Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two

Hunter

It turned out that relationships weren't that bad. Well, they weren't bad when they were with Katrina Stacey. I knew we were still in the beginnings, but we'd adjusted to being with each other so easily that I couldn't believe that I'd been so reluctant.

Cade and Reid weren't as shocked when I informed them I was seeing Stace as I'd thought they would be. They'd come over on Friday while Stace was at work and before Reid's shift at Sapph started.

"I really, really like her. So much that I can taste it in the back of my throat. It's like I can't breathe when I'm not with her. I know how that sounds. But it's how I feel."

Cade and Reid shared a look.

"Can I say something and you not freak out?" Cade asked.

"Maybe? Depends on what it is."

We were sitting in my living room and eating salads from the fancy place that Cade had picked up, but she'd also brought cake for dessert.

Cade looked at Reid who gestured for her to go ahead.

"I want you to consider, just consider , the idea that you might be in love with her."

I dropped my fork and it fell onto the floor.

"What?" I asked, my stomach dropping along with the fork.

"Just think about it," Reid said. "Just for a moment. It's not going to kill you.

"It might," I snapped, my heart suddenly racing. "Ever heard of Romeo and Juliet?"

"Hunter, they're fictional," Cade said gently.

"I fucking know that!" Okay, I was losing it.

Cade put a hand on my shoulder. "I just asked you to consider it. Breathe."

I didn't want to breathe. I wanted to run away from all the feelings crashing into each other in my head. Too many feelings for one person to have. I'd never wanted them. Never wanted this.

"Maybe I'm just high on the sex," I said, and I knew how silly that sounded.

"I don't think it's just sex," Reid said gently. They were both looking at me as if I was going to throw my salad on the floor and start screaming and tearing my hair out.

While that course of action had its appeal, I didn't want to clean up the mess afterward.

"Well, fuck ," I said, staring into my salad. "How the hell did this happen?"

Cade and Reid shared another look.

"It just kind of happens sometimes. And before you know it, you're in the middle of it," Cade said. She would know.

I blew out a breath. "She did say she was going to seduce me. So I guess I should have seen this coming. She told me she was going to make me hers. I guess I thought I could resist." Resist those dimples? I'd been a complete and utter fool.

"I shouldn't have had sex with her."

"But you did. Sex can change everything," Cade said. Again, she was speaking from personal experience. A lesson I should have heeded. Why hadn't I listened to my own rules that I'd made when I was a kid? I'd repeated them so many times to myself. I'd thought I could bend them and they wouldn't break.

And now here I was. In love with Katrina Stacey.

Even if I threw everyone's salads on the ground and broke every window in my apartment and screamed until my throat was raw, it wouldn't change the fact that was definitely in love with Stace.

"I didn't want sex to change everything," I whined.

"Too late, kid," Reid said and, if I didn't know better, I would have said that she was enjoying this.

I grabbed the pillow from behind my back and screamed into it. Cade rubbed my back.

"It's gonna be okay. Being in love isn't that bad. Promise."

I screamed into the pillow again.

I let myself into Stace's apartment and dropped the bags of groceries I'd hauled up the stairs. She'd be back from work in about a half an hour and she was going to be hungry so I was making her dinner. It was just a simple chicken dinner with pasta that I'd seen online. The fact that it was called Marry Me Chicken was irrelevant. That wasn't why I'd picked it.

I filled a pot with water to make the pasta and set it on the stove.

When I'd first come over to Stace's, I'd said that her place was warm, and I hadn't been lying. Her place was like her. I guess I loved it too.

"Fuck!" I yelled when I got one of my fingers too close to the burner. I quickly ran it under cold water and pulled out the first aid kit that I knew lived under the sink. Stace was the kind of woman who had first aid kits in nearly every room. I put some ointment on my finger and then a band aid. She could fuss over it later.

Stace's key rattled in the door just as I was simmering the chicken on the stove. I'd also made a quick side salad.

"Hey, baby," she said, beaming and making my heart pound and my knees go weak.

Buck rushed in to say hello to me and then run to find one of his toys to play with.

"Hey, babe," I said. I'd adjusted to the term of endearment with a little too much ease for my liking.

Stace always kissed me when she got home from work. Or when she took Buck out to use the bathroom. Or sometimes when one of us left the room and returned.

It was cute as hell and I wanted to hate it, but I could never hate kissing Stace.

"Ohh, this is fancy. What's the occasion?" she asked, putting her arms around me from behind and resting her chin on my shoulder.

"I just wanted to have a nice dinner with you. I feel like you're always doing this for me, and I want to make sure that you're not the only one."

Stace turned me around in her arms.

"You know I do things for you because I want to. Not out of obligation, right?"

"I know," I said, resting my hands on her ass. It was something I'd gotten addicted to. I just loved touching her there, and not necessarily in a sexual way.

"But sometimes you are so busy doing everything for everyone, who's doing something for you? I want to be that person." Shit. I hadn't meant to say that much.

Stace tilted her head to the side. "You do?"

"Yeah. I do."

She rested her forehead against mine. "You're incredible, Hunter. You're everything I could have wished for."

"You don't have to wish for me. I'm right here." I squeezed her cheeks and she laughed.

"Mmmm, you can't do that, baby. Because I'm starving and if you keep touching me like that, I'm going to want to take you to bed and you worked hard on this beautiful meal."

Stace stepped back from me and groaned.

"Don't look at me like I'm the bad guy."

I patted her abs and bit my lip.

"You're not the bad guy. Okay, fine. We'll eat first. How was the shelter today?"

We did manage to eat dinner before we ripped each other's clothes off and ended up in her bed. I'd started traveling with several vibrators and Stace had pulled out a few of her own and we'd both discovered that we liked adding them to our repertoire.

