He brought me in closer. “Shit. I’m sorry, Lorrie. I shoulda been there for you when that happened.”

I shook my head, pulled away, and took a deep breath. “It’s okay, you had a pretty good reason to be missing. I should have called you when I got the letter rather than a few days later.”

His face slowly hardened. “What kinda sick bastard is this guy, anyway? Why did he send you the letter? How did he send it?”

“I don’t know how it got through, but the letter just asked for me to write him back. He even had the nerve to ask for forgiveness and tell me he loved me.”

“Did you write him back?”

“No. I just went kind of numb after I got that letter. The whole thing’s a blur.”

I considered whether to talk to him about my therapist’s suggestion to write him back, but I hadn’t even decided myself.

“And that’s when you had your exams and stuff, right?”

I nodded.

He hugged me again. “I’m so sorry Lorrie. I shoulda been there for you. I coulda helped you.”

“It’s okay. We both could have done things differently. I should’ve reached out for help sooner.”

Hunter frowned and then took my free hand in his. “Lorrie, you’re never gonna have to reach very far because I’m gonna be right there by your side. If I have to save you from a freezing lake, I’ll jump in. If I have to follow you to the ends of the earth, I’ll find a way. If I have to crawl on the ground to be by your side, I’ll crawl to you until I’m next to you. There’s nothing that will stop me from being there for you, Lorrie. Not my MS, not anything.”

The intensity with which he held my hand and said the words he said startled me. When I looked up into his gray eyes I not only knew he meant it, but that I wanted him to mean it. Desperately.

“Hunter,” I whispered, tears emerging from my eyes and trailing down my face.

We stood chest to chest. He took his hand from mine and touched my face lightly, wiping away my tears. His touch set my body aflame. My breaths shortened as I froze in my place.

His hand came under my chin and tipped my head up toward his. He touched his lips to mine, tentatively at first then firmly, his warm mouth sealing against my lips with a desire so strong it made me tremble. I hugged my arms tighter around him, pressing my body against his as our tongues played softly.

It was over before I was ready. One of my hands went from his back up to grip his short hair. I tried to pull him back down toward me, but he resisted.

“Lorrie,” he moaned. “You said we can’t go too fast.”

My eyebrows shot up and my eyes opened wide. “You don’t want to kiss me?”

“Of course I want to kiss you, I just don’t want to mess things up between us again.”

Part of me wondered if he had a point, but when I looked into his eyes I realized this was just where I wanted to be. I loved kissing him, and there was nothing wrong with it. If Hunter hadn’t come all this way to find me, I’d probably still be totally lost right now.

“Hun, I really appreciate you listening to what I said yesterday. But I don’t think it’s going to hurt if you kiss me again, okay?”

He paused a second, then his hands flew down to my butt and he hoisted me up quickly, his mouth crashing against mine. I gasped and then smiled against his lips, kissing him back. This was more like we were. This was okay.

This time I was the one to break off the kiss, though I was still smiling. “Worried?”

He made a show of considering my question. “Not really.”

He started leaning back in for another kiss.

“Lorrie?” my aunt called.

It sounded like she was downstairs. I tapped Hunter’s shoulders and he put me down hurriedly. We both straightened our clothes and I flattened out the pictures still in my hand as best I could.

She appeared in the doorway a few seconds later. “Oh, there you are Hunter. Are you two alright?”

“I was just showing Hunter some pictures of my dad,” I said quickly.

Her lips made a thin line and she nodded. “Okay. Well, don’t stay too long.”

“We were just coming up,” Hunter said. “Plenty of work to do today.”

Aunt Caroline smiled and then turned to go back upstairs without a word. Hunter gave my shoulder a quick squeeze and we made eye contact. His look was apologetic. I shrugged and nodded my understanding as he walked around the boxes in the room and out the door.

When I was alone again, I looked down at the picture in my hand, the feeling of Hunter’s lips still fresh on my own. My dad was gone, but that didn’t mean I had to forget him.

I decided to continue flipping through the pictures of him in my room. Stack in hand, I left the storage area and followed Hunter and my aunt upstairs.

Chapter Seven

MOVING ON

When I came upstairs I found Aunt Caroline at the kitchen table writing out a list of groceries she had to get for the week. Judging by the noise, Hunter was already back at work in the dining room.

She looked up from her list as I came into the room. “So did you find some pictures of your father?”

I stood for a moment and processed her question before flipping to the first picture I found of my dad and handing it to her.

She took it hesitantly, looked at it, and put her hand to her mouth. “Oh my goodness, his hair! Bill had such beautiful hair when he was young.”

I didn’t know what to do, so I did nothing. How long had those pictures been down there?

“That is such a nice picture. What are you going to do with it?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I just wanted to bring it to my room for now, I guess.”

She tore her eyes away from the photo in her hand. “Okay. What are your plans for the day?”

“For now I was just going to keep flipping through these in my room. It would be nice to have some pictures of him upstairs. Maybe I could go get some frames later at Target or something.”

She winced, but quickly got her expression back to neutral and handed me the picture. I took it from her and went up to my room, thinking about her reaction to my idea of getting some pictures of my dad in the house.

Once I was in my room, I plopped onto my bed, lay on my back on top of the off-white comforter, and began sifting through the pictures.

They didn’t seem to be in any chronological order. I was in many of them, but there were also several with my dad’s cousins and other people I only remember seeing a handful of times at family reunions. All in all, I’d grabbed about twenty pictures.

The picture that stuck out to me was toward the very back. It was a shot of my mom and dad on a tropical beach. They both looked like they might still be in college. The picture had definitely been taken before I was born.

Seeing the way my parents were lovingly embraced made me think of my relationship with Hunter. Kissing him again had been a high and I definitely felt lucky that he had come after me. There was no doubt in my mind we needed each other.

Still, there was a lot for us to overcome. For one, I was worried that this felt too much like a honeymoon period between us and too little like reality. I had no idea what was going on in my life. I couldn’t stay at my aunt and uncle’s house forever.

Then there was Hunter. Anytime I thought about his future, it was hard not to jump to his MS. No matter how brave he was about it, it was still scary. I had almost no idea what it even was. All I knew was that it had something to do with his nerves or his brain and that it was bad and incurable. Even beyond his disease, I wasn’t sure he had any more idea what he was doing with his life than I did.