

————

The table I'd been assigned was empty. Wade's family's names littered the little cards in front of each seat, but all of them were either up and about talking to people I'd never seen or dancing happy and drunk on the dance floor, not a care in the world for who could see them.

They'd kept the number of attendees small. There were only a hundred people or so, but in my efforts to draw lines between how everyone knew everyone else, I'd come up mostly empty. There were those that I knew, although not well: Wade's sister Chloe, Wade's mother and her husband, Wade's father, and Ray's mother. I knew that their close friends, Jackson and Mandy, had to be around somewhere.

The two lovebirds made their way around the room throughout the first hour of the reception, making sure to stop and thank every single person for coming. At one point, Wade carried Alex on his hip, the five-month-old unable to resist tugging on his father's tie or playing with his pocket square. I'll admit it was cute, but seeing that made me acutely aware that part of me felt so far removed from everyone else.

The hanging wisteria, the love songs, the intimate glances and long kisses; it all felt unattainable, or rather, unwanted. I suppose there was once a part of me that longed for that deep down, though it had been buried beneath years of fallen rubble and extinguished flames. I wouldn't be human if there hadn't been. But everything that came along with it—the vulnerability and the trust that one needed to have—wasn't on the table for me. I'd built my walls in my early twenties for a reason, painstakingly laying every brick, and I'd either need to meet someone capable of climbing over them or be willing to tear them down myself.

Neither seemed attainable for me.

From across the room, Chloe's wide eyes briefly met mine then widened as her mother whispered in her ear. It was enough to pique my interest, enough to get me up and out of my seat for the first time in a while.

I plucked my third glass of red wine off the table and crossed the sea of unfamiliar people as hands grabbed onto my suit jacket, trying to get me to dance with them, talk to them, or interact with them in one way or another. I brushed each one off. The minor haze of alcohol was beginning to wash over me, just enough for me to loosen up and drag myself into something that probably wasn't meant to involve me.

"What's going on?" The words left my mouth before I'd thought about them. Arlie, Wade and Chloe's mother, looked up at me in confusion.

"Hunter?" she asked, the fine line between her brows deepening. "What are you doing here?"

"It's a long story that I doubt you'd be interested in," I chuckled, lifting my glass to my lips and taking a sip of the finest red wine Wade and Ray could buy. "Don't worry. Zane's not here."

"That's the least of our worries right now," Chloe grumbled, her voice barely audible over the loudness of the music.

"What do you mean?"

"You see that girl over there?" she asked, one finger pointing discreetly toward the doors. I dragged my gaze across the room, my eyes landing on a woman with long, pin-straight black hair, olive skin, and a scowl that could curdle dairy. "I have no idea who she is. She's not even dressed up."

After looking a little closer once people had mingled and moved out of the way, she was right. Jeans, a t-shirt, and sneakers were all that covered the mystery woman's body. Suspicious, but not wildly. Hell, I wished I was in jeans and a t-shirt.

"I only know about five people here. Are you sure she's not the date of a guest?" I asked.

"I hand-delivered the invites and I've met everyone that should be in attendance," she replied.

Oh.

"So what are you thinking?"

"That she could be the press."

"Or some kind of weird wedding crasher," Arlie adds.

The girl's eyes moved in our direction for a quick glance, but within a second she stared only at me, a direct gaze of ocean blue noticeable from across the room. She was beautiful, all soft angles and flushed cheeks, but the look in her eyes resembled a deer caught in the headlights.

And then she was gone.

"Shit," Chloe cursed, her hand diving into her little handbag and fishing out her phone. "Should I call hotel security?"

The temptation to tell Chloe how absolutely ridiculous that question was itched at the back of my mind, but not nearly as much as the temptation to follow the unknown woman. "I'll find her. Don't worry about it."

I was already ten feet away before either of them could object.

Humid air hit me like a freight train as I pushed the door to the ballroom open. Barely-there flecks of orange and pink filtered through the darkening clouds, the sunset just moments away from transitioning into night. A flash of black hair bounced along the wall of greenery, each twisting turn of the gardens seeming to confuse and frustrate her.

"Hey!" I shouted. I stepped off the concrete and back onto the too-soft grass, nearly spilling my wine in the process.

Wild eyes met mine from across the foliage, half-angry, half-terrified. The way her lips parted, the way she dragged her tongue along the bottom one in concentration, added fire to the flames I'd only just noticed had started. Of all the faces I'd seen tonight, every single one of them forgotten within seconds, hers was the one I would surely remember.

