18. Hunter

EIGHTEEN

HUNTER

I pull her through the compound, angling for our bedroom. When we reach it, I pause only long enough to bring out the black duffel bag I stashed there when I sent Misha’s people to Amelia Manor to grab things from my safe.

Repairs to Amelia Manor are well under way—by the end of the summer, the property restorations will be completed. In my dreams, Winter, August, and I could return home and pick up where we left off. But I know that fate likely has other plans for me.

I look down at Winter as we walk—it's a quick glance.

Maybe she’ll be able to return one day.

When we’re out of the room, I run into Luna and Leo where they talk in the hallway. I absently note that Max isn’t with them, but quickly put the thought aside.

“Can we use your office?” I ask Luna.

She gives me a curious look, but then says, “Sure. Knock yourself out.” Spinning on her heel, she heads toward the main workroom for the rest of the members of The Resistance.

Taking in a short breath, I turn to Leo and say, “Follow me, I’ll need a witness.”

Leo’s expression doesn’t change, somehow gathering the severity of the situation and the next thing I need to do.

Winter speaks. “A witness for what, H?” I pull her along faster and Kitty yips.

A witness for me making everything right.

I can’t voice the words. All I can do is keep walking—keep moving forward. I have to do what I can to protect her and our baby and August.

“Hunter? A witness?” Winter presses, but I continue to ignore her. She pulls on her arm, dislodging herself from my grasp, and I whirl around, grabbing at all the patience left in my body.

“We don’t have time for this, Winter.”

The fearful, worried look she’s worn for the last several minutes disappears, and in its place is the spark of fire that I’ve missed so much.

“We have enough time for you to explain where you’re taking me. You don’t just go caveman on me and expect me to meekly follow.” Her chest rises and falls with the intensity of her rising fury—red casts across her golden cheeks, and she’s so angry the tips of her curls seem to vibrate.

I want to look at her face forever. But now….

… now you don’t even know if you’ll see tomorrow.

“Sunbeam, please, ” I say. The four of us are silent—Winter and I stare at each other while Leo stands off to the side, and Kitty pants, clearly judging all of us.

After a moment, Winter says, “Okay.” She tightens her grip on Kitty and walks toward Luna’s office, leaving me behind.

When we’re all inside, I shut the door, walking to the file cabinet where I stashed all the documents I grabbed from the vault at Amelia Manor.

“Leo, grab a few pens,” I throw over my shoulder.

Walking back over to where Winter stands frozen, I grab her elbow, rub it gently, and say, “Please sit.”

She does, taking a chair at the two-person table on the far end of Luna’s office.

I open the first file. “This is an accounting of all my assets. The investments, cash on hand, the properties we own.” I slide an earmarked sheet to the top. “You’ll sign here, and they’re all yours. Leo will witness.”

She gapes at me, her eyes wide. “What?”

I pull out another folder. “This one explains August’s guardianship. When I’m gone, I want to make sure that you’re his guardian and that you have control of his inheritance until he reaches the ages outlined in my will here.” I pass her the bound document with my will and information on August’s trust.

“H,” Leo says, his voice rough.

I lift the bag, open it, and pull out stacks of cash and documents.

“Here are the passports I got for you. There’s one for August too. There’s sixty grand here in cash, but here are the account numbers for other places to get more money. There’s roughly four hundred and eight million in liquid cash. The rest are in investments and real estate. We have a lot in Bitcoin and a few other cryptos. I recommend holding those, though.”

I don’t know what will happen to those if and when the Feds decide to put their hooks into me. I want to make sure they’re all taken care of.

“Hunter—” Winter begins.

“Go here,” I point to an address in rural upstate New York. “You can hide for a while. At least until things die down. Then I want you to go overseas with August. Start over. Make up with Veronica and stay close to her. Keep yourself safe and lie low.”

“Hunter!” Winter’s voice pierces through my tirade like a thunderclap, and I pause with my hands splayed on top of the woodgrain desk, over the reams of paper.

I breathe in, but it’s hard to gather air.

“Hunter, what is this?”

I can’t answer her. It’s too hard to say the words: I’m preparing you to live without me.

“I want to make sure you’re taken care of, baby.”

She starts to shake. “Why? It’s going to be all right. Misha said?—”

“I know what Misha said, Sunbeam. But the reality is….”

The reality is these people can do whatever the fuck they want, and I want to make sure that Winter and August are as far away from here as possible.

Safe.

Her eyes widen even more. “Hunter, you will get past this. They have nothing tying you?—”

“Sunbeam, you know as well as I do that if they wanted to connect me to all of this, they can. Just do this. Please. For me.”

