“You were in love with him.”
“We had so much in common,” she sought to explain it without revealing everything. She didn’t want Hunter’s pity. She didn’t want him to treat her as if she might break. She liked that he was passionate and physical and constantly challenged her to keep up with him and she never wanted that to change. And it would. His very nature was protective.
“It was cancer,” she said before he could ask more. “He fought it for so long. But in the end…”
His arms tightened about her, gently holding her close. “I’m sorry.”
The hospital. The smell. The sickness. The tiredness of that damn battle. Days, weeks months of medication and treatment. Success, set-backs, uncertainty. It had been such a rollercoaster and she and Jack had been on it together for so long. But in the end their paths had diverged.
Just thinking of him made her heart ache now. Because that relationship compared to this?
Hunter had said experiences weren’t a competition. And it wasn’t right to compare either. He was right. But she still felt guilty. And she was still holding so much back. She didn’t want to tell Hunter the rest—not about her own illness, or what had happened to her sister. Those things couldn’t be changed. Couldn’t be helped.
But she almost did. Part of her ached to open up to him completely, but she didn’t want to see pity on his face. She didn’t want to scare him. She didn’t want to think about either the past or the future. She could only have this moment. But he was so curious—too curious. And she ached to understand him too. Because she recognized that loneliness in Hunter. It mirrored her own.
“Why do you want to know everything? Why is it so important to you?” she asked.
He was a seeker of knowledge. Hunting information, people. Avidly learning and seeking. An insatiable curiosity for absolutely everything. He silently watched the world, seemingly fascinated. Thirsting for more. Always thirsting.
“Because the most important things I can never know.” His voice dropped to little more than a whisper as he rested his head on hers. “I’ll never know who I am.”
She frowned but she couldn’t lift her head to look at him, he was holding her too securely. “What do you mean?”
“Exactly that. I don’t know who I am.”
“You’re Hunter Shaw.”
“And that’s just a name I picked. Poetic irony for Hunter. Shaw because it was common enough.”
She blinked, listening intently. “You chose your name? What was it before you changed it?”
“The name she gave me.”
“She?”
“The woman who raised me as her own. But I wasn’t hers. My sister Beth and I weren’t related by blood at all. The woman who raised me wasn’t my mother.”
A horrible, horrible feeling grew inside her. “You don’t know who your mother is.”
“I don’t know anything. Mother, father, where I was born… whether I was given up or—”
He broke off.
Luisa waited silently.
“She said she saved us. That could be the truth, or it could have been the ravings of a madwoman who travelled from town to town, living on the outskirts, keeping her children home from school and from prying eyes.”
“Oh Hunter.” She felt the tension in his entire frame—different to anything she’d felt in him before.
“We were lost kids. She didn’t do anything too awful to us. Nothing worse than a spanking when we talked back. But the uncertainty… we shifted so much. When I was nine, Beth was twelve and talking back at bit more. I guess she started asking questions Martha didn’t want her asking.” He sighed. “I wonder if Beth remembered more than me. I don’t know how long she’d been with Martha.”
“Do you know how old you were when she took you in?”
“I don’t have any baby photos. I don’t have any aunts and uncles or cousins. I don’t have neighbors I grew up with. I don’t have anything…”
“Where’s Martha now?”
“She died when I was fourteen. That’s when I found out our whole life was a lie.”
“You went into the foster system?”
“For as short a period as I could.”
“And Beth?”
“Who knows.”
She tightened her arms around him but still couldn’t look up to see into his face. There was nothing she could do to make this okay for him.
“I went into the army because it was a place to go. A fraternity. Routine. Food. But in the end, I needed my freedom as well. Not to be told what to do without knowing all the why’s.”
Because information was power. Sometimes it was all there was.
Now she understood.
And he deserved so much better than her.
“After she died I found out she’d lied to me all my life.” He sighed. “She betrayed Beth and me. That’s why she didn’t push for them to search for Beth. She was afraid they’d ask too many questions about her. About me. She didn’t want them to take me away from her.”
Luisa couldn’t imagine his sense of betrayal. And of isolation. “You’ve tried—”
“Everything. Of course. DNA, missing persons… so far there’s been nothing. I don’t believe I’ll ever know and perhaps it no longer matters.” He shrugged and suddenly released her to step back, putting distance between them. “So that’s my sad little story.”
“Hunter, I’m so sorry.”
He just shrugged again. He regretted talking to her about it. That was clear.
All she wanted was to hold him again. She wanted to offer him comfort in that age-old way. To literally come together and escape everything if only for a little while. But he’d turned his back. Shutting her out. She sensed he could not bear to be touched anymore right now. She needed something to diffuse the situation. Something that wouldn’t require him to say anything more.
“Let’s go out on the water,” she suggested, pushing past the croak in her voice. “It’s soothing,” she added lamely when he just looked at her. “Fresh.”
“To clear our heads?”
As impossible as that was. “Yeah.”
He turned and walked—taking the idea like a drowning man grasping for a life-ring. The kayaks had been left pulled up high on the beach and it took nothing to drag them down to the water’s edge.
“Race you,” she challenged.
He was in the water well ahead of her. In only a few minutes he’d recovered his equilibrium, but she hated that he regretted telling her. And she hated that she couldn’t fully reciprocate. It was too late now. Her past was nothing on what he’d suffered. But more than that, he didn’t need to be burdened with her sob story. He had enough to deal with.
They paddled out past the breaking waves and parallel to the shore for a while. The sky was cloudless, a brilliant blue, the rising sun blinding. It was so beautiful. Yet all of a sudden she was utterly, unbearably tired. So tired. So heartsore. The shore seemed an awful long way away.
“Come onto mine,” he called softly.
She hadn’t realized he’d paddled up beside her. That he’d noticed her fatigue.
“I’ll paddle you back,” he added.
“And we let this one float away out to sea?” She shook her head. She couldn’t just abandon it.
“I’ll tie it to mine and tow it.” He reached out a hand and held her kayak steady.
She dived into the clear, warm water to try to rouse herself from her sudden funk and then swam the couple of strokes to come to the other side of his kayak. She trod water while he secured a small stretch of rope between the two. Then he reached down and pulled her up easily, his hands hauling her like she was lighter than the paddle. She melted at the sensation of flying through the air.
So like a girl Luisa, she inwardly mocked.
But the indulgence of having a big guy like him carrying her was too much. And here she’d been thinking she could help him. Instead he lifted the paddle over her.
“It’s not awkward for you to
kayak like this?” she asked guiltily.
“I don’t mind.”
She closed her eyes and leaned back against him. She didn’t think she’d felt so tired since those days at the hospital… she frowned and turned her thoughts away from that time. This was a different kind of tired. This was good and warm and she wanted to hold him the way that he was holding her—with compassion and understanding.
It was only ten minutes before he had them back at the shore-line. They pulled the kayaks up onto the beach. The staff came to help, waving them away with a smile.
And then she stood beside the big bed in his hut and looked at him, determined to take him the way she wanted to. To care. But now he wouldn’t quite meet her eye. As if he feared he’d revealed too much and didn’t want to see whether how she saw him had changed.
Of course it had. She understood him just the tiniest bit more. Still not enough.