6. Hunter

Chapter 6

Hunter

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Those words haunt me now. I created another account almost immediately, regret pulsing through my veins, but I couldn’t find her anywhere.

The app wasn’t going to match us twice, because I’m not the right man for her.

It’s been a week since our kiss, and Kira has snuck into my work—apple-cheeked beauties with dark, glossy hair suddenly the only characters I want to draw—and everywhere I go in town, I see couples with obvious, visible age gaps .

The barber has a young wife with a baby on the way. The lighthouse keeper, too—his young wife works at the retirement home where I volunteer a few times a month, drawing pictures of the residents.

And once the feverish guilt over how far I’d taken the kiss had passed, I’d realized that even in my own family, Wyatt and Heath are both older than their wife Emily—the gap between Heath and Emily even larger than my seventeen years on Kira.

All of them, men who are bolder and braver than I am.

As I’m waiting for my family to arrive on Christmas Eve, I look up the tutoring sessions at the library. There isn’t one this week, but they’ll resume in the new year, and when they do, I’ll be the first dummy to show up at her table and ask for help.

After the holiday break, I’m going to go there in person and explain why I went dark. And then ask her out on a real date. Not coffee and a dry hump in an alley. A proper, keep-my-hands-off-her date where I find out more about her and show her more about me and do whatever it takes to get a second chance.

Muscle memory has me swiping to the dating app, even though I know I won’t find her. Frustration churns as I swipe through faces I’m not interested in. Mouths I don’t want to kiss. Bodies I don’t want to cradle in my arms, because they aren’t the unique soft, lush shape I can still feel trapped against my chest if I close my eyes.

A text message to the family group chat slides down at the top of the screen, interrupting my pity party.

Wyatt

On our way

And then another, not a surprise.

Hannah

Running late, just picking up Cara now

My daughter is always running late.

I’m not sure what to make of this last-minute addition to our little family gathering. Hannah insists this friend is just that, a friend from school. A new bestie, she said, and not a date. Although she also insisted that this friend stay over and participate in all of the holiday moments with us, so I’m not sure I believe her denial.

My daughter is a chaotic energy demon of the best sort, and I’ve learned it’s best to just roll with her ideas.

As a single dad who is a bit of a chaotic energy demon himself—although I try to keep that locked down these days—I get it.

My brother arrives first, swinging a sprig of mistletoe. Right behind him is his husband Heath, who is laden down with bags of presents, and their wife Emily, who is carrying a trifle bowl bigger than her head.

I’d forgotten that she was going to make that. It slipped my mind in the Kira-obsession of the past week, which isn’t like me. I’ve been completely family-focused for so long. To have this quiet distraction under my skin is very unlike me.

Wyatt is the reason Hannah and I settled just outside Conception Ridge a decade ago. Back then, it was just the three of us. Once I sold syndication and print rights of my most popular cartoon strip, I knew I wanted to use that once-in-a-lifetime advance to put down roots, and the Pacific Northwest now feels like home.

And then last year, Wyatt went and fell in love, not once but twice, in a wonderful surprise that almost doubled the size of our little family.

“Come on in,” I say, take the monster-sized trifle. “What kind of gravy did you use?”

Emily rolls her eyes, but that joke slays with Heath. I know my audience.

“Tree is in the same place it was last year.” I jerk my head toward the library.

Heath and Emily head that way. Wyatt hangs the mistletoe on a hook in the archway separating the foyer and the rest of the ground floor before he follows me into the kitchen.

The whole main floor of the split level rambling house is open, with a kitchen at one end and a library at the other, and in between a sunken family room .

It’s a mid-century modern retro throwback to another time, an era I draw a lot in my comics, and I love it.

But it’s too big for just me now that Hannah has moved into town for college.

That’s partly why I demand to host the holiday get togethers.

The other reason is that I miss what we once had.

My kid is busy with her own life.

My brother is busy with his own family.

And I’m…alone.

Which might be too obvious today, or something, because Wyatt is looking at me carefully.“You okay, bro?”

