33. Hunter

"Do you want to do this before or after we eat gumbo?"

Lottie glanced behind me into the kitchen at the big pot bubbling away on the stove. "I didn't get to finish my lunch before you messaged, so…"

"After we eat, then." I plucked a couple of bowls from the cupboard and set them on the counter in front of me. The air hung between us uncomfortably, thick and heavy. I just wanted to fix things, just wanted it to feel the way it did back in Austin when I cooked for her then, but I knew better than that. I knew I couldn't snap my fingers and make everything okay, especially with everything she was dealing with.

Slowly, she lifted herself up onto the high-top chair at the center island.

"You don't have to eat with me if you don't want to," I said, dipping the ladle into the gumbo and pouring it into her bowl. Even if she had betrayed my trust, knowing what I knew now, I didn't hate her. I didn't want her far away from me, not even in the next room.

"It's fine." She leaned forward onto her elbow on the counter, her chin perched in the palm of her hand. "I'm going back home tonight, though."

"Okay."

The awkward conversation put me on edge. I slid her bowl over to her along with a spoon, a glass of water, and a napkin. She didn't waste a second before her spoon clinked against her teeth. "Mmm," she hummed. "It's so good."

"Thanks." I set my bowl across from her, standing on the other side of the island, and resigned myself to leaning and eating instead of sitting next to her. No need to make it more cramped than it already felt.

We ate in agonizing silence. The seconds ticked by, each one feeling like hours. I wished the food wasn't so good—it was hard to genuinely enjoy it with the tension sitting between us.

I only managed to eat about half before I wiped my chin and watched her finish up. Her long black hair was braided and hanging over one shoulder, her face devoid of any makeup. The hoodie she wore looked strangely familiar, and the more I focused on it and the barely noticeable oil stain on the shoulder, I realized it was mine.

"I spoke to Wesley." I couldn't hold the words back any longer. "He showed up in my office unannounced the other day."

She paused, spoon halfway to her mouth, and stared at me.

"He said Jared's been working on his own, outside of the Keelings Group."

She nodded. "That's not surprising. He's never been the loyal type."

"Do you understand what I'm saying?" I said slowly, leaning onto my elbows as I looked across at her. It put us nearly at equal height. "He was acting alone. Wesley said he had a vendetta because of the situation with you."

Her lips pursed together. "So you believe me now?"

I bit my lip and looked down at my folded hands. I wished I had believed her at the time. "I do. I'm sorry I didn't before."

Her spoon clattered in her bowl as she set it down. "I appreciate your apology." I waited, wondering if she would say anything else, but all she did was stare.

That's it?

"Congratulations, by the way. I heard you're the new CEO. Finally got what you wanted."

"That's all you have to say?" I challenged.

Her brows furrowed as her glare deepened. "What do you expect me to say? That I forgive you? That you're going to do amazingly well as the CEO? That I'm happy now and we can go on as we were planning to?"

I pushed myself up to my full height, tugging at the strings of my apron angrily and pulling it off. "I was hoping for an apology as well."

Her snort set me on edge. "For what, exactly? You're the one that didn't believe me. You're the one who went back on their promise." She shifted uncomfortably in her chair, her eyes flicking upward in irritation. "I don't have anything to apologize for."

"You could apologize for not telling me the truth sooner, letting it all blow up in our faces on our wedding day," I snapped. "You could apologize for the way you thought the worst of me when I didn't respond within two seconds of you asking me if this was real. You could apologize?—"

"I'm not apologizing for any of that when you've yet to apologize for going back on your word."

I placed my hands on the counter, my knuckles cracking as I pushed down on them to relieve some tension. "I'm sorry about that, too, okay? But you kept something really fucking important from me, Lottie."

"I don't see how that is in any way on the same level." Her chair squeaked as she pushed it back away from the island and hopped down. "None of this should matter anyway, Hunter."

Not this again.

