Page 73 of Hunter

“Want to know the truth?” she asks, turning around in my arms. Her eyes are black in the darkness, but I lock my gaze onto their onyx shininess.

“Absolutely.”

“It wasn’t an all-at-once decision. It happened in stages. At first, I agreed to do the race because my cousin asked me to. So, originally, I thought I’d come up for three weeks, film the race, and go home.”

“What changed?”

“McKenna,” she answers honestly. “Most summers, I work for a summer school or for the summer camp at the private school where I work from September to May. But Ken told me all about seasonal employment up here, and how much money I could make. A lot more than I ever made teaching summer school.” She pauses. “Not to mention, being heredoes meanI’m spending time with family. Ken’s just as much my family as my parents orabuelos. We miss each other like cousins or sisters;it’s good to catch up face-to-face every few months, you know? Besides, summers are typically quieter for my family in Seattle—people travel, visiting in-laws out of town or going back to Mexico for a few weeks at a time. We have a big Memorial Day BBQ and an even bigger one over Labor Day weekend, but the rest of the summer is pretty low-key as far as my family goes. And you know how I teach English at the community center? That’s only from September to May, so I wasn’t letting anyone down there, either. Staying here for a few extra weeks to make bank and spend some time with McKenna wasn’t beyond my comfort level. It felt organic on a few different levels.”

Everything she says makes sense, but my heart longs for her reasons to include more than just her closeness to McKenna and desire to make money.Where do I fall into this equation?I wonder. Before I can ask, she speaks again:

“So, at first, it was my cousin, and then it was Ken and the job she found me.” She reaches up to cup my cheek. “But then…it was you.”

I am hit with the full force of her words and their meaning: that this woman who doesn’t do long-distance, who loves her home and her family beyond measure, abandoned both to spend her summer with me.

My heart skips, fluttering wildly in my chest as it catches up with itself on a double beat.

One for you. One for me.

“Bella.” I sigh, leaning into her touch, and she presses her lips gently to mine.

“I didn’t expect for us to get together again. I definitely didn’t expect to fall so hard for you this time,” she confesses.

“What happens now?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says, her voice uncertain and a little sad. “I really don’t.”

“I don’t either.”

“I can barely breathe when I think about leaving you—”

“You don’t have to!”

“—but when I think about abandoning my parents? That feels like dying, too.” She whimpers softly. “I’m an only child, Hunter. I’m all they have. To be honest, I don’t think I could live with the guilt of leaving them to move up here. It would eat away at me. I think, eventually, it would end us.”

“So the only option is for me to move—”

She reaches up and covers my mouth with her fingers to silence me.

“No!” she whispers passionately, her eyes severe. She holds her breath for a second before her thoughts come out in a tumble: “You loveyourfamily, too. You lost your mother. You helped raise your brothers and sisters. You’re the oldest grandchild. The oldest son. The older brother. The oldest uncle. In so many ways, you’re the anchor of this family, Hunter. I can’t be the reason you leave. I can’t.”

I’m surprised when my eyes burn like soap has somehow seeped into the corners. I close them tightly against unexpected, unwanted, unmanly tears.

She’s right, of course. Iamall of those things. But I am something else, too.

“But I’m also the man who loves Isabella Gonzalez,” I tell her, pressing my forehead against hers in the darkness. “And I’m not sure any of those things matter if I have to live the rest of my life without her.”

Her chest heaves against mine as a sob escapes her lips, a puff of breath warm against my own. She’s crying. We’ve made each other cry.

“It sh-shouldn’t be this hard,” she whimpers.

“Says who?” I ask, gathering her sweet body closer to mine, and blinking the tears away. “Isn’t anything good worth fighting for?”

She takes a deep breath, but it’s a little jagged. “I…I guess.”

“So, let’s fight,” I tell her.

“How?”

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