Page 99 of Hunter or Hunted

Bakers needed more than a sink and hearth.

The living room, though, had a complete brick fireplace. Since it was on the other side of the wet room, there was plenty of space to combine it. Boxes and old furniture—some of which could see a second life—took up most of the room, which was the size of my cabin. We could easily knock down a couple walls and give the place an open concept.

I hated the modern trend of gutting historic homes, but a home this historic could only become livable with drastic structural changes.

Sebastian showed me the upstairs next. Rather than a dark hallway filled with doors, the railed landing overlooked the stairwell and foyer below. On one side of the house, a big bay window provided a perfect view of the front yard, and a French door opened to a rickety balcony on the back. He said it wasn’t stable enough to walk on, but from that spot, the backyard framed by trees seemed to stretch on forever.

That was the only glimpse I got of the barn that’d become our “second location.” It was the only glimpse I wanted.

I wanted to kill Evan because the world would be a better place once he was gone. Not because I actually wanted to kill him.

I wanted one less woman to suffer.

That was all.

If I could trust the justice system to make sure Evan wouldn’t do it again, I’d smack the dust off my hands and call it a day. But that wasn’t the world we lived in. So I would do what those in power refused to.

Right now, I didn’t want to think about what I intended to use it for. I wanted to think about wallpapers and paint colors and floor plans.

Upstairs, the floor plan would stay the same. There were four bedrooms. The primary suite comfortably housed a king-size bed, a few dressers, and a decent closet. Attached to it was a small bathroom. It’d need more work than the bedroom, mostly because the sinking floor confirmed that water damage we’d suspected.

One bedroom, roughly the size of mine in the cabin, stood independently. The other two connected via a Jack and Jill bathroom.

As soon as I stepped into the one closest to the primary suite, I could see a cradle and a changing table. Never mind the barely hanging-on chandelier or the broken floorboards that let in light from the dining room below. With the tall oak blowing in the breeze out the window and the cozy built-in wardrobe in the corner, it was all I could see. A sweet little nursery, decorated with farm animals, or storybook characters, or dragons and faeries.

Maybe I was the one getting ahead of myself.

Or maybe Rhiannon would call that growth.

My past considered, maybe I should have feared the implication of all this. A year ago, I thought I’d never marry again. I’d told myself that it was an arbitrary ritual I never would’ve agreed to had my prefrontal cortex fully developed beforehand.

Now?

Now I still stood by that sentiment. Marrying my ex-husband, committing to spend the rest of my days with him, was an arbitrary ritual I never would’ve agreed to had my prefrontal cortex fully developed beforehand.

But Sebastian was not Troy.

Troy never smiled so big when we talked about our future. He never offered to knock down a wall to build me a bigger kitchen. He never saw a hole in the wall and debated whether we were better off ripping it down to the studs or just patching it.

He’d punched through them, and I’d gone to the hardware store, bought the supplies, and cleaned up his mess.

Sebastian and I were standing in a mess neither of us had made, devising how we’d go about cleaning it up together. As a team. Partners in life, partners in crime, partners in whatever came next.

Maybe I finally had what I’d always wanted.

A partner.

32

GWEN

New Year’s Eve fell on a Sunday, leaving Monday New Year’s Day. Maple & Thyme didn’t open until Tuesday, so my day had stayed open.

Simone didn’t have any appointments until Tuesday either, so I woke her up that morning with breakfast in bed. She managed to smile her thanks and put on a good show for Junie, but it was only that. A show.

After we ate, we met Rhiannon in town and filled her in on the night prior. Irate, she called her lawyers. They agreed filing an Order of Protection made sense. Since the magistrates were still closed for the holiday, Simone would need to go to the city for that tomorrow.

It would only last twenty days though. Then there would be a formal hearing where a judge would decide whether it would stay in permanent effect.