“I’m fine,” I snap, not prepared to tell my younger brother that I’m fucking lonely.

“Festive lying, I like it,” he says with a grin.

Despite myself, I laugh. “Okay, I’m not…fine. But I will be.”

“Work trouble?”

“No.”

“Woman trouble.”

I don’t answer him.

His eyes light up. “Yessss. It’s woman trouble!” He dances around in a circle, his arms raised over his head victoriously. “I can help with that. I’m so good at women now. Have you tried going down on her again after sex? Like, of course you go down on her before sex, right? But if you do it again after , she will love you forever.”

“It’s not?—”

He gives me a pitying look. “Oh my God, are you not going down on her first, bro? Because?—”

I slap my hand over his mouth. “There’s no sex. Not…yet? I don’t know.”

His eyes bug out behind my hand. “Blue balls?” He whispers around my fingers.

Somehow, those two words carry all the way across the main floor to where Emily and Heath are putting presents under the tree in the library.

All of his cavorting around about oral sex didn’t catch their attention, but the murmur of blue balls…now I have three pairs of eyeballs staring at me in concern.

“I— ”

The doorbell rings.

I exhale in relief. “I’ll get that.”

My brother isn’t wrong. He is good with women, or at least, he’s great with Emily. All three of them are a relationship gold standard, and I could learn from them, although I didn’t need the specifics. Like rubbing salt in a wound, because I’m so far from being able to bury my face between a lush pair of thighs, it’s not funny.

First step is finding Kira again and apologizing.

Through the glass panel beside the front door, I see a blur of a person, and the color of the jacket pricks at my brain, like it’s familiar, but I don’t have time to process why that is before I pull the door open?—

Shocked hazel eyes stare back at me.

Hannah tries to push her forward, but Kira doesn’t move.

“Hi,” I say hoarsely.

Hannah doesn’t notice that we’re both stunned. “Merry Christmas, Dad! We made it.”

“You made it,” I repeat dumbly.

“This is Cara.” When I don’t react, Hannah adds, “My lab partner and the smartest person on campus.”

Her friend’s pink cheeks go pale.

Her lab partner. I try to remember anything Hannah said about the girl she was bringing home for Christmas. I draw a complete blank. All my brain can remember right now is eager vanilla licks and gasping little pants that made my cock so hard I couldn’t think straight. Friend. Friend. Daughter’s friend. What the fuck.

“Cara?” I repeat her name like it’s a question.

“Cara,” she whispers, and I think she did that when we were kissing, too.

Is Hunter your real name?

She’d told me Kira wasn’t her real name, but it was so damn close.

I nod, blood pounding in my veins, loud as a winter storm on the ocean in my ears. “Come on in, Cara. It’s nice to meet you.”

The words sound inauthentic and harsh, even to my own ears .

“I—” She takes a tiny step in, but no further than that.

Hannah rolls her eyes. “Dad, you’re looming . Can you give my guest some space, please?”

Yes, space. That’s what her friend needs. Space from Hannah’s pervert dad, who was just thinking about how he’d stalk his daughter’s friend in the new year and try to force a second date on a girl he didn’t even know.

A girl who lied about her name, and probably her age, for sane security reasons. I’m not so far spun that I can’t see that.

But at the same time, I thought she was twenty-five. And now, looking at her next to my nineteen-year-old daughter, I’m really fucking sure she isn’t twenty-five at all.

“Don’t worry, Care Bear, he’s very nice and usually more talkative than this.” Hannah glances past me as I take a giant stride back. “Uncle Wyatt is here?”

“Yeah,” I say, distractedly. All I can see is Cara’s panicked expression. “Sorry. I’m sorry, Cara.” I hold her gaze and remember my fucking manners. And I do the right thing. “You are very welcome here. Any friend of Hannah is a part of our family.”

As I step back, the damn mistletoe catches my eye. I’m going to have to take that down before she steps through the archway. “Hannah, why don’t you take her upstairs and show her to her room? And then you can join us in the great room. We’d all like to get to know you better.”