Page 88 of Regret

“Where are your parents?”

She closed her eyes, trying to muster up the courage to talk about her life. To just finally let it all go. “I never knew my father. Right after my sister’s father divorced my mother, she had a brief affair with some man.”

Hunter sat up on his elbows. “Your sister?”

“Yup. My sister.” Scarlet almost choked on her words. It was the first time Scarlet had spoken about her sister to anyone. It wasn’t a topic she liked to discuss. “No one knew the name of the man my mother had been seeing back then. She never told anyone. Hence why I was given the family surname—Wolfe—and not my mother’s since she kept her married name.”

Hunter narrowed his eyes, a big frown forming on his forehead. “So where is your sister now?”

“Some place far from here.” She cleared her throat awkwardly since the words seemed to choke the air out of her. There was no way she would be able to talk about her sister. Not yet. Those wounds were far from healed, and talking about it would just aggravate them more.

“So,” Scarlet continued. “My mom died when I was twelve. A stroke at the young age of thirty-eight. Which is why my sister and I ended up living with our grandma. My sister’s dad was in the military, and he was hardly ever home.”

Hunter just nodded, and she felt him touch her hand with his, gently rubbing his thumb over her fingers. It was the softest, subtlest touch—yet it felt so strong that it somehow comforted her. Something she had never felt before.

“And the tattoo?”

“I couldn’t carry the torment and the pain inside of me any longer. I thought to wear it permanently inked on my skin would somehow lessen the burden inside me.”

“Did it work?”

“No.”

Hunter continued to stare at the ceiling. “It didn’t work for me either.”

They lay there in silence, the heavy cloud of all their pain hanging over them. Two broken people searching for their place in the world. Two broken souls that would probably never get put back together. What a pair they would make.Fucked-up, meet fucked-upper.

Unable to stand the smothering silence, Scarlet sat up on her elbows. “I suppose I don’t have to guess what theBluestands for.”

He didn’t move, or even blink. It was like he wasn’t even there anymore.

“Is that her name?”

“Was.”

Scarlet balked.

“Itwasthe name I used to call her,” he continued softly.

Holy shit.“Is she…”

“Yeah.”

Scarlet looked down at her toes sticking out from under the black sheets.

“Did you love her?”Dammit.Scarlet wanted to mentally slap herself for asking such a stupid question that had absolutely nothing to with her. “You don’t have—”

“I did. I loved her.” He finally turned to face her, his dark green eyes filled with so much emotion it almost knocked the wind right out of her. “I loved her more than anything. I would have died for her. I would have sold my soul for her. But instead, I watched them bury her.”

This time his words rocked her to her core. It felt like it shook the very foundation beneath her. The knowledge that he had loved someone else so completely, so irrevocably, was something she now wished she didn’t know. It made her chest tighten, her insides crawl, and her heart feel like it was about to stop beating at any second. There was no way she would have been able to say something to that even if she wanted to. The anger in his stone cold voice was nothing but a disguise, a concealer of the pain that he actually felt. Theregret.

Hunter let out a breath, and then got off the bed and walked to the window.

“And that tattoo on your back?” Scarlet got off the bed and walked after him.

He turned around. “What about it?”

“I saw it at the fight earlier when you took your shirt off.”

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