by Coralee June
I didn’t know where I belonged anymore or what my purpose was. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing with my life. What kind of person tracked down their ex-stalker?
“Is this seat taken?” a low voice asked. I closed my eyes and breathed in before opening again.
He didn’t bother waiting for my answer. Hunter pulled out the seat across from me and sat down. A part of me was hoping he would find me. I ended up sleeping in a motel forty-five minutes away so I could cry and rest in peace. Thankfully, I’d showered and brushed my hair. At least I didn’t look as crazed as I felt last night.
I slowly lifted my eyes to meet his heavy gaze. Blue pools of heat greeted me, and I felt my entire body clench. He was real. He was here...here. In the stark reality of daylight, Hunter looked dashing. He wore a tight black shirt, his usual, and jeans. His scruffy beard was a change. I liked the messiness of it all. It was like he’d grown a little bit wilder out here in the desert air.
“Hello,” I croaked.
“Hello, Roe,” he replied. No nickname. No playfulness to his tone. I felt like an acquaintance. There was something raw in the lack of familiarity.
“You live in a cute place,” I began while scraping my spoon across my bowl. “The weather is lovely this time of year—”
“You show up at my camper after five years and want to talk about the weather?” he asked, eyebrows raised in beautiful challenge.
“You never were good at small talk, Hunter,” I replied with a dark chuckle before reaching for my coffee and taking a sip. He stared at my neck as I gulped the hot liquid down.
“Why are you here?”
“I was in the area,” I lied. “I thought I’d say hello.”
“Bullshit. You live in an apartment with Nicole in Denver.”
It was both exciting and painful to hear that he knew where I was. Was he still keeping tabs? Was he watching me? “How do you know where I live?”
He clenched his teeth like he was pissed at himself for revealing that bit of info. “Don’t be stupid, Roe. I’m still friends with Mack. He bitches about how much he misses you from time to time,” Hunter explained with a wave of his hand.
I should have been surprised, but I guess it’s nothing new. All this time, I was dying to know what he was up to, and he didn’t have to suffer the same way.
“How’d you even find me?” he asked. I knew my answer would probably piss him off, but I didn’t care.
“I had a nice chat with Gavriel Moretti. His wife made us dinner,” I breezed triumphantly. At the mention of Gavriel, Hunter’s face turned red with anger.
“You did what?” he asked incredulously. “Why the fuck would you talk to one of the most dangerous men in the country, Roe. Why are you here?”
“I mean, I fucked an assassin, Hunter. Dinner with a gang banger isn’t that big of a deal.” Hunter blanched, and I reveled in catching him off guard.
“I’m not going to ask you again, Roe. Why are you here?” He punctuated every syllable with gritty animosity. I stared at his white-knuckled grip on the edge of the table. I’d forgotten how quick to anger he was. I’d forgotten how much I loved it.
“I wanted to see you,” I replied with a shrug. It was the simplest explanation but wasn’t the full truth, either. Telling Hunter I’d been obsessed with seeing his face again felt hollow. I’d been thinking of him ever since that night—the night he left my naked body on the ground with cum seeping out of me. It was such a brutal goodbye, and I still hadn’t come to terms with it. Maybe obsessing over him was my way of coping with the trauma.
“Why?”
I scoffed. “You can’t demand answers from me. I owe you nothing. I was here. I wanted to see you. I’ve seen you. So now I can leave.”
I wiped my hands on the napkin and waved the waitress back over. If I stayed much longer, my cool facade would fade, and all that would be left is a crying girl in the middle of a restaurant, asking why everyone always left.
“Are you going back to Denver?” he asked.
“Probably,” I murmured while staring over his head. I wasn’t strong enough to look him in the eye and see nothing in his gaze. “I might just drive around for a bit. My boss probably fired me for just leaving, and I’m not looking forward to Nicole and Joel hosting an intervention.” At the mention of Joel, Hunter’s lip twitched.
“Typical,” Hunter growled. “Running away when you can’t accept reality.”
