Before You

Chapter Thirteen.

Hunter and I spent hours down by the pond.

We stretched out on the rocks at the water's edge, soaking in the sun and talking about everything under the sun. Hunter quizzed me on my favorite sports teams, giving me a hard time about most of my choices, then on what I was like as a kid. It was a strange question to begin with, but I had to admit it felt good, laying there like that, to think back to being small when all I wanted to do was pretend to be a mermaid all summer in my family's pool or play with my dolls.

He laughed when I told him what a goody two-shoes I had been growing up. I'd never done drugs, never smoked, never drank until after I'd moved out after high school, never snuck out or lied. I had been a practical angel child.

"We couldn't be more different in that respect." He chuckled, picking apart a leaf he was holding in his calloused hands. "I was a screw up."

"That's not a nice way to put it." I sighed, rolling onto my side to look over at him instead of the little fluffs of white clouds overhead.

His eyes seemed far away. "There is no nice way to put it." He told me. "I really was awful. I got kicked out of two schools before I was sixteen, I got picked up by the cops with cigarettes and a mini bottle of tequila when I was seventeen, broke my wrist in a fight in school. Literally, if there was a bad thing to do, I did it. I was a mess."

"My parents would have killed me." I shook my head.

He only scoffed at the idea. "Not mine." He wiped the left over leaf crumbles from his palms onto the rocks. "They'd just sweep it under the rug or pay whoever they needed to in order to make any record of it disappear. If I hadn't gotten into football, I would probably be in jail right now."

"So sports saved your life?" I smirked and then shrieked when he swatted his hand into the chilly water and splashed it towards me.

"Don't laugh," he told me even though he was laughing too. "it's totally true. My coach showed up at my house my junior year and gave me the whole speech about how if I'm unhappy with my life, then I need to man up and change it. I started taking practice seriously, and before long I had all the colleges calling my house at all hours begging me to come play for them. I had to straighten up my behavior though if I wanted to have a chance at actually going to play at any of them."

"You ever wish you would have done that instead?" I asked. "Football instead of military?"

He shrugged quickly. "Nah, I don't really think about it." He explained. "No point really when it wouldn't have worked out anyway. I just had to get out of here and the only way to do that, at least at the time, was to sign my life away. I was an angry, pissed off kid. The Army worked wonders on me."

I nodded. "I'd say so." I agreed. "You don't seem anything like the person you describe."

"I'm glad you don't think so, but you might find that the people who know me best wouldn't agree with you."

"Like who? Your parents?"

I hadn't meant to bring up a sore subject again, but I could tell by the look in Hunter's eyes as he gazed out over the water to the waterfall that thinking of them caused him pain. "Yeah, I guess."

"I'm sorry." I told him.

His brows knitted together as he turned back to me. "For what?" He laughed, the smile not reaching his troubled eyes.

"For bringing them up again. I can tell you don't like to talk about it." I dipped my eyes, a little embarrassed.

"It isn't you," He muttered. "I'm the one who keeps thinking of them for some reason. I swear I go months without them crossing my mind but for some reason..."