HUNTER (The Corbin Brothers Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

was I supposed to say to that? That I didn’t care about keeping myself clean because what was the point? I didn’t have anyone to impress; I didn’t care about the way I looked or smelled; I didn’t really even stand out with the way the rest of my brothers drifted in while working on the ranch, dusty and sweaty and smelling of livestock.
    “Do you think you might be depressed?” she asked in what I was beginning to understand was that no-nonsense way of hers in spite of the sensitivity of the question. In my line of work…well, in what had been my line of work before I’d lost the leg, depression was a dangerous thing. Depression might get you removed from duty, at worst, and mistrusted by the people relying on you to have their backs when shit really hit the fan, at best. I’d been just as suspicious of guys who moped in the barracks when the rest of us were monkeying around as I had been of the people who weren’t in uniforms when we went out on patrol. And now it looked like I was like them, moping around, trying to find things to dump into myself to make it, if not right, then just a little more bearable.
    “Leave the head shrinking to the shrinks,” I said, wobbling as I stood up from the couch. “You’re just a physical therapist.”
    “That doesn’t mean I’m blind or deaf or dumb,” Hadley said, standing up too, her hands on her hips. “I can diagnose a problem when I see one, and you, Hunter, are a big problem.”
    “Do you want me to take a shower or not?” I asked, scowling at her. “If you keep insulting me, I can just let you keep on smelling me.”
    “Lead the way,” she said, pressing her lips together tightly.
    I hopped and hobbled down the hallway, past the kitchen, having to propel myself beyond the magnetic pull of the liquid contents of that refrigerator, aware that Hadley would judge me much more harshly than any of my brothers would if I opened another beer right now. I’d have to slake that thirst later, when she was gone and I could get a moment’s peace.
    “This place is bigger on the inside than what it looks like from the outside,” she said by way of conversation, having more than enough time to observe her surroundings as I struggled on ahead of her. It made me self-conscious to be so physically inept, but that was just the way of the world now.
    “It had to be big on the inside,” I said. “There were a lot of us Corbins.”
    “You all still live here?” She’d paused at an old family portrait hanging on the wall, its frame embarrassingly dusty. “This place could use a woman’s touch. Or just someone who knows how to clean up after themselves or other people.”
    “You offering?”
    “Hell, no,” she scoffed. “Do you really think I went to medical school to sweep and mop and dust?”
    We all looked happy in this photo. I couldn’t have been much older than four or five, and I had no memory of going to get the portrait taken. Avery had a gap-toothed grin, Emmett held himself with quiet confidence, Tucker puffed his chest out, and even Chance still looked hopeful about the future, all of us squeezed in together in front of a drop cloth draped in the background. We’d all inherited our size from Dad, but Mom wasn’t a shrinking violet. She was tough as leather when she wasn’t doting on us—at least, that’s what I gathered from my patchy memories and the times my brothers got drunk and maudlin enough to reminisce. I wondered what parts of which parent were mine and mine alone, not shared by any of my brothers. It was hard to know.
    “We all grew up in this house, sure,” I said, answering Hadley’s first question. “And some of us left it to try to scratch out our own identities somewhere else. But we all drifted back, whether we actually wanted to or not.”
    “Home always has that pull on us, doesn’t it?” she mused, and I could tell she wasn’t talking just about the ranch.
    “Where are you from?” I asked, peering at her. “Not from