He opened his mouth, and Autumn could almost see his lips forming no, but then he closed it again. Rubbed a hand over his face; took a deep breath.
‘I am.’
She straightened. ‘Yeah? You’re in trouble?’
His eyes shone with an emotion she couldn’t quite define. It disturbed her. She’d dated him for two years; they’d been friends for one more. She should be able to tell what he was feeling.
‘Yes.’
After a brief moment of hesitation, she laid a hand on the one he’d rested on the table. ‘What’s going on?’
He took a breath, then exhaled sharply, his gaze lowering.
‘I’m a father.’
‘What?’
‘I’m a father.’
She tilted her head, tried to process. But she couldn’t. Her headache had dulled to something bearable, but it felt as if her mind had fallen out of her ear with that head tilt.
‘I’m sorry, I thought you said—’ She moved her head again. ‘Did you say—?’
She broke off, told herself the question was ridiculous. He didn’t say he was a father. He didn’t say it twice. No. No. This was Hunter she was talking to. The man who’d gone quieter and quieter whenever she’d talked about their future together. The man who’d started pulling away from her long before they’d ended things because he’d realised he didn’t want children.
There was no way that man, this man, was a father.
She let out a small laugh. ‘You know...’ she lifted her hand, though she didn’t have any reason for doing it ‘... I thought I heard you say you’re a father. Which is ludicrous, right?’
‘It is,’ he agreed quietly.
Relief burst in her chest as if it were a diva arriving at a party.
‘Oh. Well, then, what is it? Because—’
‘But it’s true, Autumn.’
The diva was assassinated. The party turned into a funeral.
‘Huh?’ she said, inelegantly. ‘What? No. You’re not a father. You’re... You’re you.’
He inclined his head in both acknowledgement and acceptance, then folded his arms. ‘I know. I responded in the same way,’ he told her after a moment. ‘I didn’t believe it when she told me at first either.’
‘She?’ Autumn repeated through numb lips.
She tried to swallow, but the simple task seemed awfully hard. It was as if her throat had forgotten its entire purpose was to swallow. As if it, too, were stunned by what Hunter was telling her.
‘She,’ he confirmed with a tight nod. Though he had every right to be amused by the stupid question, Hunter spoke seriously. ‘A woman I met a...a year ago.’
‘A year ago.’
She was still so numb.
‘After our... After.’
The words sounded distant, as if she were listening to him through a wall or through glass or perhaps under water. She blinked, trying to figure a way out, then lifted her hand to her hair, tucking it behind her ears in case it was obscuring the sound. But when he started speaking again, it was the same.
‘I...was trying to deal with our break-up,’ he said deliberately. ‘It was hard, for both of us.’
But I didn’t sleep with anyone else.
Her mouth almost said the words. Somehow, by nothing short of a miracle, it didn’t.
‘I wasn’t dealing with it very well.’
Was she dreaming? Maybe she was having a nightmare.
‘I went to the bar close to my house.’
She brought her hand to her legs under the table. Discreetly, she pinched her thigh, hard, but Hunter kept talking. She was awake.
‘It was the night after we decided to end things. I started drinking. I didn’t stop.’ He paused. ‘It was a drunken mistake. I... I made a mistake.’
Autumn sat back, her eyes sweeping over the frame of her house. She’d rebuilt it by herself, this house. It had been stately, impressive when she’d bought the estate. It had been falling apart, too, and she’d rebuilt it. The red brick outside, the balcony above them, all of that had been her.
When she’d struggled with her life, with trying so hard for people to see her, to love her, she came out here and looked at it. At what she’d built. It never failed to make her feel proud. Steadier.
Tonight, it couldn’t anchor her.
She felt as if she were floating away. She wasn’t quite sure where to, until she saw herself as a child, following her father around the Bishop Enterprises building. The home of their family empire. She watched as the child asked questions, was answered, but curtly, as if to brush her off. Summer, Autumn’s twin sister’s questions were answered patiently, though.
Then she was at home, at the Bishop mansion, listening to her mother talk about Summer. Autumn said the right things in response to her mother’s concern. Waited patiently for her mother to ask about her. About Autumn. It never came.
Finally she saw her gangly frame at fifteen. She was standing outside her parents’ house, waiting for her date to the school dance. When he arrived, he asked her where her sister was. Looked behind her—no, through her—to check for Summer...
The hurt that had informed her every action since those days flared again now. It asked why she wasn’t enough. Why, even when she tried, people still didn’t want her.
Even Hunter didn’t want her. Of course, she’d known it when he’d agreed to break up. But they’d stayed friends. And she didn’t have to try as hard with him. She felt the most like herself when she was with him. She almost felt like...like she was enough. As if she were the first choice.
Except she wasn’t. She very clearly wasn’t.
IT WAS AS if Hunter had been given X-ray vision and could suddenly see through flesh and bone. As Autumn sat staring at him, Hunter saw her hurt, the desire she had to scream at him. He saw how badly she wanted to run. From his news, from him. He wouldn’t have blamed her.
He probably looked like a nightmare. He’d pitched up at her house at eleven at night, having got into his car almost as soon as Grace had left his place. He should have tried to get some sleep first, after he’d heard the news. He shouldn’t have arrived at Autumn’s house in a panic. But he doubted his ability to sleep. He probably wouldn’t be able to for the foreseeable future, considering what it might hold.
What it would hold, he thought, Grace’s words echoing in his ears.
He’d felt better when Autumn had opened the door, concern in her eyes. Something had clicked back in place when she’d put her arms around him. Now, that seemed like an appropriate punishment for coming to her with this.
Seeing how hurt she was, seeing her wanting to run, sent an unbearable ache through his body. Another appropriate punishment.
He’d thought he’d grown accustomed to her disappointment. Every day towards the end of their romantic relationship had been stained with its stickiness. She had never said it in so many words, but he’d sensed it. Every time he hadn’t responded to her gentle probes about their future. Or when he hadn’t added anything