I stare at him.
Blink.
Blink again.
My heart splinters in my chest. I’m almost sure I can hear it. Can he? Can the horses? Is the whole fucking world privy to the state of my fucking life? To the abuse I suffered? To the way I almost lost my fuckinglifetrying to get away from Damien?
“What do you mean you had to review the case?” He opens his mouth to speak, but I barrel on, not letting him. “You work on afarm. You shovel shit. You feed animals. In what fucking world are you ‘reviewing a case’?”
Hunter’s jaw tightens, his hands flexing at his sides, but he doesn’t say anything.
“Answer me!” I practically demand. “How does a shit-shoveling, horse-riding country boyget their hands on confidential case files?”
I’m losing it. I know I am, but I can’t stop it.
“I didn’t always work here,” Hunter says slowly. Carefully. Like he’s trying not to scare me. “Not until after my dad died.” His throat bobs heavily with a swallow, his eyes anywhere but on me. “Before that, I was a deputy at the sheriff’s office.”
My world tilts on its axis, all the things I thought I knew and understood about Hunter burning away before my very eyes. “What?” The word barely makes it past my throat.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, like that somehow makes this better. Like it somehow fixes anything.
“You’re sorry? You…” My voice cracks, and tears well up in my eyes. “You knew? You saw it? Those photos of me? You saw them?”
He nods. Short and concise.
The nod hurts. I don’t even know why, not in any real way. But it feels like a gunshot detonating between us, splintering me with shrapnel.
“You saw those photos… You—you saw me… likethat.”
To his credit, he doesn’t deny it. “Yes.”
My chest caves in. “The whole time? When you met me, when I got here, you already knew about me? You knew why I was coming to visit Luca?”
He nods again.
“I—” I lean over, bracing my hands on my knees as my breath punches from my lungs. “I kissed you. I slept in your bed. I told you things about myself. About Damien. About my depression. And you…” I choke on my next inhale, my throat closing up. “You knew,” I gasp. “The whole time.”
“Yes,” he whispers.
I force myself to stand. “I don’t understand.”
And I don’t. None of this makes sense to me. Not a single bit of it. My eyes are burning, and Hunter is blurry.
“I told you things,” I repeat. “I trusted you. And you—”
His bottom lip quivers, and that hurts too. Everything about this fucking hurts. “I’m sorry, Theo. I wanted to give you the chance to tell me on your own.”
I laugh. It’s broken and loud and all wrong. Nothing like the carefree laughs that spilled from me as I rode Molls. “But youalready knew. You already knew the most awful, worst thing I’ve ever lived through! You fuckingknew, and youliedto me.”
He shakes his head. “I didn’t lie to you, Theo. I just wanted you to have the space to tell me on your own.”
“That’s worse. You see how that’s worse? I trusted you. You made me trust you. I don’t fuckingtrustpeople. It’s a fuckingtrauma response. You know, from when my fucking husband tried to murder me in cold fucking blood.”
My voice breaks, rage and humiliation fighting for control of me. I can’t even tell which one hurts more.
“You let me trust you. Was it fun? Was it fun for you to get little pieces of me? Was it fun watching me feelsafewhile you knew the whole time? Did you have a good time making me feel normal for five goddamn minutes before everything came crashing down around me?”
His jaw drops open, his eyes flashing with hurt. “Of course not,” he whispers, his voice raw. “Do you really think that?”
