Hunter finally finished the sentence for me. “You don’t trust him.”
I didn’t say anything. The silence was so elongated, I thought it was going to snap.
Finally, Hunter said, “I didn’t tell him about Lola either.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
Because what we both knew about Warren, and had no need to say, was that while he continued to do what he thought best for the troop, he ignored the implication of those actions on the individual troop members. I didn’t know what Hunter had endured at his hands, or exactly why he didn’t want Warren knowing about his own daughter, but Warren’s past actions made him a bit of a ticking bomb. He’d known, for instance, about Skamar long before I did, that the doppelgänger was an evolutionary precursor to a tulpa, and that my mother had been the one creating her. He hadn’t told me any of that, making me instead discover it on my own. He’d then admitted he would have taken Ben from me, deleting me from the mortal’s mind and life, except for fear it would interfere with my focus. With his plans. What had Warren said at the time?
I didn’t want you distracted.
“He always knows more than he lets on.”
“His right as troop leader,” Hunter muttered, and I could practically hear the addendum. Or so he thinks.
I angled myself toward Hunter then, chaps squeaking against the seat. He would have made a smart remark about that except he caught sight of my face first. “You’re wrong. I do trust Warren. I trust him to do what he wants regardless of what it means to us. I trust him to run my emotions down if it’s the most direct path to his goals. I trust him to take what he wants without asking, without care, and without guilt.”
Hunter ran a hand along the hair at his temple. “Oh, he’ll ask.”
“Then demand that I agree.”
He said nothing, which told me everything. I relaxed…until his next question. “Is that why you let go of Ben?”
He was studiously not looking at me.
And that was the sign I’d been waiting for. I didn’t need five fingers to count the number of times in the year I’d known Hunter that he’d begun a revealing, personal conversation. I wasn’t sure exactly why he was doing so now, but the vulnerability it exposed was so raw I both wanted to protect it and look away at the same time. And I had to tread softly, I knew, or he’d turn away.
“You know why I did that,” I said softly.
“Because Ben chose wrongly.”
“Partly.” And I wouldn’t apologize. Ben should have known he was bedding down with Regan, not mistaken her for me. Sure, I understood she’d tricked him. And that life was complicated…I think I got it more acutely than most. But that was precisely why I wanted my most intimate relationship to be simple. I opened my mouth to say that, but we were already pulling into the workshop bay, and Hunter shoved the gear into park. He told me to wait in the car while he disengaged the alarms.
I sighed at the slamming of his door. I’d waited too long to speak. Other than a few intermittent beeps from within the warehouse, complete silence enveloped me. Hunter disappeared inside. The bay door lowered to encase me in darkness.
I leaned back my head, closed my eyes, and sighed again.
15
While Hunter busied himself putting space between us, I again cursed the timing of our return to the warehouse. He’d opened up to me for a moment there, like the dappled edging of the sun through the trees, the first real opportunity at intimacy since I’d left his bed in this very warehouse more than a month earlier. I knew even before stepping from the car that the precious sliver of vulnerability, like the sun, would be clouded over again by the time I joined him inside. Again I wondered why it couldn’t be simple.
No, not simple, I silently clarified, but true. Undivided. Decisive. A woman wants to be chosen, after all, the one deemed precious above all others. The thought made me think of Hunter’s eyes fixed on the road as he asked about Ben. Could that be what he wanted as well?
“Wow. I’m always leaving, aren’t I?” I laughed, a small, unamused puff trapped in the cab of the car. How ironic that I could do so much leaving while trapped in Vegas, in this body, in this life. How ironic also that my return from another world was what emphasized all those little departures.
Before I could think, or back out of it, I went inside and said that same thing to Hunter.
“What are you talking about?” He was occupied at his drawing board, shuffling papers and tossing foam pieces into an open bin. He looked like he wanted to shrug off my words but couldn’t quite. He knew exactly what I was talking about.
I just smiled. “I mean, I left Ben…actually, I left him a note. In a mailbox.” I shook my head at the stupidity of thinking that was somehow acceptable. “Then I left you for him…then him again. But you helped me return from Midheaven, do you know that?”
He swallowed hard and shrugged. His actions were jerky, not at all his usual lithe, catlike movements.
I leaned against the table, toward him. He turned, disappearing behind the clouded plastic screen separating the workshop from the shooting range. I raised my voice. “You did. I was…trapped there. It would have been easy just to…” Give up. Die. The words slipped away. “Anyway, it would have been easy. But I remembered you once talking about my strength, how you thought it was beautiful, and that memory made me want to fight.”
It’d been in this very workshop, the sole time we’d made love. I’d left him then too. I edged around the hanging plastic sheet to find him standing before it, unseeing, motionless. He licked his lip, still not looking at me. “Not now,” he whispered. “Please.”
I didn’t know what he meant by that.
“You also said it was okay to change, to want something new. To admit you made a mistake and then make a new choice. For a new person. In a moment.”
I thought of what Solange had said as we were spinning in her planetarium, that I doubted my place in the world.
But I didn’t doubt this.
Sure, I wasn’t Solange, with her confidence and authenticity-her powers-but I was certainly the best me I’d ever been. I put my hand on his arm, hoping he’d choose this moment too. That he’d choose this new me. Hunter lowered his head for a moment.
Then he turned away.
It hurt. I closed my eyes. Yet I still wanted him. I opened them again.
And when he strode off to clear the target, I followed. A firing range, I thought. How appropriate.
“What are you doing?” he said, stopping in front of the first bull’s-eye, feeling me behind him.
Keeping my expression pleasant, I inched closer. “Sticking,” I said shortly, slipping my smile into the word.
“No, you’re being obnoxious.” He yanked on the old bull’s-eye, crumpling it in his hands. “Not to mention aggressive.”
“I know.” I rolled my eyes. “It’s so unattractive.”
He loved my strength. He loved my stubbornness. I stepped closer.
Hunter moved away, not looking at me. “We tried this before.”
His resolve was so firm it made me ache to shatter it. I smiled. “And we’re going to do it again.”
He whirled. “No.”
“Yes.” I snorted. He was right. It was obnoxious. “What, hero? Nobody and nothing touches you just because you’re bulletproof?”
He lifted his chin. “That’s right.”
I tilted my shoulder and batted my lashes. “C’mere, Bulletproof.”