THE QUEEN'S GAME

Chapter 15

"Hunter."
"Vince." Hunter took a seat. "What is this all about?"
"This is about you and my daughter. This thing has gone on long enough. I'm hoping to come to some sort of resolution."
Vince was undoubtedly reacting to the media coverage they'd gotten. Stephanie was being dragged through the tabloids as some rich airhead that trapped a man into marrying her, but what really bothered Hunter were the things said about Charlotte. Stephanie had painted her as some home wrecker when they'd never even had a home to wreck. Charlotte said she was fine, that people would think what they wanted, but he wasn't. She didn't deserve any of this.
"I thought we all agreed to handle this as adults and not have our parents involved."
"Hunter, you know as well as I do that this has gotten out of hand. My daughter will never back down, and you don't seem to want to either. We have to do what's best for everyone at this point. And what about Charlotte?"
"Charlotte is fine."
"No, you have my face champion embroiled in some marital scandal, and it can't be good for her mentally going into this performance at Royal Rumble."
He'd really meant that. He cared about Charlotte. It was crazy, he never saw any of that concern when he spoke about Stephanie.
"Well what do you propose we do? I want it over."
"Technically the money in the trust belongs to my daughter now, because of her crafty plan, but there are things in place stipulating that I could assume control at any point of the money was there in its entirety. With your pending divorce, she can't touch it, so it's all there. I'd be willing to give you what you're owed if we can end this quietly."
"You want to steal from your own daughter and pay me off?"
"It's not stealing. The money is mine. It's always been mine."
Hunter tilted his head and stared at Vince. Something was off here. "Why do you hate her?"
"I don't hate her, I love my daughter. The one thing I know about life is how to manage things. Stephanie was never one of the things I could manage. She's always needed more than any of us could provide. She had the best—nice clothes, the best schools, she's had experiences most kids would have dreamed of, but it was never enough."
"All those things you listed, I didn't hear time. Kids want nice things, but they want your time more than anything."
"Me building an empire is no excuse for my child to act the way she does. Me and Linda have both tried with Stephanie, but nothing seems to work. The only thing I can think of is being this drastic."
Hunter would admit Stephanie had always seemed a bit vapid, even when they were younger. Because of her family's close relationship with the Flairs, they spent a significant amount of time together, although Vince wasn't around much. Every time he saw her she was throwing her weight around or flashing her money. That was mostly the reason why he'd declined her multiple advances. She wasn't his type.
"I don't really want her money. I just wanted her to know what it felt like to lose something she loved."
"If it's any consolation, I think you deserve something. My daughter's issues are with me and my family. I hate that it seeped into your life."
"Why is she this way?"
"It's too much to discuss." Vince looked defeated. He wasn't the asshole Hunter once thought he was. He seemed to be a concerned father just out of ideas about his out of control daughter. This was the side of him that Charlotte talked about. She'd said he was a good person.
"I don't think I can really keep her money. I was going to give it to my mother. I just want my mother taken care of."
"Well give it to her. This isn't on you. I'm not going to let my daughter benefit from playing with people's lives. I do wish I'd been told about this sooner. Maybe we could have avoided what needs to happen next."
"What's happening?"
"We obviously can't pair you and Charlotte now. It would be too much in the midst of all this controversy, and honestly, I owe it to her father to not add to the already stressful situation. I hear you're seeking a divorce, but if the marriage was never consummated we may be able to wrap it up sooner with an annulment."
"We never slept together afterward."
"Good, well then an annulment should help things on Charlotte's end as well."
"She's not to blame."
"I know she's not. Stephanie has always had an issue with her, I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe it's the fact that she and Ric are so close and we just aren't."
"That's no reason to try and destroy her."
"It's not. I can't explain why she does the things she does, and I've grown tired of trying to. She's going to have to clean up her own messes at this point, but this one is affecting my business. I won't sit back and let her destroy what I built. I should have something to you by the weeks end."
"I don't feel good about this. I was never raised to take from a woman."
"Either way it will be taken from her. It's high time I put an end to the things she does."
"Fine, but nothing comes to me, only my mother."
"I'll have the papers drawn up."
Hunter nodded and left the room. He exhaled in the hallway, not at all feeling good about this. He'd wanted to teach Stephanie a lesson, and maybe this would. It would limit her resources, but it would only drive Stephanie's hatred and jealousy of Charlotte further. He'd be divorced soon—actually annulled. It couldn't come soon enough. Maybe he could start fixing things with Charlotte once that was all settled.
