**10 months later**
Emma heaved the wooden crate onto to the back of her truck, blowing away a stray stand of hair that fell across her face. It was snowing lightly but she was sweating profusely from the heavy lifting. Decked in a pair of mom jeans, a light jacket and a black t-shirt, her hair was tied in a messy bun atop her head as she went about loading her truck. It was her first day with the four wheel beast, and she was still bitter at having to let her old one go. It had “apparently” become a road hazard (for real this time) but whatever – she knew she could have squeezed a couple of more months out of if Hunter had let her. But no, he’d gone on careening off on a rant. “What would I do if the brake pedal stopped working and you went spiraling off the highway? Or if the engine sparked a fuse and you shot up in flames? And those windshield wipers don’t even work, what if there’s a torrential downpour?....” it had ended in a firm “No. You’re not driving that thing anymore.”
So now, she was driving around a ’21 RAM 1500 TRX, a truck likely to survive a nuclear blast or high-speed drone strike missile. Essentially - it was highly unnecessary and showy, but Hunter had been adamant that he purchase it, as an early anniversary gift that would act as an investment into her overall wellbeing and protection. If there was somebody, out of the two of them, that was traumatized from the kidnapping last year – Emma was starting to think that it was Hunter, not her.
“That’s the last of it,” Nick brought around another wooden crate of supplies and fitted it into the back of her truck. “Don’t forget, I’ve got you closing the bar on Saturday.”
“Don’t worry, I remember!” Emma said cheerily as she secured the load in the back. “I’ll be there at eight!”
“No later!”
Giving her forehead a wipe, Emma walked around to the front of her car and hoisted herself onto the front seat. She still felt ludicrous driving this thing, given that the seat was nearly seven feet off the ground, and she felt like she could roll over everybody and everything in her wake. Regardless, she pressed the ignition and felt the engine purr into life.
She wasn’t going to lie. That part of it was sexy for sure.
Her phone rang as she drove away from Nick’s bar, and as she pressed the accept button, Hunter’s voice appeared on the loudspeaker.
“How far are you?” His voice was gruff. Irritated. She could hear the thirty screaming children behind him.
She had to stifle a laugh. “Relax, I just picked up the juice crates from Nicks. I’ll be there in less than ten minutes.”
“Hurry.”
“You’re a big boy – you can handle it.”
“No.” Hunter let out a deep, exasperated sigh. “No, I can’t. I think they’re forming a mutiny against me. Molly has them organizing. They’re collecting snowballs, and are developing weapons. I need an escape.”
Emma rolled her eyes, “Hunter. It’s a kid’s afterschool camp. Just distract them with shiny lights.”
“Just get over here.” The phone-call ended with a click, and Emma rolled her eyes. He was such a drama queen.
Unfortunately for Hunter, Emma had one small detour to make before she went back to the afterhours day-camp she was leading for the first graders in Harbordale. After months on the road, with a four-month stint in Vancouver, where Emma had taken a certification in early-beginners art, they had returned where they had started – a small coastline town that had unsuspectingly stole her heart.
Their little road trip had started innocuously. Hunter had applied for an indeterminate leave of absence that had been promptly granted, and the two had packed up his car to drive down through Canadian eastern shoreline to Toronto. They reached the city a few weeks in, and Emma had met up with Sarah – who was unsurprised to see Hunter had accompanied her. In fact, she was unsurprised about anything that had happened at all. After Emma had explained the entire ordeal of what had happened after she left, Sarah had only laughed. “I could’ve called it.” Was all that she had remarked.
Emma spent the next few days reconnecting with friends and introducing Hunter (who stood out like a sore thumb amongst her lean, lanky city friends), and then, unwittingly, realized she didn’t want to stay longer.
So after a night of lazing around in bed and musing, Hunter abruptly said. “So why don’t we keep driving?”
