I arrived at the gym and sent Hunter a text to let him know I was outside. A few minutes later he came out the front entrance. We exchanged short greetings and then I helped him into the car in silence. Once we were situated, I backed the car out and headed for home.
“Hey, thanks for taking me,” he said, once we were on our way.
I pursed my lips and nodded absently. At least he was in a better mood.
My mind wandered to the letter I’d sent Marco. Maybe I shouldn’t have been as cold. Maybe I should have pretended to forgive him, and then coaxed it out of him once I’d built up some trust. Would I have been able to do that? Maybe I could send him another one. I wished I could track whether he’d received the one I sent.
We came to a red light. Hunter looked at me curiously, his face concerned.
“Were you crying?” he asked.
My jaw clenched. “What makes you think that?”
“Your eyes are puffy.”
I glanced up at the rear view mirror. He was right. No point in lying about it now.
“Oh. Well, yeah I did cry a little bit. Just being emotional. I’m fine.”
He looked skeptical, but said nothing. We continued driving. I was glad we weren’t continuing our fight from before. At this point, I wasn’t sure I could take it.
I drifted to thinking about writing another letter to Marco. Maybe I could call the prison to see if the first one had been received. If I ever had to write another one, I was definitely paying for tracking information.
“. . . said some stuff and I got to thinking.”
Hunter was talking to me.
“Hm?” I asked, trying to pay attention.
“I said, Clint and I got to talking.”
“Oh, what did you talk about?”
My voice felt distant, even to myself. I did my best to push Marco from my mind and focus on Hunter. Why was I trying to put my emotional stability in the hands of a murderer? What good could possibly come from that?
On the other hand, I clearly couldn’t move on without some sort of closure. I had to find out why Marco did it so that things would start making sense again. Would I ever find out or was I going to be trapped by this forever?
“. . . really care about you. I don’t want to look back on my life wishing I had treated you differently.”
Hunter was staring at me. He shook his head in frustration and let out a heavy sigh. “Lorrie, are you even listening? I’m trying to apologize here.”
I rubbed my eyes. “Sorry, yes. I’m listening. Thank you for apologizing. I care about you too.”
He frowned. “What’s going on with you? Why were you crying?”
We were already half-way home and I barely remembered leaving the parking lot. My mind felt like it was trapped inside a cloud. I needed to snap out of it, fast.
“It’s nothing, Hunter. I’m sorry.”
No matter how it happened, I had to get this obsession with Marco’s motive for killing my mom out of my mind. It was popping up more and more and it had to stop if I was going to be able to give my relationship with Hunter the attention it needed.
“Why do you feel like you can’t tell me?”
Hunter was worried about me, but I didn’t want to talk about it. I doubted that talking about Marco would help get him out of my mind, but it would definitely give Hunter something more to worry about.
“I told you it’s nothing.”
He shook his head. “Lorrie, look, I fucking hate being in this chair and I know it’s hard on you too. I’m just trying to take it one day at a time. Sometimes I’m gonna fuck things up, but can you be patient with me? I promise you, I’m gonna work my ass off to get outta this chair as soon as I can.”
Hunter looked at me, his gray eyes focused and intense.
“It’s okay, it isn’t your fault.”
“Like hell it isn’t. I’m sorry I was being a dick earlier.”
“No really, I just . . . nevermind. Let’s talk about it later.”
He studied me suspiciously for a moment, but he didn’t say anything. When he realized that I had nothing else to add he sighed heavily and turned away to look out the window.
Somehow, I’d managed to make things worse. Hunter was doing everything he could to make this work while I kept messing things up. I scrambled for some way to save it, but everything I thought of sounded dumb. I had nothing.
I bit my lip and glanced over at him before returning my eyes to the road. Even though we were sitting only inches from each other, it felt like we couldn’t be further apart.
Chapter Twenty-five
ANSWERS
It was awkward between me and Hunter for the next few days. Every night, I’d have nightmares, and every day I would walk around in a fog. Aunt Caroline and Uncle Stewart seemed to notice the shift in our moods but gave us our space. I felt trapped in my own head. Even when I tried to focus on helping Hunter, my mind continued to drift back to thinking about Marco and my letter. I was thinking about asking my therapist for an emergency appointment.