He wanted to see her. She hadn't been as distant with him as she once was, but she hadn't exactly been welcoming either. She was truly staying her distance. He only saw her in passing and when they were in each other's orbit at work. They mostly stayed in the same hotels, they were now, but she was about as far away as she would be if she was across town. He needed her today. He'd take the chance.
The hotel was ten minutes away from where he'd met Vince, and when he made it into the elevator, he sighed. This could either go well or blow up in his face. He was never going to get anywhere with her if he stayed away. Besides, he had a gift for her. Whether she'd accept was up in the air.
With a quick stop by his room, he stood planted at her door. He was more nervous than he'd ever been. He realized having her love was a blessing and a curse. As long as it was there he was walking on air, but the minute it was removed he'd felt like the life had been sucked out of him. He didn't eat much, he didn't sleep well. He was easing through most days.
With two quick knocks, he stood with a lump in his throat. He expected her to come to the door in her workout gear, she had been really pushing it lately, but when the door opened, his box dropped. He was truly caught off guard.
"Hunter."
"Adam. Why are you here? Are you touching..." His temper. He remembered and took it down a notch. "I'm here for Charlotte."
"Obviously." Adam crossed his arms. His shirtless chest assaulted Hunter's thoughts, and all he could envision were the things Adam was possibly doing in her room. None of them were good.
Hunter was tripping all over himself. He wanted to kill Adam, but another part of him was just hurt that she'd moved on. It was her right, but he hadn't expected it. Not so soon after telling him he was the only man she'd ever love.
Deciding to be the bigger person, he picked the box up and placed it in Adam's hands. "Can you give this to her? Let her know that I thought she should have one of her own."
The door slammed as he turned away. Normally he'd go somewhere and have a drink after a moment like this, but he'd realized that was the root of his problems. He'd drink and behave impulsively because he was either hurt or upset over her. She was his trigger. The way she loved him had become his drug. Now he'd have to be sober. He couldn't indulge on her any longer.
Instead of a bar, Hunter ended up at his second home, their practice gym. He was prepared to face Edge, but he just needed to let off some steam. If he didn't, their match could go extremely wrong. Just thinking about his hands on Charlotte could make the match turn into World War three.
He started at a punching bag. He'd gloved up and swung so hard he felt air leaving his lungs with each connection. He was letting it out. The love, the anger, the hurt. He had to let her go.
He swung until he couldn't stand it anymore. Breathing rapidly he dropped to the floor. He hadn't ever felt this way. It was as if there was a sort of finality to their relationship. He'd deserved this. He'd created this.
Reaching for the water he'd brought, he tried to calm himself, but he couldn't achieve it, his heart hurt. It felt empty. He was lost.
Sitting on the floor he thought about all the things he should have said but didn't, all the ways he should have shown her that she was the most important thing in the world to him. He should have talked more. He should have let her in.
"Hunter." Now he was imagining her voice. "Hunter." He looked up. It was real.
"How did you find me?"
"I think I'll always know where to find you." She would. Whenever he was upset with anyone, other than her, he'd end up at a gym, working off the stress.
"I didn't mean to interrupt..."
"You didn't interrupt anything. What you saw—it wasn't what you think."
"You don't have to explain." He stood and walked further from her. "I know what I did."
"Will you just let me..."
"I'm trying to let you go. If you don't allow me to do it right now I won't be able to. This is the hardest thing I've ever had to do, but if you want to be free, I'll give you that. You deserve the world. I've always known you were too good for me. I tried to act like it didn't matter, that I could deserve your love one day, but I don't. Maybe I never will."
Tears glistened in her eyes, she blinked and they fell. "I'm so exhausted with making you cry. It's not what I want for you."
"It's not what I want for us. Nothing is going on with me and Adam. I spilled soy sauce all over his shirt and I was cleaning it when you came. We've just been hanging out a lot lately, we're friends, he is only being a friend. I haven't... I haven't moved on. How could I when things are so unresolved with us?"
"I want to respect your wishes, I've been trying."
"I know you have. There are just so many things that I feel and it's not all on you. There are things I need to do for me, and I am trying to take it one day at a time."
She sat down and motioned for him to sit with her. "I had to take a hard look at why neither of us felt comfortable being completely honest with the other, and I realized we are two totally broken people that fell in love but never tried to heal. We ended up being more destructive together because of the things we couldn't and wouldn't address. I don't want that anymore."
