Chapter 64 Chapter 64: Nowhere to Go
Cathy’s P.O.V
The prenup stared back at me from the coffee table like it had eyes.
I had opened it, yes. I had looked at the first page, at the neat columns of legal language and the cold formality of it all, and then something inside me had simply refused to go further. My fingers had gone cold the moment I touched it. Not the kind of cold that comes from the weather. The kind that starts somewhere in your chest and travels outward, extremely cold and missed with shock.
I leaned back against Hunter's sofa and pressed the back of my head into the cushion, staring up at the ceiling. The mug of tea sat half finished on the table. The city outside the window buzzed and glittered, completely unbothered.
My mind drifted back to earlier. To the moment before I left the house, when I had slipped back upstairs into the bedroom I used to share with Xavier. The guest room was where I slept now, but I had tiptoed into that old room like I had no right to be there anymore. Like a stranger, a thief in my own home. I had gone to my closet, reached past the folded sweaters and the shoes I never wore, and pulled the prenup from the back of my old sweater drawer where I had hidden it years ago.
I had tucked it into my bag and left the room quickly, my heart beating too fast, already half convinced that someone was watching. And then I had gotten downstairs only to find out that Xavier and Caroline had already gone to the Dalton estate. I had been sneaking around my own home, in my own marriage, like a thief stealing back something that already belonged to me. Wow, absolutely amazing!
The thought sat in my chest like a stone.
"I feel like I have nowhere to go," I said.
The words came out quieter than I expected. I hadn't meant to say them out loud, but once they were out, I couldn't pull them back. I turned my head and looked at Hunter, who was sitting across from me, watching me with that careful, unhurried attention that I had never quite gotten used to.
"What do you mean?" he asked, frowning.
"I mean exactly that." I sat up a little straighter, but the exhaustion in my body pushed back against the effort. "The life I thought was mine, the house, the name, the marriage, all the things I used to think made me someone, it all feels like a nightmare now. Every single morning I wake up and I don't know which direction to turn. I don't know what I'm fighting for anymore or even if I should be fighting at all."
Hunter was quiet. He didn't rush to fill the silence with reassurances, he just listened, and I was grateful for that.
"What about your job?" he asked after a moment. "You're a data analyst, Cathy. You're good at what you do. That's yours. Nobody gave you that."
I shook my head, but listened when he spoke.
"I know you need options right now," he continued, leaning forward slightly. "And I want to give you one. Come work at my company. I'll double your current pay. You'd be doing exactly what you're trained for and you wouldn't have to depend on Xavier for anything."
For a second, something in me lifted. Just for a second.
Then it settled back down.
"You're feeling sorry for me," I said.
"Cathy."
"No, Hunter, that's what this is." I shook my head, looking away from him toward the window. "You see someone falling apart and you want to fix it. I understand that. But I can't take a job that you're handing me out of pity. That position should go to someone who actually earns it, someone more deserving than me."
"You are deserving," he said firmly.
"You don't know that."
"I do." His voice didn't waver. "I've seen how you think. I've seen the way your mind works when you're not distracted by everything going on around you. You earned that career yourself. Xavier didn't build that for you."
I pressed my lips together. My eyes were starting to burn and I refused to cry again. I had cried enough in the past forty eight hours to last me years.
I dropped my face into my hands.
"I'm so stupid," I said, my voice muffled against my palms. The words tasted bitter. "I came here tonight and I kissed you. I took my coat off and stood there like I had everything figured out, like I was in some movie where the wronged woman gets to be bold and untouchable." A short, humorless sound escaped me. "And you had to stop me. You had to be the sensible one. I made you uncomfortable and I put you in an awful position and you’re still the one who’s picking up the pieces. I don't even know how to look at you right now."
The room was very quiet, and then I felt the sofa shift beside me. I did not look up immediately. I heard him move, felt the cushion dip, and then his hands, warm and gentle, wrapped around both of mine and slowly pulled them away from my face.
I had no choice but to look at him then.
He was close. Close enough that I could see the steadiness in his eyes, the kind that didn't come from indifference but from something deliberate. He was choosing to be calm. Choosing to be here for me nonetheless.
"You didn't make me uncomfortable," he said.
"Hunter, you pushed me away."
"Because I was trying to protect you," he said. "Not because I didn't want you there." He kept his hands around mine, and I noticed that he wasn't in any hurry to let go. "You didn't do anything wrong tonight, Cathy. Nothing. You came here because you were hurt and angry and you needed somewhere safe. That's not stupidity. That's survival."
I stared at him. He took a slow breath and looked down at our joined hands for a moment before he looked back up at me.
"There's something I should have said a long time ago," he said. "Maybe I was waiting for the right moment. Maybe I convinced myself there wasn't one." He paused. "From the moment I first saw you, I fell head over heels in love with you."
The words landed somewhere very deep and very quiet. For a moment, I was literally speechless, I felt like I'm in another world entirely. I didn't move. I wasn't sure I was even breathing properly.
"I'm not saying this to take advantage of tonight," he continued. "I'm not saying it because you kissed me or because you're vulnerable right now. I'm saying it because you're sitting here calling yourself stupid and worthless and I can't sit across from you and let you believe that. Not when the truth is the complete opposite."
My throat had tightened somewhere in the middle of his words and it hadn't loosened since.
"You've been in love with me…" I repeated slowly, like the words needed time to find their shape.
"Since the second I laid eyes on you," he said. No hesitation.
I looked at him for a long time. At the honesty on his face, the kind that had nowhere to hide. At his hands still holding mine. At the way he wasn't asking me for anything in return, wasn't leaning in, wasn't pressing. Just telling me the truth and giving me room to sit with it.
Something cracked open very quietly inside my chest. Not in a painful way. More like a window being opened in a room that had been sealed shut for far too long.
"Hunter," I said, and my voice came out smaller than I intended.
"You don't have to say anything," he told me.
I nodded once, slowly. My eyes dropped to our joined hands on the cushion between us, and something about it felt so, so right…even when it shouldn’t.