“Put him on the phone you stupid f**king whore!"

“Thank you for calling,” I said sweetly. “Goodbye.”

I held the phone away from my face but I could still hear Ada yelling profanities at me over it. Then I hung up.

Chapter Twelve

TALK

I looked at my phone and contemplated what to do next, putting Ada out of my mind. I had to focus Hunter right now. My face felt hot. Why wouldn’t he take this test? How could he hide it from me? If Ada hadn’t called, I would have never known about it. It was hard to believe. After we’d had that heart to heart, and he’d told me he wouldn’t hide anything like that from me again, here we were. Again. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got.

I shook my head and walked back into the living room, feeling Hunter’s gaze on me as I came in and sat on the couch. He searched my face, but I did my best to wipe any expression away, burying my frustration.

“Did you guys finish the apple slices?” I asked.

I was looking at Hunter, but it was Billy who answered. “There’s still a couple left,” he said. Peanut butter clung to the edges of his mouth. “Do you want some?”

I shook my head in answer as my aunt came into the room. “How are my boys doing?” she asked.

“Good,” they answered, nearly in unison.

“Billy, come here and let me wipe your mouth.”

“Mommm,” he cried. But he stomped over obediently.

I looked at Hunter and felt a jolt as we locked eyes, then looked away quickly. Even though I wanted to yell my voice hoarse at him, I knew it wasn’t the right thing to do.

Why had Hunter not taken the test? Was it because he was so concerned about my well-being that he couldn’t stay in Studsen? No, that didn’t seem right. After the first night he came here, he had plenty of time. Even with him working on the dining room for Aunt Caroline, he would have had time to slip out to go to a clinic in Indiana if he had wanted to.

No, it had to be something else. I sat on the couch, my emotions in turmoil as I tried to figure it out.

It was only when I thought back to the night he let me help him with his treatment shot that I realized what it was. My heart clutched in pain at the realization.

He must be scared.

It was hard for me to imagine how scary it was to deal with something like MS, but I knew it must’ve been terrifying. I knew that sometimes things were so hard to deal with you didn’t deal with them well.

Avoiding the test was not the right thing to do, but I knew what it felt like to be so paralyzed that you couldn’t even think straight. I also knew that Ada’s approach of yelling at him would never work. The fact Hunter wouldn’t respond to Ada’s messages was evidence of that.

I took a deep breath and chanced a look at him again. His head turned simultaneously, and his raised eyebrows showed he was concerned by the conversation I’d just had.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” I asked him. The boys—Joel from his position on the floor and Billy still being attended to by his mother—snapped their heads over toward me with enthusiastic looks.

“Yeah, let’s go for a walk!” Joel cried.

I grimaced and looked at my aunt, who had already seemed to catch my drift. “We can go for a walk later,” she said. “Let’s go and clean our rooms first.”

Their faces fell. “But Mom! We just cleaned them!”

“Then we can tidy up. Come on, let’s go and leave Hunter and Lorrie alone.”

They left, the boys grumbling the whole way up the stairs. When the living room was empty, I asked again. “So, do you want to go for a walk?”

Still looking at me carefully, he shrugged and grabbed his black hoodie from the floor. “Sure.”

I stood up and went to the closet to get my coat. He followed close behind. We said nothing else before walking out the front door. My stomach quivered nervously as I contemplated the conversation we were about to have.

I broke the silence once we were outside. “Want to go out back to the spot we talked last time?”

“Talk?” Hunter asked, his jaw tense. “I thought we were just walking?”

I cringed. “We can do both.”

He looked down at the ground and said nothing. My chest tight, I led the way nervously around the house and toward the path through the woods.

After a moment of walking on the woodchip covered path, I couldn’t take it anymore. I pressed my lips together and tried to steady myself, then said the words I’d been rehearsing in my head.

“Hunter, I really care about you, and I appreciate how you’ve been working on building a healthy relationship together with me. It means a lot.”

He thrust his hands into his the pockets of his hoodie and waited a beat to make sure I was finished. “I really care about you too,” he said.

He kicked the wet ground and sent a stone skidding along the dirt. “Who called?”

I took one more deep, anxious breath. “Ada.”

His eyes opened wide and his mouth opened then shut quickly. It was hard to tell if he was mad, shocked, or both. “Why does she have your number?”

I said nothing, but my vision blurred with unexpected tears. Not wanting him to see them, I turned my face away.

“And what the f**k is she doing trying to mess with us? What did she say, anyway? Was she a bitch?”

After wiping my eyes, I steadied myself and looked at him, my heart in my throat. “Hunter, you know what she said.”

“She’s always been jealous, ever since she and I broke up.”

“Why did you skip out on the test?” I asked. My hands were shaking.

He stopped walking. His eyes moved furtively back and forth like a caged animal as he looked at me nervously. Finally, he seemed ready to snap. He turned and whipped his leg viciously to kick a tree along the side of the forest path with his boot. Then he wound up and punched the tree’s trunk, sending a large chunk of bark flying.

“FUCK!” he growled, the sound coming from the back of his throat.

His outburst wasn’t loud, but it carried the intensity of a gunshot. Tears flooded my eyes and adrenaline surged through my veins. I backed away. “Hunter stop,” I choked out. “You’re scaring me.”

He turned to me, fists in a ball with his right hand bleeding. His eyes looked out of focus for a moment, then his expression melted and his shoulders slumped, defeated. “I’m sorry,” he said, breathing hard. “You know you don’t have to be scared of me. I’d never hurt you.”

He took a step toward me, then seemed to think better of it and stayed put, his eyes on the ground. We stood in the path, still fifty yards from where I had intended to have this conversation. Some robins sang and filled the painful silence. My heart pounded in my ears as I waited for his answer.

When he looked at me, I thought his eyes might be glistening, but I wasn’t sure. “If someone could tell you the exact day you were gonna to die, would you want to know?”

Shards of pain splintered in my chest.

“I mean from natural causes,” he added. “Like, if they could tell you when your body is gonna just stop working. Would you rather know, or find out when it happens?”

My breath caught in my throat as I thought about “natural causes.” My stomach felt like a rock.