“That’s rich coming from you,” I gritted in response. “You drugged me and ran with your tail between your legs when shit got real. Does your girlfriend know you’ve killed people, Hunter?” I hated how jealous I sounded but figured I already sounded like a crazy bitch, I might as well commit to it.
“She’s not my girlfriend, and we don’t do much talking,” he replied with a pointed stare. “We’re too busy doing other things to get a word out that isn’t my name or oh God’s.”
That stung. It stung a lot. “Well, I’m glad you’re happy and living your best life,” I replied as the waitress put the bill on the table. I reached for it, but Hunter was quicker. I didn’t bother fighting him on it. He quickly slipped some cash on the table to cover my meal. “Well,” I began with a forced smile. “I’m sorry to intrude on your happy little life. I honestly don’t know why I came, but it’s obvious I’ve...romanticized the time we shared together.”
I stood up while trying to keep calm. This hurt so damn much. “Roe.” Hunter said my name. Some fucked up part of me wanted him to call me his Pretty Debt again. Tears streamed down my face as I spun on my heel and bolted from the cafe. I heard the sound of his chair scraping against the floor and his steps stomping after me.
“Roe,” he called after me as I ran across the parking lot. I stopped when I reached my car and turned to face him.
“I just have to know,” I choked out. “Did you miss me at all? Did you think about me? Did you...c-care at all?”
His answer would be the nail in the coffin. “I didn’t.”
“Then why go through all that trouble?” I asked. “Why make me fall for you if you were just going to leave?”
“I didn’t plan on it. I was just projecting my own bullshit on you. By the time I realized that we couldn’t keep doing what we were doing, we took it too far.”
I shook my head and stepped closer to him. “It wasn’t just that,” I insisted. “There was something between us.”
Hunter balled his fists at his side. “There’s nothing between us. There will be nothing between us. Go home, Roe. Live your life. I’ve moved on, and so should you.”
No, no, no. This wasn’t how any of this was supposed to go. I took a bold step forward, cupped his cheeks in my hands. If he wanted me to leave, then I was going out with a bang.
I stared at his lips. It felt like the night I first met him, with me feeling desperate for his kiss and him refusing to give in. I didn’t care about all the reasons I shouldn’t want him or that this would make it even harder to leave. But I craved a sense of closure.
Or maybe I wanted to open Pandora’s box.
His eyes swept me up and down before lingering on my mouth. He still knew me well. He knew what I was thinking. The indecision was clear across his face. He looked away for a brief moment, then tore his eyes back to me.
“Take what you want from me, Pretty Debt. Then get the fuck out of here.”
How could permission feel so painful and beautiful all at once? He called me Pretty Debt.
I refused to be a cliche. Though every bone in my body absolutely ached to slam my lips to his, I wanted to make him wait. I wanted to see the evidence in his longing expression that he wanted this, too. Even if I meant nothing to him, even if this was a one-off. I’d leave here knowing I affected him.
“Take what I want, huh?” I asked while removing my hands from his cheeks. “What exactly is it that I want, Hunter? It’s been a while, maybe you don’t know me anymore.”
He looked up. My eyes locked onto the scruff covering his jaw,
and I wondered how it would feel against my skin. I wanted my lips to be red and swollen from it. “Don’t play games with me, Roe. You and I both know I’ll win.”
Pride was lifting me up by my bootstraps and dragging me out of my pity party. “On the contrary, Hunter. Coming here kind of helped dispel the illusion. I’d built you up in my mind all those years ago.”
Hunter did a quick sweep of the parking lot with his eyes before pulling my body to his. I gasped at the quick, hard contact of his muscles against my softness. A tremor traveled down my spine, and I had to force my eyes open so I didn’t melt into his touch. “You’re here because no one fucked you like I did. You’re here,” he rasped while leaning closer to hover his lips over the shell of my ear, “because you miss my mouth on your cunt. Because no matter how hard you try to fuck me out of your system with those fumbling college boys that wouldn’t know a clit if it slapped them in the face, you want to taste me again. You want my hand on your pussy. You want me to make you come so you can have the pleasure of screaming my name again.”
