And no matter how much I told myself to slow down, to keep things simple, that spark she lit in me said otherwise.
Chapter Seventeen
Camille
The bench creaked beneath us, the sound sharp in the hush of night, almost startling. The air was thick with the scent of cut grass, spring pressing close. Dampness clung to my skin, and the constant hum of crickets filled the quiet. A rhythm that had become the soundtrack of these secret nights.
Things were good between us, better than I’d let myself imagine they could be, but I still wasn’t ready for Hunter to meet the kids. Not yet.
So, he’d slip over after they were asleep. Sometimes we talked for hours. Other times, we didn’t talk much at all. Just sat there, side by side on the porch, the soft glow of the porch light catching in the dust floating between us.
Tonight, we sat on the bench he’d brought over a couple of weeks ago, a thoughtful replacement for the old folding lawn chairs we used to perch on. The bench wasn’t just a seat; it was a quiet gesture, something that told me he planned to be around to use it.
I curled my legs beneath me, a blanket draped around my shoulders, while Hunter leaned back, one arm stretched across the back of the bench like he’d always belonged there. His knee bounced before he caught himself and smiled sheepishly.
“You ever think about how much of us comes from back then?” I asked suddenly, not even sure why the words slipped out. Maybe it was the hour. Maybe it was the way the night felt softer with him in it.
He tilted his head. “Back when?”
“Childhood.” I traced the rim of my mug, avoiding his gaze. “Who we are. What we carry.”
He didn’t answer right away. His jaw flexed, eyes narrowing just slightly in thought. So I went first.
“My parents divorced when I was four,” I said. “It was just me, my mom, and my brother after that. She… she did her best, you know? Worked two jobs, stretched every dollar, kept a roof over our heads. But I watched her go through men who didn’t deserve her. I saw her get her heart broken more than once.”
Hunter’s eyes stayed on me. He had a way of listening that made you feel both exposed and safe at once.
“I admired her, though,” I continued. “Her resilience. The way she kept going, even when life kept knocking her down. She made survival look effortless, but I think… that’s what did it. That’s why I grew up believing that needing someone was dangerous. Because she always had to pick up the pieces alone.”
I swallowed hard, staring into the dark yard. “And my dad…” The words caught for a second. Thinking about my dad always hit me in a special spot in my chest. “I remember being seven, standing at the window watching him pack his car to move across the country. He waved like it was no big deal. His visits after that were… fine. Fun, even. But they were quick, and didn’t come often.”
Hunter’s gaze softened, but he didn’t interrupt.
“He was in the Navy. So was my mom,” I said quietly. “But where my mom was all emotion and softness, he was the opposite. They didn’t really teach us how to handle things well when they got hard. Just how to get through.”
Hunter leaned forward, forearms braced on his knees. “Yeah,” he said, voice low. “I get that.”
When he looked up, his expression had shifted, like a door he didn’t open often had unlocked.
“My parents split when I was nine,” he said. “My dad was a Marine right out of high school. Hard as hell. Emotions weren’t really a thing for him either. If something hurt, you walked it off. Simple as that.” He rubbed his thumb against his palm, the motion small, almost unconscious. “Mom was strong in her own way. She had to be. Dad was gone a lot, so she held it all together. But it meant nobody talked about how they felt.”
His voice roughened, quieter now. “Truth is, I don’t remember much from my childhood.”
My heart squeezed. “Yeah, sometimes the brain forgets the things that are too heavy to deal with.”
He gave a half-smile, more a twitch than a grin. “Guess I boxed it up like I was taught to do. Lock it down. Keep moving.”
The silence that followed wasn’t awkward, just heavy with shared understanding. The kind that only comes from two people who’ve both learned to live inside their armor.
“Tell me more?” I asked softly, falling into my old habit of asking questions.
He hesitated, then looked down at his hands. “By the time I was a teenager, I was a mess. We moved a lot, never long enough to feel rooted anywhere. I acted out: picked fights, raced cars I had no business driving. My mom tried to rein me in, but I wasn’t exactly easy to parent. I didn’t know who I was, so I chased anything that made me feel something. I was pretty reckless.”
I didn’t say anything, didn’t fill the space with reassurance. I just listened.
“Eventually, I moved in with my dad, hoping it’d straighten me out. It didn’t,” he said with a wry laugh. “By eighteen, I was either going to end up in a ditch or a cell. Joining the Marines felt like my last chance to get it together.”
He told me about the drill sergeant who’d barked until his voice was gone, the way the structure and discipline had both saved him and hardened him. “You don’t process things there. You push through. You get strong. You survive.” He looked at me then, his eyes steady in the dim porch light. “Guess I’m still trying to unlearn that.”
