by Coralee June
How far would they go to bring me back, though?
The bus didn’t leave for another thirty minutes, so I sat on a bench and bounced my foot on the hard tile while watching others lugging duffel bags and clutching tickets as they settled on the seats near me.
While I sat and waited, I felt the intrusion of an old habit hit me in the chest. I was conditioned to expect the worst in a situation. I knew this was reckless and foolish. There would only be two outcomes. Either the hooded man would drag me kicking and screaming back to Mack’s house, or I’d end up homeless in LA. And even though neither option seemed good, I felt a thrill. Mom would have hated everything about this. I could almost hear her whispering in my ear.
“Never keep your back to the door, Roe. You’ll never be able to see if a gunman enters the room that way.
“Eleven children die per year on school busses. I read it on the Internet. You don’t need to go to school, baby. I can teach you everything here.
“I once read in the newspaper that, at any given moment, there are two million impaired drivers on the road in the United States. We should stay home. We can do Halloween next year.”
“LA, huh?” a voice at my back that dripped with sinister honey said. It made the hair on my neck stand up. I recognized the tone, it had been haunting me ever since the car accident. He’d found me, just like Uncle Mack said he would—and in record time, too. Fuck. I hadn’t even gotten on the bus.
Good. Maybe I’d get some answers out of him. A bulky body settled beside me on the bench, his arm brushing mine and sending a spiral of threatening heat through my body. I twisted my head to stare at the man sitting beside me, and to my surprise, he wasn’t wearing a hood.
With dirty blond hair that was long and swept across his forehead, the man had bright blue eyes and a scar over his right eyebrow. His jawline was strong and defined, and his thick lips framed a bright, disarming smile. “Stop looking so terrified, Roe. I just want to chat.”
His voice was cocky and lacked sincerity. It was like mountain climbing, one syllable could make my foot slip. “I’ll scream,” I promised while looking around. There was a security guard by the door currently engrossed with his lunch, barely watching the room.
“Please do. It’s been a while since I’ve had to kill an entire room of people. You think that grandfather over there will put up a fight? He’s got an Army hat; I bet he’s a veteran.”
I swallowed and followed his gaze to stare at the older gentleman with deep-set wrinkles. He was wearing an oversized, gray suit and clutched a veteran’s hat in his veiny hand speckled with age spots. “You wouldn’t kill everyone,” I replied while shifting in my seat to put some distance between us. Every touch of his skin against mine sent me into a panic.
“I wouldn’t?” he asked, genuinely curious about my opinion of him.
“N-no,” I stuttered.
“You don’t sound so sure. Maybe I went about this wrongly. Maybe I should have told you what I am. Do you want to know how I handled the people chasing you and Mack, Roe?”
At his question, I knew with complete certainty that whoever was after us was now dead. I didn’t need verbal confirmation of his ruthless abilities. I could feel his danger.
I gnawed on my lip, drawing the attention of his icy eyes to my anxious tic. “What’s your name?” I asked.
He paused, as if surprised by my question. “Why do you want to know?”
I ran my fingers along the hard cast covering my left arm and turned to face him. “I’m just curious if the devil has a name.” I wanted to appear strong. Mom once told me that if I felt threatened, I should scream as loud as I could. I could practically feel the curdling yells bubbling up in my throat.
He smiled, flashing me a devious grin that was far too bright for the evil I could practically feel buzzing on his skin. “Hunter.”
I rolled the two syllables and the meaning of that word around in my brain for a moment before responding. “How appropriate. Are you here to hunt me?”
He wrapped his hand around my waist and leaned in to whisper in my ear. His lips brushed against my sensitive skin, sending a spiral of confusing reactions zipping through my body. I felt flushed and attuned to every movement he made. “I caught you a long time ago, Roe.”
That realization sent a flood of questions through my mind, and I found myself gaping at him as he pulled away. “Are you stalking me?” I asked.
A woman with her young child walked by at that exact moment, and he grinned at them, using his pretty face to charm anyone willing to look. He was pretty, as much as it pained me to admit it. When we first met, he hid his features from me, but out in public, I saw that he used his face like a shield, hiding his malicious intent behind a practiced smile. Once the woman, albeit a bit flushed, passed, he turned his attention back to me. “Stalking has quite the connotation. Are you flattered by the idea of someone being obsessed with you, Roe? You want someone that’ll follow you. Watch you. Pine after you from a distance and long for something you have? You have quite the track record of clinging to affection. You strung poor Joel along for months.”
How the fuck did he know all of that?
I must have spoken the question out loud, because he chuckled. “I know everything about you. But I’m no stalker. Stalkers are infatuated with their prey. They obsess and desire something they can’t have. But that’s not the case with me.”
I swallowed and stood up, clutching my backpack as I walked as quickly as I could out of the bus station and onto the busy street outside. Crawling cars in the afternoon traffic passed by. Horns blared as I stared past the tall buildings and toward the mountains in the distance. “Running away?”
“Please leave me alone,” I grunted while shuffling down the sidewalk.
“This is why you ran, isn’t it? You wanted to see if I’d chase you. You wanted answers, Roe. I’m right here with them.”