I turned to brush my nose against his neck and let out a shaky exhale. “No,” I replied.
“If you’re going to lie to me, Roe, at least make it worth it.”
I wrapped my arms around him and kissed his lips. And the moment my tongue swept across the seam of his mouth, he shuddered. Yeah, fucker. You want this just as much as I do.
He ran his hands through my hair and tugged at the scalp, making me gasp and moan into his mouth. He sucked on my tongue and clipped my bottom lip with his teeth.
“Fuck you, Hunter,” I cried out while running my hands over his chest.
“Fuck you too, Pretty Debt. Why’d you have to come back, huh?”
I pressed my palms to his abs, choking on lust as I felt each hill of his muscles. Someone in the parking lot whistled, but I didn’t let embarrassment or shame ruin this moment. His hands roamed lower until he was cupping my ass and drawing me closer to his hard body. I felt his cock against my stomach.
And then he ripped me away from him. The force of his shove made me fall on the ground. Sharp pain spiked up my tailbone, and I let out a little scream.
Looking up at Hunter, I watched as he ran his hand through his hair and spat on the ground like he was trying to get rid of the taste of me on his tongue. “I was happy, Roe. Really fucking happy. I had my life. And then you show up here, reminding me of everything I was running from.”
Tears filled my eyes, and shame coalesced over my soul. I scoffed. “Happy men don’t kiss the girls they’re running from.”
He stared at me on the ground, clenching his fist. “Get up,” he growled. “Get up and leave. Go home, go somewhere else, go on an adventure or go to hell. I don’t care. Please just go anywhere but here. I don’t want you.”
I scrambled to get to my feet while staring at him. “Bullshit. You want me, and it pisses you off. Why all this guilt? Why care?”
“I don’t care. Get in your car and never come back, okay?”
I was crying now, hot tears gathered on my lip, washing away the remnants of him on my skin. “Hunter,” I choked.
“Go. Go or I’ll make you disappear.”
“You’re threatening me?” I asked, shock making my skin chill.
“I’m telling you to leave, or the consequences will be irreversible. Go home, Roe. I don’t like who I am when you’re around.”
I swallowed and wiped my eyes. “Fuck you, Hunter. Fuck your guilt. This thing between us is real. It’s why I haven’t stopped thinking about you since the night you left. It’s why when we kiss, you forget that you’re supposed to be pushing me away. It’s why you know where I live. Why you sigh when you say my name. I’ll leave, but it’s not because you scare me, Hunter. It’s because I don’t deserve this.”
I walked to my car and got in the driver’s seat, refusing to look at the hate in his eyes as I put the car in drive and left. His words were cruel, but they did their job. I wasn’t going to sit there and let him threaten me.
When I got on the highway, my phone rang. Seeing that it was Nicole, I answered it. I needed my best friend. She would probably be pissed, but she’d put the scolding on hold to comfort me.
“I saw him. I really saw him. It went terribly, Nicole. He hates me. He threatened to kill me if I didn’t leave,” I cried out. “I think I built it all up in my head. I romanticized it all. I should have stayed away.”
“Roe, stop talking,” Nicole said. I could hear the terror in her tone. I furrowed my brow.
“Nicole? Are you okay?”
“Not really. There’s someone here that wants to talk to you,” she croaked out.
I listened to the phone as she handed it over. What the fuck was happening?
“Hello, Roe Palmer. This is Gavriel Moretti.”
ROE
“H-hello,” I said while pulling over. My hands were shaking so badly that I wasn’t sure I could see from the waves of dizziness assaulting me.
“How was your reunion, Roe? I hope it was everything you wanted.”
Cars zoomed by as I sat on the shoulder on the desert highway. The sun was high up in the sky, casting rays of bright light through my windshield. I took off my sunglasses and rubbed my eyes, pausing for a brief moment of confusion to think before speaking. Why was Gavriel on Nicole’s phone? What was going on? “It was awful,” I began truthfully. Something told me Gavriel didn’t like wasting time with lies. “I was at his house, and he showed up with some woman wanting to suck him off in his yard.”