Leo lets out a deep breath, but I can’t break my eyes from Winter’s.

“No,” she says, her voice firm.

“No?” I straighten, looking down at her.

“You heard me right, Hunter. I’m not signing all of this. I’m not going to New York or wherever the hell you want me to go, and you’re not going down for this. I won’t let it happen.”

My eyes slide closed, and I focus very hard on staying in control.

“Winter, please,” I say. When I feel her shift to stand and Kitty moves around my ankles, I give her my attention.

The smile she wears is tight. “We’ll be right back,” she says.

Leo nods at Winter from his position leaning against Luna’s desk, tapping his finger on the lip of the top.

Winter grabs my wrist, not unlike how I had grabbed hers, and she leads us back through the house. When we reach our room, she says, “Kitty, find August.”

Kitty tilts his head and then moves off in the direction of August’s game room with a huff and an eye roll.

Winter shuts the door behind us.

“First, slow down, H,” Winter says. Her tone sounds as if she’s struggling to gather as much patience as she can.

“Sure,” I reply. Then I head to the closet to gather her empty suitcase.

With the rolling bag in my hand, I grip the handle to keep myself tethered here in this moment.

One foot in front of the other.

I shouldn’t be surprised to see Winter at the threshold when I turn around, but I am unprepared for the stony silence she gives me for several tense heartbeats.

She decides to break it after eyeing me down for an uncomfortable minute.

“Don’t speak to me that way ever again, Hunter Brigham.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You gave me orders like I was an errant child or an animal. You will not speak to me that way.”

The silence is heavy.

I want to say, “I’m sorry,” but there’s so much that I’m so incredibly sorry for, I couldn’t begin to note specifically what I’m apologetic about.

“Winter, let’s rest together for a bit before you leave. I want to hold you,” I say. I don’t recognize my voice with the gruff-ness lacing it.

She huffs, an uncontrolled sound. “Before I leave? I’m not going anywhere, H.”

I sigh and roll my eyes heavenward. “Don’t make this harder than it already is.”

Because if she continues to push and push, I know I’ll break.

I need for our family to be safe, and I’m not a safe person for anyone right now.

I think about the bruises around her neck—the bruises I left.

I meet her gaze head-on.

“Hard? Hm.” She moves from the closet entrance and over to the bed. I follow, rolling the bag behind me. When she grabs the suitcase, I’m startled when she chucks it across the room, where it hits the door with a loud smack.

“Hunter, let me tell you what will be hard. Having your baby all alone will be hard. Worrying every single day and night if you’re okay—if you’re alive or dead—will be hard. Not knowing what the fuck is going on is hard. So yeah. Go ahead and choose which hard we’re gonna tackle first.”

I absorb her words and stand up taller.

“Sunbeam, I’ve set everything up. You’ll have state-of-the-art medical care?—”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about what you’ve set up. I’m not going anywhere!” She screams at me.

“Sunbeam, calm down,” I say.

“Don’t you tell me to calm down!” She vibrates, enraged, and I take slow steps toward her, intent on grabbing her hand. When our palms touch, she squeezes my fingers for a second, but then she rips herself away.

“I’m not doing it, Hunter,” she spits back.

“If I have to drug you and drop your ass on the plane, I’ll do so.”

“Try it and see what the fuck happens, Hunter James Brigham.” Her voice is low and deadly serious.

“You threatening me, Sunbeam?”

She folds her hands over her chest. “No, baby. I’m promising you that whatever you’ve got in your head won’t fucking work. A non-starter.”

She takes a big step toward me until she’s pressed to my chest.

“Here’s how this is gonna go, big guy.” She stands on her tiptoes. “You’re going to get whatever bullshit narrative that’s spinning in your brain out. You’re going to accept that I’m not going anywhere and that there’s strength in numbers. But beyond that, you’re going to accept that you and I? We stick together. We’re a team. So where you go, I go. Got it?”

Our breaths mingle as we stand deep in each other’s spaces, and the fact that it’s been weeks since I was last inside her hits me right in the dick.

Her plush tits press against my chest, their lushness even more pronounced with her pregnancy.

“We are a team, baby,” I swear, running my hand up her arm. The gunshot wound is pretty much healed, and the feeling of her flesh beneath my palm brings everything into sharp focus.

The past few weeks of staying away from her have been the lowest parts of Hell. I need her. I need her so badly.

But I need her safe more.

“You need to talk to me, then,” she whispers. Her eyes turn soft, pleading. There’s always been so much unspoken between us. The secrets and the things we don’t speak about have been silent ghosts in our relationship.

