“You have an awful lot of nothing there. You must have at least ten canvases.”
She bent over with her hand over the first canvas, and then stood upright quickly as if she’d just gotten caught opening a Christmas present before midnight. She turned to Hunter.
“May I?”
He shrugged. “You’re already there. Why not?”
“Where did you get these?” she asked, looking at each painted canvas with interest before moving on to the next one.
“I painted them.”
“You…you did? When did you start painting?” She stared at the painting with appreciation. Then looked at the next canvas.
“Sometime after rehab. We were encouraged to do something to keep ourselves busy during downtime. I couldn’t be around rodeo anymore. Still had a lot of pain. So I worked out as best I could and I painted. Some of the early stuff was pretty dark.”
“I can imagine. I suppose that is to be expected.”
He shrugged. “I was desperate to get clean. If they had told me to knit or make a bowl out of clay, I would have. I would have taken up belly dancing if I had to. That’s how desperate I was to stay clean.” He chuckled with no humor. “The stupidest thing I ever did was think I could control my addiction. I don’t know how it got out of control. I’m just sorry you were caught up in it.”
“You hid it well. But I suspected. I…saw you.”
Panic flashed across his face. “What do you mean you saw me?”
“I saw you using once. That’s how I knew.”
He rolled his eyes. “I always knew you knew. That’s why you wouldn’t even see me before you left. You wouldn’t take my calls. I was the reason you left. I’m sorry.”
She placed her hand on his upper arm.
“I’ve been there. Not with drugs, but in other ways. You get into the cycle and it’s hard to get out. Just getting out of bed seems like a monumental achievement. And then to actually do something functional, well, that seems damned near impossible. The darkness can be so strong.”
It had been different for the two of them. She had been grieving and he had been fighting a demon that he was sure was going to kill him. They’d both been consumed.
“I wish I’d been there for you,” he said quietly. “I wanted to be there for you even though I didn’t know what was going on.”
“If only.”
She turned away and looked the paintings so she wouldn’t see the guilt on his face. He blamed himself. She blamed herself. What a way to live.
“If I hadn’t screwed up. If I hadn’t been an addict, I could’ve been a partner for you. A comfort and a father to our child.”
Shrugging, she turned to him. “Things don’t always work out the way we plan. We can’t undo what we can’t undo.”
She turned back to the pictures and sighed. There was darkness there. But she could almost tell when the light had come back to Hunter’s life. There was color and brightness.
“What are you going do with all these?”
“Nothing. They were for me.”
She swung around with her eyes wide open. “You just can’t keep them to yourself.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re good. Look at all this color. I’m surprised you don’t have any in the room. Don’t you want someone else to look at them and enjoy them?”
“Not really. It’s too personal. Just having you look at them makes me feel…naked.”
“People seeing these pictures are going to interpret them in their own way. They can’t know your story. There isn’t any reason to feel exposed.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “Is that right?”
“It’s what my therapist tells me. Dr. Matthews. She tells me a lot of things I don’t like hearing.”
“Like what?”
“Like every time I walk out the door people aren’t going to know my story. People won’t know my shame. I used to think everybody could see it. I used to feel shame.”
His expression collapsed. “You don’t anymore, do you?”
“I spent a lot of time in therapy to get to the point where I can say that things happen. Sometimes it’s no one’s fault.”
“And you believe that?”
She thought for a few seconds. “Most days. Demons are a funny thing. They creep back into your life when you least expect them.”
“Don’t I know it?”
She smiled. “I guess you do. I could be having a great day and not thinking about anything in particular. Then all I have to do is walk to the refrigerator to grab a carton of milk or take my timecard and punch in at work, you know, something random. It all comes rushing back. All the doubt. I start to believe the people are looking at me and judging me. But they’re not. They’re judging themselves and their lives. And if they’re judging me it’s because they don’t want to think about their own lives.”
He whistled. “Your therapist is worth every penny you pay her.”
She chuckled. “Trust me, I didn’t always think that way. I fought against working with her for a long time, but she stuck it out. Even when I kept moving, she insisted I continue having sessions over the phone. And I was in a better place when I was in contact.”
“I wish it hadn’t taken this long for you to make your way home.”
Her shoulders sagged and the never-ending doubt came crashing back. “To be honest, I don’t know that I would have if Caleb hadn’t found me at the casino like he did. I mean, what are the odds of that? There are so many people from Montana and the surrounding states who come into the casino. I could easily have worked on one side while he was on the other side and neither of us would have even known we were there at the same time. Have you ever been?”
“To the casino?”
She nodded.
He thought back. “A few of us went to the Red Wolf about three years ago. Yeah, I think it was about