And so they had. Overnight, they packed up their bags and without saying goodbye to her friends (as that never got easier), headed out west. For the first time in her life, she allowed herself to live in the moment and only think about today. About where she was in the present, where they were going to eat in the next few hours, and what they would do to each other’s bodies when night came. They spent days driving through the green luscious hills of Ontario, stopping at provincial parks to camp by the Georgian Bay, and Lake Superior. The forests had a healing power over her heart, that was riddled with tears from the loss of her parents, grief at how she had been harmed, and how she had survived. They drove through the province of Manitoba, where she saw her first polar bear (from a safe distance), and also her first Moose. Hunter had kissed her under the studded night sky. They drove through the beautiful plains of Saskatchewan, stopping at various towns and cities to eat Saskatoon Berry Pies, deer sausage and regina-style pizza. They bought tickets to the beaver museum in Edmonton, Alberta, where she also learned the province had a police force solely responsible for keeping rats out of the state (Hunter thought this was a colossal waste of law enforcement’s capabilities and had started an argument with the museum curator who tried to explain that he wasn’t responsible for where tax payers money was directed). When they reached British Colombia, they finally began to feel at home in the port-city of Vancouver. Hunter decided to rent a boat at whim, where they set up shop for the fall. Sleeping in a boat for weeks had been a dream, and the two of them made sure to christen it as theirs. They had kissed and tousled on the deck, by the gunnels, on the kitchen counters, and in the hull. There wasn’t a single place they left untouched. And throughout the sex fueled haze, Emma felt as if her life was finally moving forward.
It was there, amongst the seaside murals and sidewalk artists, that she decided that she wanted to teach art. She was good with kids, and the thought of it made her happy. After looking around, she found an online Early Childhood Education program at George Brown College that she could complete virtually over the next two years. In the meantime, she completed a certification that taught her of the various styles of art-therapy that enriched childhood learning.
When the leaves on the trees began to crisp, and the green deepened to an orange, Emma and Hunter packed their bags and headed north. They spent another month exploring the territories, and experienced the true north, Canadian terrain. They spent a weekend in a yurt and listened to the coyotes’ howl at the moon, the memory of which sent chills across Emma’s back. They spent another few weeks learning how to white-water canoe through the rapids. As she navigated the waters, learning how to navigate the rivers with a simple paddle, Emma felt the true power of the strength that she had cultivated over the past few months.
She had been through hell, and survived.
It was then that Emma had a feeling that she hadn’t felt in a long, long time.
She wanted to go home.
“Let’s get back to Harbordale,” she said one night, her head nestled into the crook of Hunter’s arms.
He kissed her in response, so deeply that she had felt it in her heart.
It took them a week and a half of driving, but it was nearly December when they drove past the sign that declared the tiny town and its population lay a few kilometers ahead. Instead of dread, all Emma felt was excitement.
She was ready to turn a leaf and begin a new chapter in her life. They had returned to Hunter’s home, that looked eerily untouched and she had a strange feeling of having never left. As she stood in his living room for the first time in eight months, she shook her head. “I am so glad I’m not your maid anymore. I still can’t believe you made me do that.”
Hunter’s deep laugh sounded behind her as he circled his waist with his arms. “Hm… I do have to say, however, seeing you on your knees kneeling in front of me was a sight to behold.”
Emma rolled her eyes but could already feel a familiar heat spread across her belly. “You took too much pleasure in that.”
“I’m just a man. Can you blame me?”
“Well, how about we recreate that scenario, then?” Emma muttered coyly as she turned around, biting her lip as she unzipped the fly of his jeans.
Present-day Emma shifted uncomfortably in the seat of the truck at the memory, suddenly wishing there weren’t a horde of kids at their house because there was a lot that she wanted to do to Hunter that wasn’t kid friendly. Burying the thoughts, she pulled to a stop in front of the building she had to make a pitstop at and breathed a sigh of relief at the distraction. Her almost-complete mural covered the side of the building that faced the road. Painting the wall had been a therapeutic experience. The girl who had died could have very easily been her, and a part of her still carried guilt at the thought of the pain she and her father had brought to this town. The mural wouldn’t do anything to change the past, but it could help paint a brighter vision for the future.
She quickly hopped out of the car with a can of paint and scurried over to the bottom right corner. With a swift stroke of her hand, she signed the mural with her initials and then stepped back.
It was finally done. Exhaling deeply, she looked at the visage in front of her. It was a mural that reflected everything that Harbordale was: a field of flowers, jutting mountains and cliffs, roaming wolves, and breaching whales. She had painted the sailors, and the craftsmen, the boats and the markets, and at the very back of the mural, she painted a lighthouse.
“Took ya’ long enough to finish this piece of shit!”
