While the water continued to run, I helped Hunter stand and undress and swallowed my cry of anguish at all the cuts and bruises marring her beautiful body. None of them looked too serious, but it still made my heart hurt.
“Hunter…I…I’m so sorry.” My vision blurred suddenly, and I blinked furiously to clear it. “I never meant for anything of this to happen.”
“I know that, Coby. No one asks to be kidnapped. It’s not your fault. I’m just sorry I couldn’t find you sooner.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I pleaded. “Please don’t be sorry.”
“All right,” she said, sounding more like herself. “Let’s agree that neither of us should be sorry. We both know who’s to blame anyway.” It was silent for a few moments, and then she inhaled and finally asked the question plaguing her. “Did he hurt you?”
“No,” I answered quickly. “Not once.” But that was a lie. Because he hurt me when he let me go. I obviously couldn’t tell Hunter, so I changed the subject. “Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up. No offense, bestie, but your armpits smell like chopped onions. My eyes keep watering. I thought a bitch was just happy to see you, but now I know what it really is.”
“Girl, fuck you,” Hunter retorted with a smile and a laugh.
I helped her into the tub, then grabbed a fresh sponge from under the cabinet and returned to Hunter’s side. The bubbles covered most of her body from the shoulders down, but I’ve seen Hunter naked a thousand times. She wasn’t shy about her body. Content to just be together again, we didn’t speak for several minutes as she allowed me to bathe her. The bathroom was silent except for the trickling of the water and our neighbors arguing on the other side of the wall.
“He said you were here. I thought it was a trap,” Hunter whispered, sounding exhausted again as she rested her cheek on the lip of the tub. “But I had to come. I had to be sure.”
I frowned in confusion as I took my time scrubbing the dirt from her inner thigh beneath the water. “Who said I was here?”
Hunter’s eyes found mine briefly before she looked away and then closed them with a sigh. “Ocean.”
Exhaling past my longing and guilt, I once again avoided the subject of him and became hyper-focused on my task: taking care of Hunter.
Nothing I did could undo the last five and a half weeks for her, but I could try.
A couple of hours later, Hunter and I were huddled together on my bed watching TV and eating pizza—vegan for me, carnivore for her—like nothing had ever happened. We were both wearing robes after bathing. Hunter’s hair was still damp from mywashing it. She now wore two long braids with her hair parted down the middle.
“Are you ever going to tell me what happened to you?” Hunter asked out of the blue with her gaze still on the TV. “What did Ocean want with you?”
Knowing that I couldn’t avoid it any longer, “He wanted me to marry him.”
“What?” Her eyes flared wide with shock, and then she not-so-subtly looked down at my hand. Her relief was palpable at the sight of my empty ring finger. My guilt quadrupled.
“He asked me…and I said yes.” Hunter flinched and then recoiled once my confession sank in. Her beautiful mouth opened and closed several times, and then her breathing deepened.
“Apparently, Roshaun stole a lot of money from Ocean, and he had no way to repay him except for… me.”
“What does that mean?”
I sighed. “Ocean has to marry so that he can take his father’s place in the Fola.”
“Okaaaay,” Hunter said slowly. “But what does that have to do with you?”
“Ocean needed a wife, and I needed to keep my brother alive, so I…I said yes,” I confessed.
Hunter pinched her nose, and the move weirdly reminded me of Ocean whenever he got frustrated. I never realized before how alike they were. “So wait, he asked you to marry him or told you that you had to?”
I thought about it for a moment before I shrugged. “Both.”
After hearing that, Hunter had finally reached her tipping point and exploded. “Coby Perry, have you lost your mind?” she shouted.
“I had to say yes, Hunter! He was going to kill Roshaun!”
“So? Coby, I know you love your brother, but I told you he was a snake. He damn sure isn’t worth you sacrificing yourself to the mafia!”
“That’s not for you to decide, Hunter. He’s my brother.”
“Yeah, well, he doesn’t fucking act like it.”