“That’s unfortunate,” Gavriel agreed plainly. Unfortunate didn’t even start to cover how fucked up our reunion was. “How did that make you feel?”
What was he, a fucking therapist? “Jealous,” I admitted. “Then he told me he hated me and that life was better without me.”
Gavriel went quiet for a moment, dissecting my words. “Jealousy is a weak emotion, Roe. If you can conquer that, you can conquer anything.”
I let out a dark laugh. “I can’t be jealous of something I don’t have.”
This time, it was Gavriel’s turn to laugh. His booming chuckles made my spine go taut. “You definitely have him, Roe. What happened after he said he hated you?”
I stared out the window in defeat. My mind wanted to find hope at the bottom of Gavriel’s statement, but I refused to let him manipulate me. I knew how Hunter felt deep in my heart, despite the pity party I was throwing. Hunter loved me.
But love was a choice.
Chemistry and our binding past weren’t enough to sustain me. I needed him to choose me, too. “Then I got in my car and drove off. I’m headed home. I think you overestimated my abilities to bring him back. Hunter Hammond wants nothing to do with me,” I explained before punching my steering wheel.
“That’s not going to work for me, Roe. We had a deal.”
My stomach dropped. “Excuse me?”
“You didn’t think I had Nicole brought to New York for afternoon tea, did you? I needed to make sure you didn’t give up easily.”
I sputtered. “Hunter hates me. He threatened to kill me if I didn’t leave,” I rambled. “You’re going to have to bring Hunter back yourself. He’s not going to listen to me.”
“You have more creative methods of persuasion than I do,” Gavriel began. My mind immediately flashed to the intense kiss Hunter and I shared in the cafe’s parking lot. And then his cruel words rang clearly in my ear.
Take what you want from me, then get the fuck out of here.
“I can’t,” I choked out.
“You can. And you will. Figure your shit out and bring Hunter back. I have a job only he can do, and I have a feeling you’re the only one that can lure him into cooperation. Bring. Him. Back.”
The phone line ended, and I sat for a moment, staring out my window as rage simmered beneath my skin. A text message came through, and I clenched my teeth.
Unknown: You have two days.
How the fuck was I going to convince Hunter to go back with
me? He didn’t give a fuck about Nicole, so the truth would just make him dig his heels in. I could seduce him, but there was no telling if that would work. Especially after the things he said. And even if it did work, Hunter would be devastated once he found out it was all a ploy to get him to work for Gavriel again.
I didn’t really have a choice, though. Either way, I lost him. I just couldn’t stand the idea of losing Nicole to this mess, too.
I’d have to go back to see him. I’d have to seduce him. Maybe drug him like he did me, then throw him in my car and drive all the way to New York.
No matter what, I’d have to see Hunter again. And it was going to piss him off.
So why the fuck was I giddy about that?
Lipstick
She keeps warpaint in her purse, at the ready.
She colors her lips with a shade called Boy’s Tears.
Then, she dances naked in her bedroom, like Cosmo told her to do.
A broken heart feels a lot like a battle.
You have to wear armor of lace and smile with grace.
You can’t let them see your weakness.
A Queen guards her kingdom with a short skirt.
She sips vodka on the dance floor and finds comfort at the thrust of a thick, sharp sword.
And then she cries the next morning on the city bus headed home.
And then she paints poems with war.
After getting checked back into the motel, I showered and got dressed with purpose. I put on some high-waisted cut off shorts with a deep red crocheted bralette and a black lace kimono. My ankle boots made my toned, tanned legs seem even longer.
I applied makeup slowly while letting my wavy hair air dry. As I lined my lips with rouge, I thought of how the color would look smeared along Hunter’s chest. It was the same shade as blood and was named Lust. I worried that the moment Hunter saw me, he’d end this little reunion between us once and for all. Would he kill me?
No. He wouldn’t.
Seeing as it was a Saturday night, I asked some of the locals where the hottest place to hang out was. Nearly all of them said Jobe’s Place, a dive bar illuminating the sand-covered road with its neon lights.