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him up in more emotional knots. “I
came because you have something great here, and I’m not about
to watch you throw it all away.”
    “What do you care?” Hunter
snapped, whirling to face me. His golden-brown eyes were flashing,
and his breath came hard and fast, as if he were running a race. “You betrayed me. I trusted you, I thought we were a team, I—I cared .”
    I felt as if my heart were being sawed
in half. I needed to touch him. I reached out to cup his cheek. “Oh,
Hunter—”
    But he wrenched away from me. He
whirled toward the door, blowing through it like a gust of wind as he
stormed off toward the shadows of the surrounding wood.
    “Wait!” I called
desperately after him.
    He didn’t.
    I started after him out of reflex, then
stopped and looked down at my shoes. They were sensible heels, but
only for a certain value of ‘sensible.’ They were
definitely not built for chasing through the woods after a man who
didn’t want to be followed.
    “ I cared” and the look
on his face when he said it, that shine in his eyes, had that shine
been—
    But the “why are you here”
thrown in my face like a dishrag, like concentrated disdain, as if he
were completely done with me—
    Fine. New plan. I’d give him some
space. I’d give him all the space he could fucking want, and
when he was done throwing a temper tantrum, he could come crawling
back to this cabin and me, and then maybe we could finally talk.
    Yeah, that sentence had sounded really
plausible until the last part.
    Was it time to accept that we were
never going to have those kind of open, honest conversations we’d
once had again? Failure had reared its ugly head once again, knocking
me off the warpath I’d so recently set off upon. Damn. Double
damn.
    I slunk back into the cabin in defeat,
not sure how I was going to fill the hours until our stalemate heated
up again. I paced back and forth in front of the fireplace, then
flipped briefly through an adventure novel with a man wrestling with
a snake on the front before admitting that there was no way I was
going to be able to focus on a plot. I paced over to the bedroom
door, but stopped myself before going through; no point in further
violating Hunter’s privacy.
    Instead, I stomped over to the fridge
and flung the door open, more to have something to do than because I
thought I’d left anything edible in there after this morning’s
fry-up.
    Rows and rows of unlabeled brown glass
bottles glinted back at me from the top-most shelf.
    “Choose your own adventure,”
I murmured, eyeing them.
    Well, if Hunter was going to avoid all
his responsibilities and drink himself into oblivion, why couldn’t
I?
    Okay, maybe that wasn’t the most
mature response. But I was done trying to be mature. I’d
matured myself all out, and if Hunter didn’t like me drinking
his beer, maybe he could try being the mature one for a change and
have an actual conversation with me about it.
    I grabbed a whole crate of the bottles
and hauled it outside. The sun was shining, the grass was a soft
welcoming carpet, and the air was hot and muggy and just begging me
to refresh myself with a sweet, cool draught of
whatever-the-hell-this-stuff-was.
    I kicked off my shoes in the shade of a
willow tree, popped the cap off a bottle, and took a swig. Mmm, that
was tasty. But what was it? Some kind of beer, I guessed; there was a
definite hoppy flavor to it. But a little hint of vanilla and burnt
caramel too, like a bourbon aftertaste.
    Whatever it was, it was fucking
delicious. I took another swallow, larger this time.
    After all, Hunter probably had a head
start on his day’s drinking, and I fully intended to catch up.
     
    #
     
    Everything was light and fuzzy and
floaty and perfect.
    And then Hunter came back.
    I felt the tension riding up my spine
and shoulders as I watched his tall form hesitantly separate itself
from the trees, looking left and right before his gaze settled on me
and he began to make his way over.