Never Too Late

Guilt pinched at him and he felt like he had shoved her out onto the street. “You had to find somewhere else in a hurry because of me, right? I’m sorry about that.”

“I’m not. You were coming home and that was the important thing. Anyway, the house in Little Cottonwood Canyon was yours. Taylor and I were only staying there temporarily after her cottage burned.”

“After it was torched, you mean.”

Her mouth tightened at the reminder. “Right. I was always planning on finding somewhere else. You and Taylor deserved some time alone without me hanging around.”

“You could have stayed. There was plenty of room.”

She laughed a little. “Right. The roommate who would never leave. That’s me. Don’t worry about me, Hunter. I like my new place, even if I don’t expect to be there long. I only signed a six-month lease—I imagine when my residency is over and I start my own family-medicine practice somewhere, I’ll buy a house somewhere.”

Her words reminded him of his own aimlessness since his release. He needed to give some serious thought to what he was going to do with the rest of his life, now that it had been handed back to him. Maybe with the open road stretching out ahead of him, he might find inspiration.

“I do like my apartment,” Kate went on, “but this is the first time I’ve ever lived alone and I have to admit I’m finding it a little odd.”

“You’ve always had roommates?” There. That sounded just right. Casual and interested but not too inquisitive. They were almost having a normal conversation.

She nodded. “I’ve been a struggling med student, remember? I found it hard enough to make ends meet. Sharing the rent helped ease the financial strain a little.”

She lifted one shoulder. “Maybe by my second or third year I would have decided I’d had enough of roommates and moved out on my own but then Taylor bought her house and asked me if I wanted to share it. I couldn’t say no.”

Hunter had to admit, that decision of his sister’s to take on a roommate had come as a surprise to him. Taylor had bought her little cottage in the Avenues outright with her inheritance from their father. She certainly hadn’t needed a roommate to share expenses but she had taken one anyway for the company.

Taylor wasn’t like him in that respect, he reminded himself. He had never been much of a pack animal, but his sister loved having people around her. He knew she had been lonely those first few months after she’d bought her house and she’d been eager for Kate to move in.

Kate seemed to be waiting for him to respond, so he fished around in his mind until he found an appropriate question. “So do you miss having a roommate?”

She gazed out the windshield, at the minimal Sunday-morning traffic, then finally looked back at him. “I miss Taylor,” she admitted. “That sounds silly, I know, but she was more than just a roommate. She was my best friend. The closest thing I had to a sister.”

“You’ll still be close.”

“It’s not going to be the same. I understand that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled for her and Wyatt. They’re perfect for each other, I could see that right away.”

“Your brother is a good man.”

“I know. Wyatt is strong and smart and funny. Just the kind of man Taylor needs.”

What kind of man do you need? he almost asked but stopped himself just in time. None of his business. That kind of question would lead their fledgling conversation in a direction he absolutely didn’t want it to go.

“He makes her happy,” she said. “When it comes down to it, that’s all that matters.”

“Right,” he murmured. He had to admit, he enjoyed seeing Taylor find some happiness. She deserved it. Both she and Wyatt did.

If not for the efforts of his sister and of Wyatt McKinnon, he would still be in that prison, feeling his soul shrivel more each day. Taylor had worked tirelessly to free him. She had put her dream of becoming a doctor like Kate on hold, switching instead to law school so she could fight for his appeal. Taylor had finally enlisted the help of Wyatt, who had been writing a book about Hunter’s case.

In the process of trying to free him, she had been threatened, her house set ablaze, and finally had faced down death for his cause. He hadn’t wanted her to sacrifice her dreams for him—or, heaven forbid, her life—and Hunter knew he could never repay his sister for all that she had done.

He supposed that was another of the reasons he was driving through the sparse Sunday-morning traffic heading south on I-15. He owed Taylor and Wyatt everything for all they had risked. Maybe by turning around and helping Kate—someone both of them cared about—he could start to check off a little of that debt.

“You’re not taking I-80?” Kate asked as he passed the interchange—the Spaghetti Bowl, as the locals called it, for the various lanes twisting off in every direction like pasta in a dish.

He shook his head. “The weather report said that light snow we had last night gathered strength as it headed east and was due to hit Wyoming with a vengeance today. I figured if we head south now, down through Albuquerque and Amarillo, we’ll escape the worst of it.”

“Good thinking.”

They encountered no delays traveling south across the Salt Lake Valley and, all too soon, they reached Bluffdale where the Point of the Mountain state prison sprawled out to the west of the highway, its buildings squat and depressing.

This was the first time he’d been this way since his release, Hunter realized. Perhaps he had made a point of staying north of the area without even realizing it.

If he had come this way before, he might have been prepared for the rush of anger and hatred rising like bile in his throat.

His hands tightened on the steering wheel. Sunday mornings were relatively quiet at the prison. Many prisoners chose to sleep the day away, while others attended the various religious services offered.

Hunter had quite deliberately chosen to stay in his cell reading. By the time he’d found himself on death row, he had lost whatever faith might have lingered in his soul.

He had been less than nothing in prison. Inhuman, like a dog locked up in a cage at the pound. He had been out for six weeks and he wondered if that feeling would ever go away.

“It’s hard for you to see the prison, isn’t it?”

It seemed a sign of weakness to admit the truth. It was just a cluster of buildings, after all. A part of his life that was over forever.

He opened his mouth to deny he was at all affected by the sight but somehow the lie caught in his throat.

“I lost two and a half years of my life to that bastard Martin James. Three lives were lost while he tried to protect his web of lies and deceit. Who knows how many more he would have taken? It’s a little hard to get past that.”

Her blue eyes softened with understanding and she reached a hand across the width of the SUV and touched his arm with gentle fingers. “I’m so sorry, Hunter.”

Despite his grim thoughts, heat scorched him where she touched his arm and he was suddenly aware of a wild, terrible hunger to drown in that heat and softness, to lose some of this rage always seething just under the surface.

He jerked his arm away, just firmly enough to be obvious. “I’m sorry enough for myself. I don’t need your pity, too.”

She paled as if he had slapped her—which he guessed he had done, verbally at least—and quickly pulled her hand away.

“Right. Of course you don’t.”

He opened his mouth to apologize for his rudeness, then closed it again. Maybe it was better this way. They weren’t buddies. It was going to be tough enough for him to stay away from her on this journey without having to endure shared confidences and these casual touches that would destroy him.

He had been without any kind of physical affection since his arrest and he hungered for gentleness and softness as much as for sex.

It was a grim realization, one that certainly didn’t make their situation any easier.

She had two choices here, Kate thought as his blatant rejection burned through her like hydrochloric acid. She could let herself be hurt and pout for the rest of the day. That was the course that appealed to her most, but what would that accomplish?

Yes, her feelings had been hurt. All she had been trying to do was offer comfort and he had slapped her down like she was one of those inflatable punching bags she used to beat the heck out of when she was in foster care, angry at the world and unsure of her place in it.

But she decided not to let herself be offended. Hunter was a proud man who had seen his entire world crash down around him. He had lost friends, his job, his standing in the community.

It must have been agony for him to know the whole world believed him capable of murdering a pregnant woman and her dying mother.