That made sense, too. “We’ve both seen the bad that alcohol can do.” Or maybe their fathers were already bad, and the alcohol had just helped them to cope with it. Anyway, who cared? “I still throw up at the smell of whiskey.”
Hunter rolled his neck. “Miss A keeps me in the loop, and she said you’re thinking of going back to school.”
Faye lifted a shoulder. “Maybe.”
“To do what?” he asked.
She flattened her hands on her jeans. “I’m not sure yet.” Then she pointed over to a set of trees. “You should plant tulips there for next spring.” She grinned. “Though you’d have to pee on them every night to keepthe deer away.”
He chuckled. “What else?”
She straightened. “Well. What about a bench surrounded by flowers over there?” She gestured nearer the water.
He stared into the darkened night. “Why don’t you study gardening? Or landscape design?”
Heat filled her face. “I’ve been thinking about it.” How did he alwaysread her mind?
“You’d be great at it, Faye.” He rubbed his hands down his jeans and laid his head back, closing his eyes. “Ramsay pushed my buttons.”
“Figures.” She set her tennis shoes on the railing, relieving the tension in her lower back. “I gave it fifty–fifty oddsyou’d hit him.”
“Thought about it.” Crickets competed with the sound of water over rocks. “But then I figured he’d win. If I become like him, even for a second, he wins.”
God, she missed this. These quiet moments with Hunter Holt and nature around them. “He’ll never win, Hunter.”
“You still have nightmares?” he asked, his voice low in the night.
“Yes. Mainly when I get stressed.” Horrible ones, where she was a kid again, hiding from her monster of a father. She wished she could remember her mother, but she’d died young. “But not about the patient who committed suicide. I’ve handled that. It’s the ones from childhood that nevergo away. You?”
“Mine get mixed up.” He sighed, the sound heavy and a little lost. “Sometimes they’re of Ramsay when I was young, and sometimes I see the faces of people I shot through a scope. Every once in a while, it’s Mark asking why.”
“Yeah,” she whispered, her heart aching at the thought of the cute redhead who’d been a younger brother to all of them. “Miss Angelina has his flag on her fireplace mantel in a very pretty case.”
“Raider carved that case,” Hunter said. “One of his many hidden talents.”
Something was missing. Faye plucked at a string on her jeans. Hunter was saying all the right words, but a distance remained inside him—between the two of them, but definitely inside him. Was he still angry? It felt like it. “How often do you have the nightmares?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Who cares?”
She did. Always had, and always would. He wasn’t the only one who’d given his heart away and never gotten it back. That left them exactly nowhere, especially if he still wasn’t dealing with everything. “Hunter—”
“I’m not yours to worry aboutanymore, Faye.”
The words cut hard and fast. Ah. This was why they’d broken up. Or at least it was one of the reasons. He’d had five years, but apparently it wasn’t long enough. “You’ll always be mine,” she surprised herself by saying. “You, Raider, and me. We’ll always have each other.” Even if they couldn’t be together, they were family. Whether he liked it or not.
His feet dropped to the wooden planks. “On that note, I’m gonna—” He stiffened and turned toward the path through the forest. Then, smooth and silent, he stood. “Go inside, Faye. Now.” He drew a gun from the back ofhis waistband.
A gun? While just sitting on the porch? “What’s happening?” she whispered, jumping to her feet. The wooden chair rocked back and forth fromher suddenness.
He angled his body to the edge of the porch, his gun pointed down, the sinewed muscle of his forearms tensed.
She moved behind him, looking into the darkness. Nothing seemed out of place.
He lifted his head. “Two men. Coming this way.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I told you to go inside. Do it and turn off all the lights. Now.”
She backed away toward the sliding glass door.
“Hunter? Don’t shoot me, brother,” Raider called from the darkness.
