Chapter 18

We didn’t speak the entire drive to his apartment. He parked in an expensive-looking designated spot. Had he borrowed this car from his “friend” Collette? As curious as I felt, my pride refused to bend long enough to ask.

We walked up all three flights of stairs to his apartment, where he turned on the lights and retrieved a few blankets and pillows from an armoire near the bookcase. He dumped them in a pile on the sofa.

“I don’t need that many,” I muttered.

“I do. You’re using the bed.”

“You can drop the hero act with me, Hunter. I’ve known you since you were potty-trained.”

Hunter took a deep, impatient breath. “Kennedy, you wanted to be friends. What kind of friend would I be if I found out about your real estate friend and didn’t warn you? Or left you at his mercy on that dock? Or left you sitting on the doorstep of your hotel overnight, wearing what you’re wearing?

I looked down and flushed. The dress didn’t leave much to the imagination, and I instantly felt embarrassed Hunter saw me in it. I felt like a fool.

His voice lowered, and I detected a note of hurt. “If you think I would let you sleep on a sofa in my home after the night you’ve had, you don’t know me at all.”

I sank onto the sofa and put my face in my hands, suddenly feeling overwhelmed. The romantic dinner, the dancing, the drinks. Claude’s practiced seduction, designed to work on most tourists, should have worked on me but didn’t. He fit all the criteria I’d given Mom that day about the perfect guy, yet I’d driven away with Hunter instead.

Oh, heavens. Had I really belched in Claude’s face?

I giggled behind my hands. Then the giggle turned into a laugh, and soon my shoulders shook violently.

Hunter sat next to me. “Why are you crying? Did something happen on that boat?” His voice went lower. “If he did something to you, I’ll kill him.”

I pulled my hands away and grinned stupidly. “He invited me to his apartment, and I burped in his face.”

His eyebrows lifted in surprise and he smiled. “You really did?”

“An eleven out of ten. You would have been proud.” I lifted my hands to the sky as if imploring the ceiling. “See? This is why I can’t have romance in my life.”

“Is it?” he said innocently. “Because I thought it was your stubbornness, idealism, and suspicion of good men in general.”

I grabbed one of the pillows and hurled it at his face. He dodged it, of course, so I had to use a second. Soon his entire pile of bedding lay strewn across the room and he still sat next to me, each of his warm hands gripping one of mine, pinning me down so I couldn’t launch any more linens, his torso leaning over me.

A few more inches and he’d be within kissing distance.

He must have realized the same thing because he froze. The unexpected position stole the playfulness of the moment, and we stared at one another. My breathing slowed to a crawl, my vision centered on the reddish freckles inside eyes the color of mocha mixed with cream and framed with thick, slightly messy eyebrows. Not Claude’s carefully groomed perfection but perfectly describing the unintentional freedom that was Hunter Morrison.

My traitorous hand wanted to reach up and cradle his stubble-blanketed face, but he held me in place with the force of a bulldozer. I remembered all too well the roughness of this skin against mine as he’d pressed me against his car that day so long ago, our lips finally picking up where we’d left off on graduation night before the call from Jillian changed everything.

“For the record,” he said, slightly breathless, “you are the most capable woman of having romance in the entire world.”

I couldn’t hide my quick intake of breath. What did he mean? That I would find someone else like he’d found Collette? Or something deeper, something my sprinting heart desperately wanted to be true?

I had to know. It was time. “What would Collette think of my staying here?” I whispered.

He pulled back a bit, still pinning me to the sofa. “I would imagine she wouldn’t be happy. I doubt she would be surprised, though.”

I positively gaped at him now. Was he the player I told Jillian he might be? Had I escaped one womanizer for another? But no, that felt wrong. Hunter’s attention had been on me since I arrived, solely and completely. Just like always. That had to count for something.

“Kennedy,” he said softly. “Do you think I’m in love with Collette? ”

An odd question for an engaged man, and I couldn’t quite allow myself to hope that he wasn’t one. So I squeaked, “Yes.”

“Then it’s time you understood,” he said, his voice husky, “I’m taking work off again tomorrow. There’s something I’ve been wanting to show you for a long time.”

I tried to speak, but my voice failed me. Clearing my throat, I tried again, pretending every cell in my body wasn’t being yanked toward this man with the force of a solar system. “What about Jillie and Alexis?”