I spun around on the sidewalk, grimacing at the sharp pain in my side. My ribs were banged up, and all this walking was making me short of breath. “Why me? Why are you obsessed with me? Why did you hire Mack to be my fucking fake uncle?”
Hunter stopped in his tracks. “He told you that, huh? Guess one broken arm wasn’t enough,” he said while caressing his chin.
My mouth dropped open in shock. My throat closed up with apprehension as my eyes widened and the realization of his words dawned on me. “You broke his arm?”
“His negligence broke yours.”
I looked down at the cast on my arm and took a step backward, but Hunter was too close. He wrapped his hand around my wrist and pulled me flush with his body. I could feel every hard, aggressive inch of him. His eyes were lifeless and wicked, peering back into mine as I shoved against his chest and tried to wriggle out of his grasp.
“Are you going to hurt me?” I hissed as pedestrians walked by. I could have screamed. I could have made a scene. Maybe someone would have helped me, but I wanted to know why.
“I see how excited you are, Roe,” he said before looking over my head then back at me. “You like being wanted, but I’ll tell you the truth. I want nothing to do with you. I hate you. You’re nothing. No one. Just a debt I owe.” None of this made sense. He was talking in riddles. “My prettiest debt,” he then whispered before stroking my cheek. His hands were icy cold, matching his imposing stature hovering over me. I barely met the middle of his chest and had to lean all the way back to meet his hardened stare.
“I don’t understand any of this,” I whispered. The tall buildings surrounding us seemed to fall at the feet of his declaration. He was larger than life, and right then, I felt so small I could have stood on the quill of a forgotten feather and blown away with the simplest breeze.
“Why are you obsessed with someone you hate?”
His body shivered. “Why are you obsessed with the idea of being wanted?”
He knew me. Really knew me. This virtual stranger had been watching me my entire life, and that made me sick to my stomach. I exha
led and jerked my knee up, nailing him in the balls with a hard kick. He folded over with a groan, releasing my wrist and giving me the opportunity to run away. Well, shuffle away.
Hunter might have had an outsider’s look at my life, peering through the windows of my existence. But he didn’t know me. At my core, I wasn’t obsessed with being wanted. I was obsessed with survival.
Men in business suits and joggers fluttered out of the way as I stumbled down the sidewalk, anxious to get away from Hunter. Seeing an alleyway, I slunk down it and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw it didn’t lead to a dead end. Water dripped from drains, and people shouted on the street at my back. Each hard step away jostled my aching bones. I was out of breath, my lungs pressing against my bruised ribs. My blood felt too thick for my veins as it pumped throughout my body.
Rushing around another corner, I scraped my palm against the coarse brick of the building. Sweat poured down my face as I dodged a sleeping homeless man and made my way toward a park on the other side of the alley. I moved faster and faster, jogging lightly as my backpack bounced against my back. “You’re going to hurt yourself,” his tense voice called in a weary drawl that was almost insulting. I breathed in through my nose. I couldn’t fight him off. I spotted a patrolling police officer in the distance, whistling and kicking at the sidewalk with his polished shoes. I opened my mouth to scream, the tip of my foot just out of the shadowed alleyway, with the light of day welcoming me to safety.
But a hand wrapped around my mouth. A bicep curled against my cheek. Soft lips pressed against my ear. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
I groaned against his palm, trying to scream into the muffled barrier. My feet kicked as he dragged me across the pavement. My body thrashed, each jerking movement making scalding tears burn my eyes and trail fiercely down my flushed cheeks. “You’re going to fucking hurt yourself,” he grunted again while dragging me back into the dark alley, where the only witnesses to his danger were trash bins and a light scattering of apathetic men sleeping on the street.
The glimmer of an idea bloomed in my mind. It was a trick I learned at a young age, something I hadn’t had to do since my mother’s death. I swiftly connected the dots to his motivations and went limp, my body becoming dead weight until I crashed to the ground. I knew it would hurt, but my pain seemed to fragment his cruelty. If I had to hurt to get away, I’d bite off my own arm and shove it down his throat.
His fingers were outstretched, reaching for me as I fell onto my tailbone. I cried out the moment I landed, shocking pain surging through my already throbbing body. I fell sideways until my skull landed on the hard concrete, forcing my eyes to pepper with stars. “Fucking hell, Roe!” Hunter screamed before dropping to his knees and cradling me in his lap.
He tenderly stared at my face and brushed my hair out of my eyes. He rooted around my head, searching for a wound. His cold eyes melted, becoming soft yet intense. He shook with concern that felt so palpable I practically choked on his obsession.
This man might be dangerous and disturbed, but I was his weakness.
HUNTER
Roe was stooped over and clutching her head as I drove us back to Mack’s house. With her entire body forced up against the passenger door of my Jeep, she rocked with adrenaline and acted like she couldn’t get far enough away from me. She kept stealing peeks at me, though, and I met each and every stare. I was greedy for her apprehension. It was intoxicating to have her so close yet feel so distant.
I’d debated on calling Mack and having him haul her crazy ass home, but he was resting. I was starting to almost regret breaking his arm. Almost.
