Page 97 of Bargain with the Bachelor
His voice was ragged, like an aluminum road sign peppered with buckshot. The tormented sound of it made me want to climb through the phone connection to get to him.
“I thought when I went away to school, I’d left him and all his issues behind,” he said. “Other than paying his bills and occasionally dropping in to make sure he was eating, Jack and I basically have had nothing to do with Dad for years. But that night… I realized we can’t leave it all behind. It’s part of us. He’sinus both. Our father is a drunk and a convict. Hehurtsomeone in that accident. We took care of the family, but the thing is, they can’t keep Dad locked up forever. He’ll get out, and he’ll do it again. It haunts me. Jack’s doing all right. But he’s different from me. He always was better at handling the whole thing. He’s not as…needyas I am.”
“Hunter, you arenotneedy,” I argued. “You’re the most accomplished, self-starting, capable man I’ve ever met in my life.”
“You don’t know me.”
“Idoknow you. And your father getting into a DUI accident has nothing to do with you.”
“It wasn’t just the accident,” he said quietly. “It was what he said to me at the jail after Jack and I refused to bail him out.”
My heart sank, imagining what kind of toxins the angry alcoholic might have spewed at his son as they stood there in the middle of the night separated by iron bars.
“He said…”
Hunter’s voice failed, and I almost said something, but then he spoke again. His tone was flat now, devoid of any emotion.
“He called me a needy little parasite, a tapeworm, a bedbug. Said I always had been that way, that when my mom was weak from cancer, I was always hanging around, wanting her attention, asking her to read me a story, color with me, to look at something I’d made… to give me whatIneeded. He said I exhausted her when she should have been saving her energy to fight the disease.”
My breath caught at the mean-spirited lies, and an unpleasant chill trailed down my spine.
It sounded to me like Hunter had been a normal child, terrified to see his mother growing frailer by the day and slipping away from him, devastated to lose her love in his young life.
Of coursehe’d needed her—he’d been an eight-year-old boy. Children were supposed to need their parents—not be vilified for it.
His father, in his own grief over his wife’s death, had lashed out at his heartbroken child. I’d never heard of a worse parent.
“Hunter, that was a horrible thing for him to say, and it’s not true. Do you hear me? It’s not. Your mom would havewantedto spend time with you and Jack when she knew she was running short on it. That’s how mothers are. It’s how mine was. And I see it with Cinda—nothing is more important to her than AJ. I’m sure your mother felt the same. And you can’tkillsomeone by needing them. Cancer killed your mother. Not you. Not your love.”
“You weren’t there,” he said in that dead-sounding voice. “And you shouldn’t be in my life now. I’ve loved you as long as I can remember, and I always will… but I won’t do the same thing to you. Anyway, I didn’t mean to dump all over you. I just wanted you to understand. It’s not that I wanted to keep things from you. I just… I was ashamed. I didn’t want you to know what I’m really like. I wanted you to love me. I wanted to be with you. But now I see it’s impossible.”
The pace of his words increased, coming out rapid-fire.
“Anyway, I’m glad you’re doing well there—I really am. Good luck with the trust fund thing. I hope that works out too. Okay well, I have to get off the phone. Take care.”
And the line went dead.
I sat in place, phone in hand, for a long time as I grappled with shock and empathy and heartbreak. No productivity awards would be won at work today for sure.
Hunter had finally given me what I’d wanted. He’d opened up and showed me his truth, his badly damaged heart, his real self.
And I was stricken—by the bare-bones vulnerability—by the utterwrongnessof the beliefs he held.
I was also stricken by a new realization about myself.
Though I hadn’t been utilizing my degree and hadn’t had a real “career” back in Rhode Island, I’d beenhappierthere as a picture-taking waitress than I was here in New York as an associate curator with an office and a secretary.
I loved my hometown—and especially the people in it. I missed it—and them—to a painful degree, and that wasn’t something that was going to get better with time.
Yes, I’d created a new life here, but it wasn’t anything that couldn’t be undone. There had been a great deal of competition for this job. If I left it, the museum director could likely fill the opening within days.
My co-workers and neighbors here were nice, but I wasn’t an important part of their lives.
For me, New York City was just a place. Eastport Bay… washome.
My heart began to flutter with anticipation as my mind continued down this new path I’d inadvertently turned onto.
I could call the Art Guild and see if they’d found someone for the director position yet. Maybe Bonnie’s sister Rachel and all the guys wouldn’t mind me rooming in at the Billionaire Bachelor House again.
