What You Don't Know (Sequel to "Secret Love")(Hunter Hayes/James Marsden)

Tears

After the guys went back to the recording booth, Ned helped Bethany hail and climb into a taxi so she could head back to her old home. It took about twenty minutes to get there in the rush hour traffic, but she was soon there, struggling to get out of the backseat and climb the stairs into the apartment complex. She greeted the man at the front desk warmly, but did not stop to say more than a cursory hello. She was utterly spent from the emotions of the day; she could not imagine having to explain her long absence yet again.

She pushed all of her feelings of remorse and nostalgia into a box in her heart before she unlocked the front door to her old home. She saw her bags had been placed just inside the door, and that there was a stack of unassembled boxes on the kitchen table along with a couple rolls of packing tape. No doubt Hunter had left them there, and she got straight to work.

It was difficult for her to pack; the labor was both intensified and curbed by the heavy cast on her leg. She gobbled up the pain medicine she had been given, but was then overtaken by fatigue, which further lagged the process. Yet she soldiered on, packing box after box with her belongings, and managing to stack them together by the front door with her bags.

She left her books on the shelf to pack last, knowing it was likely to be the heaviest box. It took her a few hours to finish everything else, but then she moved on to the books with a sigh of longing. She missed her books while she had been gone, but then, she had practically been living out one of her murder mystery novels.

Bethany had exactly 76 books, 29 were hardbacks and all the rest were paperbacks. She placed the hardbacks in first, counting them as she went to keep her mind off the melancholy that was pressing on her tear ducts. Then came the paperbacks, and she counted them as well. There was one missing, however, and she scanned the room to see if she could spot it somewhere else, perhaps in the reading nook Hunter never went near.

It was not in the nook, but she saw it on the nightstand beside what used to be her side of the bed. It was laying face down, one corner resting on the base of the lamp and the corner adjacent hanging off the edge on the crowded stand. She dragged her leg, still sitting, over to the stand to grab the book, and sucked in a breath when she saw what it was.

So many months ago, she had read of the troubles of Jesse Malcolm and Jared McClendon and pondered whether or not to trust Hunter, the most important person in her life, with her darkest secret. The tears were not to be stopped now; they rained down her face as she thought of all she had done in New York, all she had lost in Nashville, and all she still faced in her recreated life.

She had let Trenton into her life again, in a way that she may never recover from, and Hunter was surely lost to her forever. She had alienated herself from her best friends in the world. Now she faced the uncertainty of the future: possibly years of physical therapy that might not ever be enough to heal her leg, going to work every day with a man she still loved, and learning to deal with her self-loathing over her relationship with Trenton McDermott.

She threw the book into the box and packed it clumsily, her tears falling to speckle the cardboard. She was too exhausted to move, jet lag, her medication, and the emotional stress of the day accumulating to drag her into the depths of sleep right there on the floor.

'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'

Hunter arrived home late that night. Actually, he had been finished in the recording studio since midnight, but had done something he would normally never do in order to avoid going home: he had gone to a bar. It had been very awkward, actually, having to ask the driver where he could find a bar with good music, then walking in and sitting down and not knowing what to order. There had not been a menu, and most of the other men there were drinking what appeared to Hunter as water. Finally he just asked the bartender for a recommendation and ended up downing five fingers of bourbon. It had not tasted as bad as he had thought, but he was definitely a little tipsy by 3 AM, when he finally decided to leave.

He stumbled over one of Bethany's bags when he entered the apartment, and whispered "shh" to no one in particular. He walked over to the refrigerator out of habit, and stood next to it like he would any other day. Generally he would drop off his guitar here, but he had left it at the studio today since he would not be needing it until tomorrow morning. He laughed at himself before heading to the bedroom to lay down.

His hope had been to avoid seeing Bethany again; he had given her a good ten hours to pack her things before he came home. Honestly, he thought his mind was playing tricks on him when he got to the bedroom and saw her laying out on the floor next to a box labeled "Books". What would she be doing on his floor?

So badly, he wanted to wrap her in his arms and pretend like she had never left, and in his semi-drunken state, he could see no reason why not to do so. He took a place next to her on the floor, ran one hand through her hair like he used to, and sighed with longing. The hand moved to snake his arm around her waist and pull her into him, and as he closed his eyes he moved his mouth closer to her ear to whisper into it.

"I wish I could tell you everything will be all right, Beth," he breathed. "I wish there was some way to turn back time so we could be together like we used to be."

A lump was forming in his throat, and his words came out strangled by alcohol and despair.

"Is there a way? If you were awake, would you try to fix this?" He leaned his head against hers and clambered for breath. "I'm so scared, Beth. I'm scared you love him, and not me. I'm scared I'll never be able to trust you again, that I'll never be able to touch you without thinking of you and him together.

"I want to believe we can move past this, I do, but..."

He trailed off for a moment, and his tears abated. He hugged her closer for a moment and kissed her shoulder, one more heavy breath falling from his chest as he drew closer to sleep.

"I just don't know."

So, this is actually the end of the book, guys! I'm so glad you stuck around for the whole thing!! I was pretty happy with how this story turned out; what about you guys? Did you like it? 

I'm thinking that I'll probably write a third one, just to tie up the loose ends and maybe add in even more drama for Hunter and Bethany? What do you guys think? Yes/no? 

Though, the next one would be a lot more fanfiction-ey than this one, more like "Secret Love" was. This one is actually something I wrote to be a legitimate manuscript that I hope to actually publish and distribute, once I edit out all of the fanfiction aspects and make it into a singular book, instead of a sequel. Which will be a major project, but at least I've finally finished it, right?

Anyway, I really really appreciate all the love you guys have bestowed on this book and "Secret Love"! You guys are amazing!!

God Bless and Happy Reading!