Except, Winter has always laid it all out for me. She’s shared her whole heart, her whole past, no matter how painful. But I’ve kept the sharp, fragmented parts of mine hidden from her and from everyone.

“Why do you want to hurt me, Hunter?”

Her words are simple, but they cause a jolt of shock to sizzle at the base of my skull.

“What?” I rasp.

“Why do you want to hurt me?”

My hands start to shake. “About the shower, I’m so sorry?—”

“I’m not talking about the goddamned shower, Hunter,” she snaps. “You know, you didn’t even ask me how I felt about what happened. You’ve already decided for me that I hated it, that you’re a terrible human, that that is what has broken us.”

She puts her hand on my cheek.

“I’m talking about being hurt here.” She puts her other hand over her chest. “I’m talking about my heart. I know you love me. I know it. But you are hurting me, Hunter. You’ve been hurting me.”

I step back until my legs hit the bed. Then I sit.

I… What the fuck am I doing?

“Winter…” I run a hand down my face before reversing course and plunging my hands through my hair. I pull at the roots.

I’m barely hanging on here.

What do I do?

We look at each other and I can’t help but feel like she’s thinking what I’m thinking—that there’s so much unsaid, unresolved between us.

And there isn’t always time to fix things.

“Sunbeam. Winter, I am so fucking sorry that I’ve put you in this situation. You can’t imagine how sorry I am. And…” I move my gaze to the ceiling. “And I’m not sorry for believing that your safety is my top priority. That our family’s safety is a top priority.”

“Hunter, there is no way that I’m going to go through this terror without you. I’m not giving birth to our baby alone. I’m not going to sit back while people try to hurt you. You think you protect me? Well, I protect you too. You’re not doing this without me, and I’m not doing this without you.”

But you might not have a choice, Sunbeam.

Winter grabs my face in both her palms.

“Hunter, one day you’re going to have to let me all the way in…or you will lose me.”

I let out a shuddering breath.

My thoughts spin and spin and all of this is too fucking much.

“I want all of it, H,” she whispers and brings her lips to my cheek. “You think your darkness will scare me away. But the truth is, I want your dark, your light, and your in-between. Because you’re it for me. I love you completely. Transcendentally.”

She echoes the same words I’ve shared with her over and over.

“Okay,” I whisper. I move to kiss her forehead, bringing her even closer—wishing I could absorb her into me. “Let’s make a deal, then.”

She pulls back from me and raises her eyebrow. “A deal?”

I rub her arms. “Yes,” I say, the idea formulating quickly in my brain.

There’s so much there in her gaze, and I know that there’s so much more I need to tell her. There’s so much more we need to discuss and so much more trust to rebuild.

But right now, all I know is that the next right thing to do is this: I kneel before her, gazing into her eyes and holding both of her hands.

“Winter Leigh Vaughan, will you marry me?”

She’s dumbstruck for several moments, her eyes wide and her mouth open. Then her face turns sad.

“I…I thought you said Paris would be…” She stops talking and stares past me and to the art piece hanging on the wall.

“Yes, I did say that,” I reply. I said that before the world exploded. “I want to give you that. More than anything I want to give you that. But I can’t wait any longer. We can’t wait any longer. And if we’re going to face this shit down together, I want to do it with you by my side as my wife. I love you, Winter.”

I kiss her hands, clutching them in mine.

“I never expected you. I never dared to hope that I could find someone that I love as much as you. Or that I’d find someone who loves me as much as you do.”

She bites her trembling lip, and I’m not sure she’s aware that she’s crying.

“Please, baby, I hate to see your tears,” I say. I stand, wiping her cheek.

“Hunter…” she says on a breath. She grips my wrist, keeping my palm to her cheek.

“I know that I’m a broken, broken man. I know that I’ve hurt you.” My voice catches, and I try my damndest not to think about that fucking bathroom or the sight of her collapsing on the tile.

“I have so much to atone for with you and August and so many other people. I know that this isn’t what you dreamed of or what you deserve, but if there’s anything I want on this planet, it’s to be one with you in every single way that I can.”

This is such a far cry from the image I’d spun for her—us at the top of the Eiffel Tower with my mother’s ring in my hand.

I don’t even have a ring—I left my mother’s ring, the diamond that was last on Blair’s corpse, with Misha.

But if this is all that we have, I want to give her all of it.

Winter pulls me away from her face, but instead of stepping back, she leans into me, wrapping me in a tight embrace.

After several thuds of my heart racing against my breastbone, she lifts her head.

And smiles.