"What do you need?"
"I need something real, not a fantasy. It's not always going to be easy."
"I want to give you that. There are just things—things you don't know."
"Tell me."
She grabbed his hand, laced her fingers through his, and his heart skipped a beat. This was the closest she'd allowed them to be in a while.
"I know I get angry, and I know it scares you."
"It's not that I'm afraid you'd hurt me, I know you never would, it's just sometimes I can't separate what happened in my past with your rage. It's like no matter how safe I know I am it all comes back to me when you're angry. I get scared and it makes me shut down. I know that I probably need to talk to someone about that."
"You can talk to me."
She smiled, it was the first smile she'd given him in over a month. "A professional, but thank you. I really feel like you mean it."
"I do. You can tell me anything."
"I miss us being friends."
"I miss it too."
"So tell me the rest."
He gripped her hand tighter, really feeing her support as he continued. "I didn't want to tell you where I came from because I thought I was dealing with it. I thought I had put it behind me, but a good friend pointed out that it was affecting the way I was with you."
"You can be intense, but I know it's because you care."
"I care so much, and it scares me."
"Why?"
"What if I'm like him? What if it's genetic. I have so many what ifs, especially when it comes to you."
"I'm not sure I understand."
"I've always thought you were beautiful. I used to think wow, she's going to be some mans dream. You were always so special, and once I realized I was attracted to you I knew that you were my dream. I first noticed it on your prom night, or at least that's when I admitted it to myself, but what if I'd felt these things before then?"
"What's wrong with that?"
"You were a child. I'm six years older than you."
"We know our ages."
"What if I looked at you that way when it wasn't okay to? What if I'm just like him?"
"Hunter, I don't understand. You were never inappropriate with me when I was younger. You were always like family until it changed. I don't know what you think you've done, but I can assure you that you didn't do anything."
"Not physically, but what about my intentions? It had to have been building inside me—my attraction to you. It makes me sick to think I felt that way when you were..."
"Hunter, you're beating yourself up over hypotheticals. I just don't know why any of this matters. Yes, you're older than me, but anything between us was consensual. I've never felt forced by you in any way."
"I tried to stay away from you. I even made sure we were hardly ever alone."
"I remember that. You'd dart out of a room if it was just us. I remember brushing up against you once and I thought you were going to combust. I was over eighteen, Hunter. Your fears are so misplaced."
He was talking in circles and he knew he was confusing her, he needed to just get it out in the open. He could just blurt it out. "My dad is a child molester."
"What?"
"I caught him on top of my cousin when I was eleven. I stopped him."
"Oh, babe. I'm sorry. You've been holding this in all this time?" She touched his face. He could tell she was reacting before thinking. She hadn't shown him that kind of affection since the day she stormed out of his house. Now it just seemed natural for her to want to touch him.
"I thought I was dealing with it, I thought I'd locked it away."
"I triggered you."
"No, not you, never you. What happened to you made me want to protect you. It's just thinking of any man hurting women triggers me."
"Me and my situation." She nodded. "I don't know why we want to be so good for each other and our best intentions fail. It's like we're destined to hurt each other."
"Because we weren't being honest. I want to be able to tell you anything. I want to look at you and know that there is nothing between us but honesty and trust—and love."
"The trust will take a while, and we're working on the honesty. The love is there, it never left. Even when I'm angry at you I still love you."
"Can you love a man that almost killed his father and cost his family everything?"
"You didn't do that." She put her forehead to his. "You have to let that go. It wasn't you. You were protecting your cousin."
"I could have stopped hitting him, but I didn't. I picked up a bat and swung and kept swinging. I beat him half to death." In explaining, he thought about what he'd done to Mickey, he wouldn't have stopped if the officials hadn't broken that up as well.
"I get it. I understand it now. Some men are bad, but you have to stop seeing your father in every conflict."
"It's like when I think about it something takes over me. I wish I could be in control of it, but it's something I'm working on."
"You can join me on my psychiatrist couch." Now it was his turn to laugh. "No, I'm serious."
"I'll think about it."
She ran her palm down his cheek, gazing into his eyes. "I like this."
"What?"
"You talking to me. It's the most you've ever told me about your past."
"I was ashamed."
"You don't have to be ashamed with me. I'm your best friend, remember?"
"You are."
"And I expect you to come to me with things. We should have been able to do this before now."
"I didn't want you to leave."