"This," she said, gesturing between us animatedly, "is a business transaction. You have something that I want, and I got you the thing you wanted. It shouldn't matter unless you have a problem sticking your cock in the same place Jared has."

Her words hit me like a knife to the chest. She was more than just a business transaction to me. Didn't she know that? "I don't care whose cock has been inside of you, Lottie. I care because there was something there between us and you're acting as if there wasn't."

Her eyes bulged for a split second. "Something there?" she laughed. Her hand pressed to her chest, closing around a fistful of the hoodie and what I could only assume was her horseshoe necklace beneath. "Do you honestly think you're going to pull me back in with that bullshit?"

I could feel my anger rising, could feel my pulse in my fingertips.

"I meant what I said before the ceremony, Hunter. We'll have a beautiful, perfect-from-the-outside, loveless marriage until this time next year. And then I want my forty-nine fucking percent and I will divorce you." She took a step toward me, her small frame seeming to take up so much more space than she did. "Just drop the act."

"It's not an act!" Pushing my fingers through my hair, I gripped onto the strands, tugging in frustration. "I don't want that. I don't want a loveless marriage, Lottie, I want a beautiful one filled with love. I want us to try."

She froze, something flickering across her face. "Can you stop, Hunter? Please. I don't want to do this. I have enough on my plate already. I don't need you twisting up my gut and heart and throwing me in the goddamn trash."

"I don't want to do that to you," I rasped.

"Then stop."

"I can't. I won't."

Her eyes went glossy, her lower lip quivering. I knew I was seconds away from saying what had been on the tip of my tongue for too long. "I can't do this," she said, her voice cracking. "I'm going home. I need… I need time, okay? Please don't contact me?—"

"Stop," I whispered. "Don't leave."

"You're just going to hurt me if you make me stay. You know how I feel. I can't sit here and watch you try to fake something you clearly can't. You're only making it worse." She sniffled, her face stoic. My chest ached like a fire had broken out in it, and all I wanted to do was go to her, hold her in a way that I hadn't in over a month. "I fucked up. I know that. But if I have any hope of making it through this then I need to keep my distance or it's only going to get worse, Hunter. I thought… I thought there was something between us but apparently there wasn't. Every fucking insistence otherwise from you just drives the knife in deeper?—"

"There was." I stepped around the side of the counter, just a little bit closer to her, allowing myself to be vulnerable.

"There wasn't!" she snapped. Her anger kicked back in, and before I could blink, her hands were on my chest, t me backward. I barely moved. "You didn't answer me when I asked if it was real. You knew what you were doing to me!"

"I love you." The words came too easily, and by the time I realized I'd said them, she'd already taken a step back. "I panicked. I didn't know what to say. But that, that's what I should have said. That's what I wanted to say, Charlotte. I love you."

She blinked back the tears that had formed in her eyes, her face scrunching in confusion. "No, you don't."

"I do. I did then and I do now. Maybe I have from the first day I met you. I don't fucking know." I couldn't bite my tongue, not even if I wanted to. I'd held onto those words for too long, stayed silent when I should have spoken up, and all it had done was ruin things over and over. "I love you, Charlotte. I genuinely want to try."

One shaking hand covered her mouth, her eyes flicking wildly between mine. She stood there in silence, the air thick with confusion, hesitation, and longing.

Lottie's phone lit up on the counter next to her abandoned bowl of mostly eaten gumbo before her ringtone chimed. The name Sarah flashed across the screen—Brody's nurse.

She moved, rushing toward the phone with wild eyes. Within a second it was against her ear, her thumbnail between her teeth, her eyes locked on something behind me. Something was wrong. I could tell from the way her breath caught, how her lower lip trembled, the way her body froze.

The gumbo threatened to come back up.

"I'll be there in ten," she breathed.

Slowly, her hand lowered the phone, hitting the end call button. Her eyes met mine, wild and full of confusion, panic, fear, and need. "I can drive you," I offered.

Her head shook, knocking a tear free. "It's okay. I can drive myself."