Page 74 of Bloom

I turn to Hunter to ask him about it, but something else quickly steals my attention.

It’s not the brown paper bag with Bishop’s logo stamped on the side that accosts me so aggressively, nor the plastic to-go cup of what I immediately recognize as their signature spicy lemonade.

No, it’s the bundle of flowers in every shade of orange that renders me speechless.

I don’t dare look at Hunter. I don’t want him to see the wetness in my eyes. I don’t want to assume they’re for me—I don’t want him to assume I’m assuming they’re for me. But as I look closer, there’s no mistaking the single word on the note attached to the bouquet by the same peach ribbon tying the stems together.

The letters of my name in the same swooping letters scrawled on the Post-It.

“I’m sorry.” The apology is whisper-quiet, staggeringly sincere. “I’m so sorry, Caroline. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.”

Fingers twisting around the hem of my t-shirt, I nervously tug on the material. “Why did you?”

If I didn’t know any better, I would swear the twitch of Hunter’s fingers was a little nervous too. “I was pissed. I took it out on you.”

“That’s not fair.”

“I know.” Propped against the counter beside the bouquet, the perfect,beautifulbouquet, Hunter stoops until his earnest eyes find my wide ones. “I’m sorry. Those girls…” Full lips thin out, that bearded jaw ticking. “Didn’t like how they were talkin’ to you. Didn’t like how you were just takin’ it. Makes me a fuckin’ hypocrite, I know, but I snapped. Got frustrated. I tried to come back and apologize, but your dad said—”

That has me snapping upright. “You spoke to my dad?”

“He said you didn’t live there anymore.” The words are careful. So careful. “Seemed mad.”

My eyes screw shut.

“It was your dad,” Hunter says. Not asking. Sounding eerily calm. “Last night, and the night you left the ranch.”

The shake of my head is instinctive, but it comes a second too late, after a moment too long of frozen hesitation, and Hunter sees right through it.

“Okay.”

I open my eyes to watch that broad chest rise and fall slowly.

“Okay, honey.”

I brace, but I’m not sure what for. The anger so clearly simmering to boil over, maybe. For him to storm away like he did last night, for me to expend energy I don’t have begging him to come back inside.

I’m so sick of doing that.Begging. Screaming for someone to listen to me only to be ignored time and time again. Not having any control over my freaking life. I’m so tired of feeling so damn powerless.

When Hunter moves towards the front door, I block his path. “Hunter, nothing happened.”

He brushes past me easily, my frame no match for freaking Goliath. “I think you’re lying.”

“I think it’s none of your business.”

A veritable growl escapes the man as he grasps the doorknob. “Like fuck it isn’t.”

“If you go to my house, I’ll never speak to you again.”

That makes Hunter pause. Slowly, he turns around, face set in tentative disbelief.

I swallow. “You could buy me a whole field of flowers and I wouldn’t forgive you.”

A frustrated noise rattles his chest. “Caroline,” he… begs. Yeah. Hebegs. Like asking him to do nothing is killing him.

Even though my spine feels like jelly, I stand firm. “I mean it.”

Another growling grumble leaves him. He faces the door again, and I almost think my gamble didn’t pay off, that I overestimated how much he actually likes me, that I gave too much weight to my presence in his life.

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