“Yeah, Dad. I know,” I tell him.
“Then don’t be an ass,” he says, thumping his hand against my back. “Go get Olive and let’s get back to the house before we miss lunch, too.”
Dad and Olive head up the stairs, leaving me to Ellie for just one more minute.
I dig my toe into the dirt, staring straight into the center of the etched heart on the tree. “Ell, is it true you want me to be happy?”
Now’s the time when the wind is supposed to blow or the sun is supposed to break through the branches and hit me in the face—any type of sign that she can hear me. But that never happens.
And I think it’s because her heart is still holding her soul captive somewhere in someone else’s body.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I follow behindDad’s car on the way back to the house. Breakfast was not supposed to be an all day event, but clearly when my family sees an opportunity to watch some entertainment, they make themselves comfortable and grab their bucket of popcorn.
As I walk back inside, I’m quick to notice the house has been straightened up, cleaned as if breakfast never happened. Charlotte and Lana are gone, Alexa is nowhere in sight and AJ is sitting at the cleared dining room table with his hands folded tightly together.
I want to punch him square in the jaw. And I might if he doesn’t have a really great explanation.
“I’m sorry,” he begins again.
“Dude, I don’t give a shit if you’re sorry. How about you tell me what the hell you were thinking.”
He looks up at me, and I see grief coating the glassy look in his eyes. “It’s not what you think.”
“Then what is it? If you think I’m going to sit here and ask you a dozen more times, you’re wrong. I’ll leave again. I’ll cut you out of my life so fucking fast...and I won’t hesitate.”
“Jesus,” he says, likely stunned by my non-Hunter-like response. Continuing with what better be a fucking good explanation, he says, “A year ago, right before Alexa and I got hitched, I was having second thoughts.” He leans back in his chair and folds his arms behind his head. “We all know she’s a pain in the ass and I wasn’t sure if I could really spend the rest of my life with her.”
“So you cheated on her?” I ask, trying my hardest to sound unfazed.
“Let me finish,” he snaps back. “Look, not that I’m going to place any blame on you or anything, but sometimes I need a friend or a brother to talk to and let’s be real, you haven’t been much of either to me in the past few years—understandably so, but still.”
I suppose I deserve that. It’s the truth, but nevertheless I say, “Do not blame your cheating scandal on me. You are a grown man, AJ, and you need to act like one. You can’t blame anyone for the mistakes you made or make.”
A growl escapes his throat before continuing, “I’m not blaming anything on you. I’m telling you I was going through a hard time.” He shifts around in his seat again, this time bringing his elbows to the table. “I needed someone to talk to, so I created an account on ‘theLword.com’.” He places his hands up, I’ll assume to stop me from saying what I want to say. “I know I shouldn’t have been on that site looking for someone to talk to.” That is not how I figured he met her. What the hell? “Anyway, something weird happened with my account and it got hacked or something, I’m not sure—I’m not real good with computers, you know that. So I had to contact whoever was in charge of the site so I could try to figure out how to fix the problem. Emails were being sent out to my email list and Alexa was one of the recipients. It was a huge fucking mess.”
“And that’s when it all happened,” I chime in. “Charlotte contacted you and you found your person to talk to.” My cheeks are burning—all of my skin actually feels like it’s on fire. I’ve needed someone to talk to for years, but I haven’t turned to a goddamn dating site, and I certainly wouldn’t do that if I were engaged to be married. But that’s AJ—he doesn’t think things through.
“Well, kind of. We just got to talking while she was going through my page, trying to debug whatever happened. She was going through her divorce and needed someone to talk to, too. Honestly, we only met up a few times because I realized I did want to be with Alexa and we cut off all communication since Charlotte didn’t want to be the reason I broke off my engagement.” I can tell he’s giving me the truth, but I can’t tell if he’s leaving shit out.
“Did you fuck her, or not?”
“Hunter,” Mom shrieks from the kitchen. “Don’t use that language while your daughter is in the house.” I’m not sure why I would have thought Mom wouldn’t be listening in on this whole thing. She is probably standing around the corner with that big bowl of popcorn.
“Did you?” I repeat.
“No,” he grunts. “We kissed and maybe a little more, but we didn’t sleep together.” The ‘a little more’ fires me up a bit but I tell myself it could be worse. I tell myself that this happened before I knew Charlotte even existed. What I’m pissed about is that both AJandCharlotte failed to mention any of this before now. What are the odds? I go five years without a female romantic interest in my life, and when I finally find someone whose company I actually enjoy, it turns out that AJ already had his way with her.
“You never came clean to Alexa?” I ask.
“She knew I kissed someone. She knew her name was Charlotte. I think she took a lucky guess when I said, ‘That’s a big win right there. Trust me.’ I should have left off the ‘Trust me’.”
“You should have never kissed another woman, and ‘more’, in the first place,” I mock him. Then it occurs to me, “Wait a minute, that Olsans’ hardwood job wasn’t a coincidence, was it? How stupid are you? You were trying to hide this shit from Alexa and then took on a job with Charlotte’s parents?”
“Dude, you’ve told me we’re not in a position to turn down work with the way the economy is, so I didn’t.”Jesus.I drop down into the seat across from AJ, resting my elbows on the table the same way he is. I lower my forehead down against my closed fists and release every bit of air from my lungs. “I am sorry,” AJ says. “You know I’d never do that with a girl you were involved with, but you didn’t even know her then.”
“I know,” I say. The words come out muffled against my fist, but he heard me. The sigh of relief he lets out tells me so.
