Read Blindsight: Part Two for Free Online Page A

He was stroking my back, then wiggled himself beneath my soft blanket and we were skin to skin, his hot body like a furnace lighting my own.  
    “Things have been so wrong with Brant for a while now, I just never could have imagined…” I trailed off, finding myself at a loss for words. My mind hadn’t fully formed an opinion yet. All I knew was that I was down in Belize with a man who was in essence on the hunt for my husband. It made my stomach hurt.  
    “It’s easy to ignore the signs when you love something.” He lulled me with his soothing, rich voice.  
    I snuggled closer and let my mind wander more. “We met in college. It was quick; we dated for only a year before he convinced me to go to the courthouse with him.” I shuddered thinking I would soon be headed to the very same courthouse to file divorce papers. “It was picture-perfect at first. But then he quit school and took the job at InteliCorp.” My gaze found Hunter's as he watched with rapt attention. “The job, the parties, the cars, the things. So many things. Brant’s always loved things…” I trailed off and picked at the soft edges of the cotton. “I think he thought all the things would keep me happy while he was gone for weeks on end.”
    “Why did you stay so long then? If he wasn’t treating you right?” Hunter asked.  
    I sighed then, my shoulders tensing as my mind flew back to thoughts of our wedding day, before our marriage had fallen. “It’s a terrible reason, I can’t even tell you how long the story is.” I huffed and leaned up to grab my champagne again.  
    “I’ve got all night.” His grin quirked before he lifted the bottle from its chilled bucket and poured the pale liquid in my glass.  
    A wry smile tilted my lips. “You sure you know what you’re in for?”
    “I know exactly what I’m in for.” His grin stopped my heart for one long pause. “I told you, I want to know all the things the paperwork can’t tell me.” He traced a thumb and finger through a strand of my hair that had blown across my face.  
    I leaned further back in the chair and settled into the story I’d never told anyone. Not because it was so heinous, but because it was the shattered pieces of my heart laid bare.  
    “Sometimes I think I married him to get out,” I finally stated, the sentence running on repeat in my mind as shame choked my airways. “Growing up with my mom is difficult to explain to anyone who hasn't lived it. She was abusive in all the non-physical ways.” I thought of his scars then, hidden beneath the tattoos that hinted at a very physical past he never shared. I hoped someday he'd tell me more. “She worked two jobs,” I continued, “and relied on the church to put clothes on my back because she was too drunk to notice I'd grown out of last year's. Brant sent her money all the time after we were together—five hundred here, a few thousand there. He even bought her a car, and still she would call me for more. And if I didn't want to give her more money for whatever lame excuse she had, she would say the nastiest things.” I twisted my hands in my lap, thinking of the rushing criticism she threw with a sharp-barbed tongue. I shook my head. “If she was in a bad mood, she went crazy. You couldn't even talk to her, the screaming and hysterics. It felt like I was more in control than she was a lot of days.” Hot tears spilled over and before I knew it I was sobbing and choking into Hunter’s shoulder. “Isn’t that terrible of me?” I whispered as I wiped my cheeks on the blanket. “Marrying Brant to escape home?”
    “It’s not terrible at all. And I know you -- I bet there’s more.” His warm hand cupped my jaw, the pad of his thumb working slow circles at the tense muscles of my neck. “You loved him. You love everyone you meet with something fierce and loyal; it's who you are.”
    I cried harder then, feeling the emotional burden of the love I carried, before tucking back into Hunter’s