"You didn't want to go out tonight?" Stace asked as we lay tangled together.

"Did you want to go out? We can." This week we'd been kind of in our little bubble, but we'd have to go out sometime.

"No, I just didn't want you to feel like we had to hide away. I can't lie; I want to take you out and show you off all the time."

I kissed her bicep and propped my head up so I could look at her face.

"You wanna go out to Sapph tomorrow night? Reid is working so we might get free drinks."

Her smile was slow. "I was going to volunteer Saturday night but I can go out with you. If you want."

I nodded. "I do. And maybe we can invite Cade and Eloise. You can finally meet the great Eloise Roth."

Stace raised her eyebrows. "Meeting your friends? That's kind of a big step, baby."

It was, but I'd already met her family. It only seemed fair since she probably wasn't going to meet my family if I could help it. Eventually. Probably. But far, far in the future. I didn't want to subject Stace to my parents. She'd probably charm them, though. I had faith in her skills.

"I know. But I'm not scared of a big step," I said, the words I'd been holding in all day pulsing beneath my skin.

"You're not? This is new."

I rolled my eyes. "Shut up. I'll still beat you with a pillow."

"New isn't bad. New is good," she said, reaching for my fingers and kissing each one, making my heart flutter in my chest.

"I have to tell you something," I said. I could try and hold it in. Live with the itch under my skin and the way my brain kept screaming the words over and over.

"Okay. That sounds serious. What is it?" I hated the way her eyes looked right now. Like she was bracing herself for me to tell her that I was done. That I was running.

"I love you," I blurted out. "Sorry. There was probably a better way to say that. I didn't figure it out until today. And I just—" I couldn't say anything more because she was kissing me, and my mouth was busy.

And then she was laughing and kissing me and I was laughing and we were rolling on the bed and I was guessing she was happy about this.

"You love me?" she asked, grinning down at me, bright as the sun.

"I love you, Stace," I said, stroking her face.

"I thought I was going to say it first, but you beat me. Holy shit, you never stop surprising me, Hunter."

"You don't have to say it back."

"Are you kidding? I've been wanting to say it all week and I almost said it about fifty times."

"Wait, really?"

She kissed me again. "Yes, really. I love you, Hunter. Fuck, I love you so much."

I kissed her this time and then there was nothing more we needed to say.

Contrary to what I'd believed up until now, the world didn't end when I told Stace that I loved her. No. It got better. After the first time saying it, I found that I couldn't stop. The words felt good, so I kept saying them so much that Stace teased me about it, but I didn't mind.

We went to Sapph with Cade and Eloise, and even Jo joined us. She was in grad school and rarely had time even on the weekends, but she'd made time to come and meet Stace.

Of course everyone adored her, especially Eloise. She and Stace got talking about books and I had to tear Stace away so we could go hit the dance floor and I could put my hands all over her and make everyone jealous that she was mine.

I'd never understood the appeal but seeing all the people who gave Stace covetous looks made me want to drag her into the bathroom and have my way with her. So I did.

"Come with me," I said in her ear before leading her into a stall.

"Remember when you said that the kind of sex you have isn't like the kind of sex I was used to? Well, how about you find out what kind of sex I used to have?" I slid my hand into her jeans and found her already wet for me.

"Fuck yes, baby," she said, claiming my mouth in a searing kiss. "Show me."

Safe to say she liked any kind of sex, as long as it was with me.

Stace and I settled into a routine, even with her unusual hours. I got used to her crawling into bed early in the morning with me and getting up to take care of her and then having naps during the day to catch up on my sleep. I started working a little less so I could watch Buck while she was out and make dinner and do her laundry. I'd never really taken care of someone other than myself and I found that I liked it. I liked when she came home from work and I had dinner ready for both of us. I liked it when she always kissed me goodbye, no matter when she was leaving. I liked it when she came home, still smelling slightly of smoke from fires and told me about her calls. Yes, I was scared for her running into danger, but I knew she was a professional and she had a whole team with her. I got to meet her friends from the station, Cooper and Rivera, and they seemed like great people. I was glad they had Stace's back.

The best part about being with Stace was how easy it was. We had disagreements, but Stace never yelled. She just sat me down and we talked about whatever it was until we came to a compromise or we got out what was really bothering us.

It was so much better than giving each other the silent treatment and being petty and passive-aggressive for decades like my parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins.

Every time I tried to retreat into those patterns, Stace grabbed me and made me confront it. To see that doing things like that wasn't productive.

In some ways she was teaching me how to be in a relationship, but I was teaching her too. Teaching her how to let someone else carry the load. To let someone else pick up the slack. She didn't have to do everything for everyone all the time. We balance each other out in ways I never expected.

"You'd want to have a library, right?" she asked me one night when she'd come back from a particularly upsetting call and couldn't get back to sleep. I liked staying up with her and talking about anything as a distraction.

"What do you mean?" I asked, lifting my head from her stomach.

"In our house someday. We'd have to have a library, right? And probably a room for all your haunted shit." She made a face. Stace was still on the fence about my haunted collection.

"Our house?" I asked.

"Yeah. Our house someday. Or did you want to live in an apartment? I always pictured a house, but I can be persuaded."

"You speak about our house as if you're ready to put in an offer," I said. Talk of the future like this still had a tendency to scare me. It was getting better, but I couldn't change overnight.

"No. Just thinking. Wondering. It's not serious. Don't you ever dream about things like that?"

I turned on my side so I could look at her gorgeous face.

"I guess. I was always alone in those dreams, though. I'm going to have to make all new ones."

Her smile made my heart beat faster.

"I want to be in your dreams, Hunter."

I kissed a spot right above where her heart beat. "You are."

That was a lie. She was the dream. The dream I never knew I wanted. But now I had her and I was never letting her go.

I was all in.