I let out a slow breath, rubbing the back of my neck. “Yeah. Sometimes that’s the part that stings the most.”
Her hand found mine then. They felt so small and warm in my grasp, but it was all it took for the noise in my head to quiet.
Her voice wavered. “I’m sorry…did I overstep?”
I looked up at her, the uncertainty showing in her eyes.
For a second, I didn’t trust myself to speak. I just stood there, taking her in. The quiet doubt behind her question, the way her hands trembled ever so slightly.
Then I shook my head. “No. You didn’t overstep.”
She exhaled, a small, shaky breath that hit harder than I expected.
I stared at the frame again. At the medals, the photo, the dust of years between who I’d been and who I was now. Usually, it felt like looking at someone else’s life, a different time, but now, it felt like it was mine.
“You didn’t overstep,” I said again, quieter now. “You gave me something I didn’t think I’d get back.”
Her eyes softened. She didn’t fill the silence. She just stood there, letting me find my footing.
“Thank you,” I said, and it came out rough, too small for what it meant. I shook my head, searching for words that didn’t exist. “You don’t know what that means to me, Cami. For the past year, I tried to forget that part of my life. Figured if I buried it deep enough, it couldn’t reach me. But you…” I paused, swallowing hard. “You didn’t try to fix it. You just saw it. You sawme.And you didn’t flinch.”
Her eyes glistened, and she smiled. “You deserve to be seen, Hunter.”
The air between us shifted. For a heartbeat, everything feltstill. Like the first breath after surfacing from deep water.
I stepped closer, brushing a curl from her cheek with my thumb. “You didn’t have to do this,” I murmured.
“I wanted to,” she said. “You should be proud of who you are.”
I nodded, jaw tight. “Yeah, maybe you’re right.”
She smiled again, and for a long moment, neither of us said anything. I just listened to the sounds of her apartment, all of it grounded me in a way nothing else could.
When I finally leaned in and pressed a kiss to her forehead, a thank-you I couldn’t put into words.
Her hand squeezed mine gently, and I caught myself thinking how damn lucky I was that she saw something worth saving in a man who’d spent years running from himself.
This wasn’t just a frame on a coffee table. It was proof that someone saw me, all of me, and stayed anyway.
That was the first time I didn’t feel like a soldier just trying to survive.
Chapter Forty Five
Camille
Weeks later, the way he looked at the shadow box, like it was delicate and loaded, still held a hold on me.
The way his voice cracked when he said thank you, like the words had been scraped raw from somewhere deep.
We came to a point where I thought maybe we had turned a corner. For a while, it even felt like we had. He lingered longer, opened up more, and there was an ease between us, the kind that comes after a storm when the air feels clean again, and the world softens around the edges. The kids adored him, my mom teased me about the way I smiled when his name came up, and at night, when the house went still, I let myself imagine a future that didn’t end with someone walking away.
Life was still messy, with school deadlines scattered across the kitchen table, bills tucked into the drawer I tried not to open, and Zeke’s boundless energy colliding with the twins’ daily chaos. But it all felt lighter with Hunter around.
He was simply there. Bringing takeout when I was too tired to cook, taking the kids to the park on Saturday mornings so I could finish assignments, and fixing the loose hinge on the cabinet. The girls would squeal his name whenever his truck pulled up, curls bouncing as they ran to meet him, and even my mom couldn’t help but say how natural he looked in the middle of it all, like he had always belonged there.
We fell into a rhythm I didn’t expect. Piece by piece, wall by wall, I started to believe that maybe he wasn’t going to leave, that maybe, for once, I was safe.
Some mornings, he would swing by before work, coffee in hand, with Zeke dragging him into elaborate games that involved roughhousing and at least three costume changes. The twins demanded “uppies” until he caved, curls bouncing as he lifted them high, their laughter spilling into every corner of the house.
