Page 95 of Something Like Sunflowers

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Chapter 36

Hunter

You know what’s funny?” Devyn asks as we walk side by side to the stables. I tell myself it’s to tend to the horses before bed and not because we have some serious shit to get through that doesn’t concern either of those kids in there.

Somehow, Devyn’s beauty only enhances when she’s mad, but I won’t tell her that. If I did, it would only distract me from what we need to talk about, because when her eyes go dark green like they are now, I willingly lose myself in them every damn time.

“What’s funny?” I follow her gaze to the stars, and we both smile when one shoots across the sky. “You have to make a wish before you answer that.”

“I wish we could go back in time,” she whispers, then laughs, letting her head hang low. Our eyes meet, and I want to tell her I want that, too.

But it would be a lie.

“Dev, I’m gonna tell you a lot of things tonight. And you might not like me afterward, so before we get into that, let me just say that I’m gonna be very honest with you. No more lies.”

She nods, watching me while I tug at my beard. God, why is this so hard? Fuckin’ vulnerability and shit. I fuckin’ hate it, but this has to happen, or…I can feel it in my gut.

She’ll run for good this time.

“I don’t wish we could go back. Not the way you do. And if this is going to work, you have to know that. None of this—” I wave my arms around the stables, rows and rows of horses people trust me to board. The best of the best in Pine Forest. “—the community, the scholarships, the town, Ellie…None of this would be here if I hadn’t lived the alternative first.”

If you didn’t leave me.

“The alternative?” she gasps, backing away, but I take her hand, holding on and praying to God she never makes me let go.

“When we lost her—” I pause, the words pricking my tongue like pins. “When you left, my heart shattered. But you have to understand, Dev. You were alive. And that’s all that mattered. If I could have gone back to that day and picked myself over our baby, if I could be the one trapped beneath the wreckage, I would have. And I let myself drown in that knowledge. What you don’t know is that…for the time you were gone, you were better off without me.”

Devyn lifts her chin, but she’s not shutting me out. She’s still listening.

“That same grief is what made me worthy of you again. To be worthy of what fate had in store for me with Eleanor. So, I don’t wish it never happened. I’d do it all again if it led me here. To her. And you.”

She blinks up through soft, rolling tears, and a sad smile falls into place. It’s one that tells me she understands.

I lean in and wipe her cheeks with my thumbs like she did to mine a month ago in this very barn, when she learned about a little girl she never got to love, but was raised in her image nonetheless. I cup her face in both hands.

“The only thing I want now is a second chance with you, Dev.”

Her pink-tipped fingers, fresh from a girls’ night manicure she had with Ellie, snap the hair tie on her wrist. She brushes me off lightly and shakes her head, sagging onto the bench and running her fingers through her hair before resting them on her lap.

“You say all that, but you make it seem as though you never fell out of love with me, like we were destined all along, but here’s the thing. I came back to visit…to talk about it, several times that next year, and you looked plenty over me then when you were getting under all of Lemon’s friends. You pushed me away, just like you’re pushing me away now.”

She tugs the hair tie again, snapping it twice this time.

“It feels the same, Hunter. I’m letting you in. I’ve rearranged my whole world to be with you. I’m even learning to parent a little girl who has the same name as a child we almost shared, a level-headed, brave, and perfectly beautiful young lady you’ve spent years raising on your own, but I am just now learning to love.”

She twirls around, looking at the barn, inspecting it like she’s seeing its intricacies for the first time.

“You say you want me to be your wife, but what I need to know, Hunter, is if you want me to be her mother. Because I don’t think I can be one and not the other.”

She swallows, twirling the hair tie around her wrist, and I hate myself for making her doubt her place. For causing her this worry. She sniffles, and my heart breaks as I stare into glossy, green eyes. “You’re a package deal, isn’t that what you said?”

Fuck.

“Dev, of course I want you to be her mother. You have no idea how much I want that. From the start, I—”

“Then what’s with the secrecy? What aren’t you telling me that has you all twisted up? And what has Garrison Presley got against a nine-year-old girl that makes you think he’d use a little playground scuttle against her? It’s her custody hearing, isn’t it?”

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