Emma snapped out of her reverie to see 86-year-old Jane swinging her cane at her. “I know you like the mural, Jane – I heard you telling Barbara at the Seniors meeting a week ago. You also asked her to ask me to paint your living room.”
She scoffed, “I never said such a thing!”
“Alright then.”
“Can you ask your policeman boyfriend to come check on my farm? Someone is poisoning my cows.”
Emma sighed. Nobody was poisoning her cows. She was lonely and kept asking people for favors to have some company. “Will do!”
“And if you want to paint my living room, I won’t stop you!”
Emma hid a laugh. “I’ll think about it.”
She hopped back into the car, and this time, made her way back to Hunter.
The lighthouse beamed in the distance. After signing over the rights of the lighthouse to the city, they had refurbished it and had got it working again. It had brightened the town like nothing else and had become a point of destination for the surrounding townsfolk. Kids wanted to go to the viewpoint; adults wanted to picnic there, and teens wanted to make out there (much to her dismay). Her street had suddenly gotten busier, with cars driving in and out to see the site. Just two weekends ago, someone had even proposed to his girlfriend up at the top in purview of the Labrador Sea. She had never been so certain that she had made the right decision in signing over the property.
She had moved all of her belongings to Hunter’s home but had kept her father’s home to run what was her main focus these days: an after-hours art camp for the kids in Harbordale. She had been nervous that the townsfolk wouldn’t want to trust their kids around her what with all the drama that had unfolded. But the town was so deprived of extra-curricular education, that her first class had been booked in less than 24-hours. And she loved every single bit of it; teaching the kids, playing with them, and occasionally pulling them apart when they fought over supplies or called each other’s artistic ventures “ugly.” Her days were jam-packed now. She studied online during the day, taught for a few hours after five-pm, and then bartended part-time in the evenings. Hunter was adamant that she drop the bartending gig, that it was wholly unnecessary because he could support her during her studies, but she was equally adamant that she support herself.
As she drove up to her house, currently operating as her art-camp, she felt her heart well up as she saw Hunter standing amongst the thirty odd kids, looking murderous. It looked like he had been right about the mutiny; he was covered in snow and the kids – especially Molly – looked particularly happy.
She parked and hopped out, bellowing at the students. “Alright, get your juice boxes. You can’t make art if you don’t fuel your brain!”
They all screamed (some too passionately) as they charged towards her. She opened the crates and handed out the orange juices to the bloodthirsty sharks. She mouthed an apology to her man, and if looks could kill, she knew would be six feet under right now.
Two hours later, she found Hunter in his kitchen. She could smell steaks on the pan, and her stomach clenched as she saw him at the stove, cooking them dinner. The sight of him cooking for her never got old.
“That’s the last time I help you out, Emma.” He said as she took off her paint-stained apron. “I don’t know what they have against me, but I was powerless against the thirty of them. I swear to God, I should fingerprint all of them now and save myself the hassle, lord knows I’ll be arresting those disobedient shits a few years down the road.”
She laughed. “Blame your niece. You have a little tyrannical dictator on your hands.”
“Tell me about it.”
Emma went up to him and wrapped her arms around his chest, burying her face in his back to breathe in the scent of him. “I only have about an hour before my shift at Nick’s starts.”
“Dinner will be ready in five.”
“I wasn’t thinking about dinner.”
Hunter’s body froze, and she could sense his muscles tightening. “We can’t burn another dinner.”
“But…” she squirmed against him, trailing her hands down his abdomen to where his shirt ended. “Just think about it?”
Hunter let out a quiet groan, “You’re killing me, Emma.”
She gave a kiss on the neck. “We’ll eat takeout later. Come on.”
There was a beat of hesitation before Emma felt his resolve melt away. Turning off the stove, he turned around and immediately picked her up, settling her legs around his hips. “If you have to be there in an hour, I’m demanding I get the next fifty-five minutes.”
Emma leaned into him, murmuring against his lips. “I wouldn’t expect anything else.”
“Have I told you how happy I am that your shitty car broke down outside my house all those months ago?”
Her heart swelled, and she smiled. “I love you too.”
Hunter swallowed her lips then, crushing him to her.
And then he promptly carried her upstairs, where he dropped her onto the bed and handcuffed her to wrists to the posts.
Emma barely made it to her shift on time.
But hell, it was worth it.
x.x.