Page 110 of Bloom

Suddenly, the tightness in my chest has nothing to do with panic or a lack of oxygen. Shame lowers my gaze to the ground, the full weight of lying like an asshole sucker-punching me in the gut.

“How long have you been carrying this around?”

Hunter smiles, soft and sweet andshy. “How long we been hikin’ together?”

As I gaze up at him with freaking hearts surely dancing in my eyes, I don’t tell him that I haven’t had an asthma attack in years—that I likely never will again since I had the kind you grow out of.

I do, however, use the stopper to place three drops on my tongue anyway. And when he tucks the bottle away before taking my hand again, I hold onto it extra tight.

Even as exhaustion scratches at the corners of my mind, I can’t stop thinking about my dad.

I should’ve been smarter earlier. I shouldn’t have frozen up. I shouldn’t have reacted like that, all suspicious like I had something to hide; I shouldn’t have reacted at all. Who cares if some random bartender knows my dad? I sure shouldn’t. I shouldn’t be regretting not asking Caleb if he’d seen him lately, if he knows if he’s okay, if he knows anything about the state of a man who doesn’t deserve my concern.

I shouldn’t feel like a bad daughter. I shouldn’t feel like the worst person in the world for fleeing one absent parent when I already lost the other. I shouldn’t feel the need to lie lest the man with a thigh tucked beneath my head remembers how utterly unwanted the girl whose hair he’s threading his fingers through is. How much baggage I come with. How the weight of that baggage has pinned me in place my entire life—how it probably always will.

When I hear, “I could stay here forever,” it doesn’t comfort me. I open my eyes and the sight of the sun setting and casting the lake in warm light doesn’t either, not like it usually would. Because I’m spiraling. I’m thinking about how Huntercouldstay here forever. Not that he will. And how timely is it, how freaking perfect, that as I’m lamenting being stuck here, he reminds me that he isn’t.

Shifting to stare up at him, it’s a relief to find him not staring back. He’s barely taken his eyes off me all afternoon, either convinced I’m prone to an asthmatic fit at any moment or well aware that I lied earlier. Whichever one it is has him watching my every move; even when we jumped in the lake to cool—and clean—off, I could feel the burn of his gaze the whole time, concerned and unrelenting. Like a silent plea to talk to him that I pretended not to understand.

I wonder if I’m what he’s thinking about hard enough for those little creases beside his eyes to form. I don’t get the chance to ask. A holler of our names—my full freaking name makes me wince—draws our attention to the familiar group tiredly trodding our way.

Hunter groans, and I pinch his thigh in gentle reprimand as I sit up, calling out a greeting. Although, when Caleb holds up a bottle I recognize all too well, I stifle a groan myself. “We’re gonna have a drink, if you wanna join us.”

While Hunter declines as emphatically as I’ve ever seen him doing anything, I’m a little kinder as I say, “I don’t drink.”

Caleb’s brows go up, the corners of his mouth too, and I see the quip on his lips before he makes it—I shut it down before he can. “Actually, I was gonna head to bed.”

He pulls a face, but he doesn’t put up much of a fight; he was probably only offering to be polite, which is fine by me. Though, I’m not so fine with essentially trapping myself in a teeny, hot tent before the sun’s even gone down. But I certainly prefer the company; it appears Hunter did not, in fact, pack a tent of his own.

Or he did and he follows me into mine just because.

Flopping onto his back on my sleeping mat, he lets loose a loud, tired exhale and props his arms behind his head, biceps bulging. “Think you broke his heart a little, honey.”

Laughing weakly, I gather my hair to pull it up into a ponytail only to be impeded by tiny braids Hunter must’ve plaited into my hair without me noticing. I loathe to mess them up, but the thought of sleeping with my hair down in this heat makes me sweat preemptively so I gently start unweaving them, frowning when I find another obstacle. There was a rather large thighbetween me and the ground yet somehow, I managed to get grass in my—

Bringing my hand to my face, I stare at the definitely not-grass between my fingers. I stare at the horizontal man approximately one deep breath away from snoring. I touch the back of my head again, grabbing one of the thin braids to examine it, and my throat gets a little tight.

Flowers. He wove pretty wildflowers into my hair.

He really doesn't make things easy for me, does he?

Carefully picking them out, I set them aside in a neat pile, feeling so verywarmat the colorful sight. I glance at Hunter, and the warmth spreads. Makes me feel… different. Needy. Desperate for more warm and fuzzy, less cold and confused and unwanted.

When I crawl on top of him, he opens his eyes lazily. “Whatcha doin’, pretty girl?”

Tucking my hair behind my ears, I put on my metaphorical big girl pants as I peel off my literal top.

Hunter’s amused grin drops, and his gaze does too, zoning in on the swell of my breasts above the neckline of my sports bra. I feel my chest flush, feel the heat crawl up my neck, feel the tips of his fingers trace the heated skin, and before I lose my nerve, I kiss him.

He reciprocates with zero hesitation, kissing me with startling ferocity, letting loose a noise that sounds awfully relieved—the kind you make when you finally do something you’ve been waiting to do all day.

It floods me with the exact warmth I’ve been yearning for, eddies my mind of everything and anything that doesn’t involve the man beneath me, makes me kiss him even harder. He mouths a curse as he grips my hips tightly, making them roll, drawing a ragged noise out of us both.

With a strained groan, Hunter pulls back, hand on my heaving chest pushing to put some distance between us. “Don’t think I can be quiet.”

Right. Because there’s people nearby. People who might hear us. Who might hear him because he can’t keep quiet.

Because ofme.

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