“They’ll be fine. They know their way around now. Just tell them to secure their belongings on the metro.”

“It’s not thieves I’m worried about. It’s Alexis and Jillian alone together.”

“They’re adults, and it’s time they worked things out. Kennedy.” The sound of my name on his lips stole what little air remained in my lungs. “If tomorrow is your last full day here, I’m spending it with you.”

As I lay in Hunter’s bed a few minutes later wearing his fiancée’s silk PJs and drinking in the scent of my best friend’s bedroom, Hunter’s words echoed through my tired mind.

If tomorrow is your last full day here, I’m spending it with you.

Nearly identical words from my mom long ago. I still remembered how she lay in her bed on hospice, barely able to speak. Her eyes blazed with pain, but she’d refused her morphine.

“It takes me away from you,” she complained. “Let me feel today, the good and the bad.”

I nearly called the nurse to force it down her, but I desperately wanted to spend lucid time with her. I wasn’t ready to let her go, even to the comfort of sleep.

“What do you want to do?” I had managed, forcing a note of cheerfulness into my voice. “Jillian won’t be back from the store for an hour.”

She relaxed into her pillow. “Tell me what he’ll be like, the man you marry. Since I won’t get to see.”

Warmth sprang to my eyes, but I looked away in time to hide it. There would be time enough for crying later. “Like Clark Gable but with a better haircut.”

Mom laughed. Or, rather, she released a few happy notes and then began to cough. I gripped her hand tightly, wishing for the thousandth time that I could do more.

“You can do better,” she said.

“Ridiculously wealthy, then. Supportive, educated, driven. A good cook and an excellent listener. Super clean. He’ll worship me like a goddess.” The exact opposite of Hunter.

She made a face. “Sounds boring.”

“Does not,” I said, pretending to swat at her arm. “Hey, you asked.”

“There’s something I need to tell you,” Mom said as her smile faded. Her voice grew quieter with each word, and I had to lean forward to hear. “Your father wasn’t the only proposal I got.”

“Really?” This I hadn’t heard.

“My best friend was a guy too. We dated a bit in high school, and he proposed soon after, but I wanted to be swept off my feet. I wanted magic, not just comfort. So I told him no. I met your father a few months later.”

She struggled for breath for a moment, and I stroked her arm. “Thank you for sharing, Mom. It’s really okay. Just rest.”

“Tell me to rest one more time and I’ll stab you with one of those needles over there.”

I nodded and lifted my hands in surrender. “Fair enough.”

Finally, she spoke again. “I sometimes wonder where my friend is now. If he ever married, or . . . what would have happened if we were given a second chance. If that magic was there all along, but I refused to see it because it felt familiar.”

I lay in Hunter’s bed now, four years later, breathing in his scent and taking in every detail of the bedroom that housed his new life in the city I loved, thousands of miles and nine time zones away from home. The linens held the scent of leather and mint I loved from the old Hunter but also the deep, wiser scent of French cologne. The old and new together, the same but different. A perfect description of both of our lives now.

In just over three weeks, at the end of our European tour, my sisters would return to their lives in the States, and I would start a new life here. Alone. No sister to care for, no constant barrage of memories of Mom except for those moments we could have shared here together. No more travel-agency stress or cutting the grocery budget again to make this month’s medical payment for treatments that never worked. No more blind dates in a town where all the eligible men had left long before—including the only one who mattered.

If fate wanted me to be alone, at least I could choose where to be lonely.

But could I live in the same city as Hunter, knowing Collette also existed? Could I date other men while Hunter hovered in the wings of my mind or, quite literally, on shore to whisk me away? Could I watch him find happiness with someone else and reject me again when I needed him most? Because that moment on the couch when he grabbed my hands affected me more intensely than an entire romantic evening with Claude.

Dad. Alexis. Mom. Hunter. Soon, even Jillian would be gone. She’d find a handsome model husband to sweep her off her feet, and if I didn’t move here, I’d be alone in the home where I was raised—surrounded by the ghosts of the people I loved.

No. I couldn’t face being left behind again.

I didn’t know my sobs were audible until the door opened and a shadowy figure filled the doorway. Hunter crossed the room, rounded the bed, and climbed in. His arms slid around my waist and we lay there, wrapped tightly in each other, as my sobs lost their power and melted into the night.