“Guys like Penn never do.” I move to the kitchen, motioning Hunter to follow me. I have to change the subject. I need to change the subject. Asking Hunter to have dinner with me is the step I need into a future without my past dogging my heels. “I hope you brought your appetite because I had two extra-large pizzas delivered—one supreme and the other spinach and mushroom.”
“You think I’m the spinach and mushroom type?” he asks, grabbing one of the two plates I had set out in anticipation of him coming over.
“I’m not sharing the supreme.” I bite back a grin as he opens the boxes and puts two slices of my favorite on it. “Just look at all those green peppers and olives.”
He hands the plate to me, then proceeds to pour a glass of soda for me. “Funny. Sit. I’ll serve myself.”
Taking the glass from him, I head to the living room and sit down on the sofa, waiting for him to join me before I dig in. “I’m thinking The Martian or the latest Mission: Impossible movie?”
“Latest M:I movie,” he says, his footsteps heavy against my floor. When he gets to the sofa, he toes his shoes off before sitting beside me. “Sorry, I should have taken these off at the door.”
“It’s okay.” I grab the remote to download his pick, then start eating my pizza. “This is so good. I hate that it took me so long to order from them.”
“Saylor’s recommendation?” he asks before taking a drink of his beer.
I nod. “She knows all the great places to eat.”
“I know some, too.”
“Like the taco truck.”
He nods. “Especially the taco truck.”
“Is that how you hurt your eye? Got in a fight for the last taco?”
“You got jokes, huh?” His full lips quirk, then he sets his beer down on the coffee table. On a coaster.
Don’t pay attention to that. Don’t even act like it happened.
But I can’t stop staring at his drink on the coaster. It’s so ridiculously considerate that I feel actual tears welling up in my eyes.
“Sometimes,” I admit, then redirect my attention to my meal.
“I got hurt at work because I wasn’t paying attention.”
“So a bad guy didn’t do that to you?” I ask, peering up at him.
“Wish it had been. Then I could have arrested him for assault.”
“I’m sure that would have helped your ego.”
His brows crease in obvious confusion.
“You know, like the time you hurt your knee?”
“Thanks for bringing it up,” he says wryly. “I’d like to talk to you about something that’s been on my mind.”
A sliver of unease runs through me, my formerly good mood starting to ebb away. “What’s that?”
“Us.” He tilts his head to one side for a moment. “Specifically, the night you were found.”
My mouth turns dry. The pizza on my plate is no longer appealing. “What about it?”
He picks up the hand closest to him, engulfing it with his much larger one. “I wanted you to know that you have nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“Easy for you to say,” I mumble.
“Actually, it’s not. It’s not easy at all to talk about that night, or how you looked…how I felt.” Setting his plate on the coffee table, he scoots closer to me and takes my plate away as well, then pulls me into his lap. I feel as stiff as a board at first, but Hunter doesn’t let that get in his way.
Instead, he begins to rub circles on my back, kneading out knots that have been there for years. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but I want to clear the air between us.”
“My air is just fine.”
He presses a kiss to my forehead. “I didn’t always want to be a cop.”
“What?”
“I didn’t always want to be a cop,” he repeats. “All the guys I work with, they have that in common. It’s something they’ve wanted forever, or it’s part of their family history. For me, though, cops brought nothing but trouble, or at least my dad made it seem that way.”
I lick my lips. “Why?”
“Because he was a very bad man who hated when he got caught doing very bad things.”
“Like hurting your mom?”
He nods. “Like that.”
“So why did you become a policeman?”
“Because I wanted to be the good guy for once. Growing up, I was a troublemaker. Always got into fights and cut school a lot. Held back once in elementary school and a second time in middle school because I was so far behind the other kids. It was…not easy being the stupid kid.”
Anger for the little boy he used to be replaces my embarrassment. “You were and are far from stupid. You couldn’t help what was done to you, or why you missed school.”
“I know that now.” He brings my hand to his mouth, kissing the knuckles. “Just like you couldn’t help what was done to you.”