"I only left because you lied to me. I'm not sure what we will be from here, but I want to start at friends. I love you so much, but is it enough?"
"It's not enough to just have love if we don't feel comfortable with the big things."
"You have to settle the biggest thing before we can really see what this is between us."
"Soon. Possibly within the week."
"I wasn't aware divorces happened that quickly."
"An annulment."
"If you do that then she gets away with what she did to you. I hope you're not doing this because of me. I understand now more than ever why you want to do it. I don't care about some silly reputation."
"I care. You're not some home wrecker, and I don't want people thinking of you that way. I never wanted her money. I thought she had cost me you—I wanted to make her suffer the way I did every night I slept alone. I just missed you so much and I needed her to feel that way about something."
"The first night I slept less than two hours. I couldn't get used to not being beside you. The next night I slept a little more. Gradually, I was able to sleep full nights, but I hated it."
"Why? I'd give anything for a full night of sleep."
"Because I'd dream about you and when I woke you wouldn't be there. It was like having a nightmare every morning. It would just make me angry when I saw you afterward because I just wanted to reach out and grab you, to fall into your arms like I used to, but you hurt me."
"I know I did. I will regret that for the rest of my life."
"I'd have to tell myself to stay angry."
"You sure played the part. I thought you hated me."
"I'm still upset, in time I will be over it, but I hate to see you in pain. I knew when Adam told me you came by that you would be upset. I couldn't let you think that I'd ever do that without talking to you."
"I appreciate you considering my feelings."
"I came here with no expectations, but I'm glad I came."
"I'm glad you came too. I hated it, but I was prepared to let you go."
"And you didn't even punch Adam out. I don't know whether to be impressed or offended."
"Impressed, definitely. I wanted to kill him with my bare hands."
"I wanted to kill Stephanie too."
"You tried."
"I did, didn't I? She said all those things about what you did with her, and all I could think was that she'd had you first and it was similar. I mean I'm sure I'm much better, but the way she described it..."
"Was all for you. I'd called you that night and he answered, I thought you'd taken him back, I really didn't know, and I started drinking. I got to the point that all I saw was you. I was doing and saying all those things, but they were for you."
"Thanks, I guess." She shrugged in the cute little way she often did. "I mean, it's a little weird, but I get it. I hope at some point you realized it wasn't me."
"Of course I did. The first time I had you was like nothing I've ever felt, and it gets better every time. I would never mistake that again."
"I know. I feel the same way about you too, Hunter. With you it's so real, I feel connected on a different level."
"I hope you do." He pushed the hair from her face, contemplating if he should lean in or not. Maybe it was too soon, but he craved her. He went in half way and she pulled back. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have pushed."
"I want to—I want to be okay with this, but I can't right now. I don't know when..."
"You don't have to explain."
"I do. I don't want to have what we had before. If we go back to being us, I want it to be better."
"We can do better."
"I won't be with a married man, not intentionally."
"It will be over soon."
"Okay." She stood up, pulling him with her, and wrapped her arms around his neck. "I'm so proud of you. I know that was hard."
"Actually it wasn't." He was surprised how easy it was. She'd really given him the love and support he'd needed. He had been a fool. He should have been honest with her sooner.
"Well good. I hope this helped."
"It did. I feel much better."
"Me too. And thank you."
"For what?"
"I opened the box, it's beautiful. It fits perfectly, and I'm just... I love it, Hunter."
"I'm glad." He'd had her very own robe created for Royal Rumble. It was fit for a queen. "Are you ready? I mean, do you feel good about your match?"
"I'm as ready as I'll ever be." She nodded. "I just have to do what I have to do and think about consequences later."
"Charlotte—"
She walked toward the exit and paused. "Good luck, Hunter. I really mean it."
"Good luck to you, Charlotte." He'd go out on the limb and say exactly what was on his mind. "I love you."
"I know you do, and I love you too."
"I want you back."
"I want that too, but not today."
"I'm going to wait for you."
"You don't have to do that. I don't know when—"
"It doesn't matter. There is no one else in the world for me."
She smiled at him, he'd seen something flicker in her eyes, and she stared at him for a second. "I won't make you wait forever."
"I sure hope not."
"I'll see you around."
She left and although she hadn't given a time stamp, he was optimistic. Her willingness to try sure felt better than what he'd thought when he arrived here. It had completely talked him off the ledge. Now he could focus on his annulment and the Royal Rumble.