I was fucking attracted to the potential wedding crasher slash reporter slash whoever the hell she was.

She backed away from me, palms out in front of her as if she was trying to show me they were empty. Every step I took toward the girl felt like a magnet pulling me in, an unexplainable gravitational pull.

"What do you want?" she spat, the words falling flat and sounding more flustered than I was sure she intended.

I shrugged. "I'm curious how you know the bride and groom," I said, a little smirk pulling my lips up. I snaked between the last row of hedges that separated us, fully expecting her to run again. Instead, she stood up straighter. "And why you're not dressed to the nines."

"It was a last-minute thing." Her voice had gone a little breathy, sounding a little scared.

I nodded, entertaining her lie for just a moment. "It was a last-minute decision to crash a wedding?" I chuckled. I watched as her eyes trailed down my body before slowly, painfully, meeting my gaze once again. "I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here and assuming you're not the press."

One sneakered foot stepped back again before her spine hit the brick garden wall, a little squeak escaping from her lips. She steeled her jaw to make up for it.

"Nothing to say?" I asked, closing in on her with ease. Up close, I could see the little freckles that dotted across her face, could see the way her lips parted and came back together, the light smattering of lipstick on them. Most intoxicating though, were those stark blue eyes. "Perhaps I should tell the bride and groom that they've got an unexpected, uninvited guest."

"Please don't," she breathed.

"Then tell me why you're here." I pressed my hand against the wall above her head, leaning over her to assert myself. Lifting my glass to my lips, I sipped at the wine. "Are you from Oahu?"

She shook her head. "No. Colorado."

My brows shot up. "Colorado, hmm? What a coincidence," I taunted her. "We're all from Boulder. Though I assume you'd know that as an invited guest."

The breath she released was audible as I leaned in just a little bit closer. "Yeah. I definitely knew that," she muttered. I couldn't tell if her reactions were that of a terrified woman or that of a woman who couldn't decide between feigning fear or lust. Based purely on my experience and the way her lower lip slid between her teeth, I went with the former.

"How… how do you know the bride and groom?" she asked, her gaze flicking between my eyes and my lips.

Definitely lust.

"I met them at the groom's sister"s wedding," I explained. I set my glass on the top of the wall just above her head, wanting my other hand free to deal with whatever this was going to result in. If I had any say in it… "And then the bride crashed her car in front of my house and I was the one to call emergency services."

Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. I took a leap of faith and dragged one knuckle along the front of it, watching as her entire body broke out in goosebumps. "That sounds like an interesting way to get to know someone."

"It absolutely was," I smirked.

A silver chain hung limply around her neck, the weight of the pendant pulling it down low. I let my fingers graze across it, the little horseshoe charm feeling heavy in my grasp.

"How do you know the bride and groom, beautiful little stranger?"

Her gaze twitched between my own. "Wouldn't you like to know?" she breathed.

A challenge. I was a goddamn sucker for a mystery. "Tell me and maybe we can do a little more than talk," I teased, flipping the little pendant between my fingers. My knuckles grazed her collarbone with every little movement.

She huffed out a light, little laugh. "I don't even know your name."

"My apologies." I leaned in a little closer, bringing my lips almost flush with her ear. "My name is Hunter. Hunter Harris."

She stilled.

"And yours?" I asked, my pinky hooking into the open space of the horseshoe charm.

Hands pressed firmly against my chest, pushing me back an inch. Her olive skin had paled, her wide eyes suddenly looking far more horrified than turned on. "You're… oh my God. You're a beast."

What?

Her hands pushed harder, managing to put real distance between us. I heard a faint snap as she slid out of the space she'd created between me and the wall, her body moving faster than I could keep track of, the haze of alcohol blurring the last few seconds.

By the time I found her again, she was halfway across the garden, launching herself over a short hedge as she looked back in pure terror. That flash of black hair was gone again in an instant as she finally found the stairs she'd been looking for. Then, as quickly as she'd appeared, she was gone.

I felt a slight weight in my hand. Looking down, I realized what the snap had been—her necklace with the horseshoe charm hung loosely from my pinky finger.

She'd reacted in fear and ran when I said my name. Why? Does she know who I am?I stared at the tiny horseshoe charm, my mind moving far too sluggishly. I didn't understand. But goddammit, I was going to.

I wanted to know who she was. I wanted to take her.

And I alwaysget what I want.