Working as an assassin, I learned that there was a thin line between loyalty and fear. When it came to controlling people, you had to use everything in your arsenal. Loyalty made people forgiving. Mack was willing to overlook my brutal abuse because he felt a sense of loyalty to me. I’d found him at his lowest and gave him purpose. We had a unique understanding of one another, founded on years of established boundaries. I had zero need to build that sort of relationship with Roe, though. I might have been shackled to her since I was a ten-year-old boy, but my burdens weren’t bred from loyalty, they were rooted in guilt.
I needed her fear. I knew how to forge terror and use it to my advantage.
Fuck right and wrong. If Roe thinking I was capable of harming her would keep her tucked away in her pretty little house and safe from all the dangers of the world, then so be it. I didn’t watch her for eighteen years just to lose her now. She was too negligent, too wild.
“Where are you taking me?” she finally asked. The white sweater she wore was coated in street grime from her fall. Her wavy hair was wild and windblown, and she was red in the cheeks. I’d carried her to my car once I realized she hadn’t seriously hurt herself during the ridiculous stunt she pulled downtown. She didn’t fight me or try to get away again, thankfully. She just peered at me with questions in her golden brown eyes. After needlessly hurting herself, I saw a spark there that she hadn’t had before. She was smug, like she’d figured me out. I didn’t like her thinking she had me under her thumb, but I could manipulate her curiosity. I was still in control.
“Home,” I grunted.
“That narrows it down,” she replied, her shaky tone dripping with sarcasm. “I don’t really have a home. That place where I grew up with Mack is all a lie. Are you taking me to your home? I don’t particularly want to sleep in that cage you call a bedroom again, but I’m thinking I don’t have much of a choice. You just run my entire life, and I’m supposed to nod my head like an obedient little lamb and be okay with it.” She punctuated her words with a scowl and rolled her eyes. Infuriating little lamb, indeed.
I forced myself to be patient. She was inexperienced. Though her life wasn’t easy, she was still naïve about how the world worked. She didn’t know she was sitting two feet from a seasoned killer. Instinctually, she sensed that I was dangerous. Her understanding of self-preservation was screaming, “Run away!”
But she didn’t know how bad it was. I knew the specific amount of pressure required to snap her delicate neck. I could kill her quietly on a crowded street, and no one would know. I could hide her body where no one could find it. I had three guns hidden in my car within arm’s reach. Commanding bullets was my calling, and if I wanted to, I could end her life in the blink of an eye. She might still have some fight in her, but she’d learn soon enough that she didn’t control her fate, I did.
“You do have a home. I might have hired Mack to watch you, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t think of you as family. Did you know that his daughter died? He took this job because he wanted a second chance at fatherhood. I’m not going to sit here and let you belittle how much that man cares for you.” My words were heavy, but I didn’t want her hating Mack. I might be vicious, but he was a good man. Just because I had fucked up expectations didn’t mean I wanted her questioning his character. I wasn’t planning on telling her any of this, but she needed to know that Mack wasn’t some schmuck I got off the streets. He was a good guy. He took his job seriously, gave me updates, and watched her back. He was better than any foster family she would have ended up with.
Her eyes cracked open in wonder. I wasn’t sure if she was more unsettled about Mack’s past or my outburst. I needed to rein in the touchy feely shit. I didn’t want her to have the wrong idea about me.
Maybe by some standards, I was the stalker she accused me of being. I watched her. I...obsessed over her safety. But it wasn’t because I found the way her heart-shaped mouth curved into a beautiful pout to be tempting. I didn’t pine over her long legs or her delicate hands and defined collarbones. It wasn’t those long as fuck lashes that left shadows on her cheeks or the way she dived head first into the world with an open heart and jaded past.
No. She was a debt I had to pay.
“I didn’t know Mack had a daughter,” she murmured before turning the vent in the car away from her. I noticed a bead of sweat dripping down her templ
e and immediately adjusted the heat in the car.
I was always doing this shit—always adjusting the climate to keep her comfortable. I spent my life keeping ten steps ahead of her. Fuckers at school gave her trouble? I spoke with them. She wanted to try ice skating? I got her classes with the best fucking coach in the area. But she didn’t make it easy on me. She was the type to never be happy, always seeking the next thrill, the next passion. She rarely stayed with one thing for too long. Last month she wanted to be a photographer, this month a dancer. Next month she’d probably take up modeling, Lord knows she had the body for it.
She was the same way with hobbies, friends, and relationships, too. She fluttered from one intense obsession to the next, never feeling fulfilled long enough to stick around. Her sadness was her only constant, though. Her life was a whirlwind, but she grieved her dead parents like clockwork.
Exiting the highway, I watched from the corner of my eye as she opened and closed her mouth, as if deliberating over what to say. She looked like a fucking goldfish. Tired of watching her wrestle with her thoughts, I finally shouted, “Spit it out!” I wanted to know what was going on in her head. I could watch her all day, but that didn’t mean I understood how her mind worked. It was infuriating. She wasn’t just flighty, she was indecisive. It made predicting her needs fucking impossible.
Letting out a sigh, she finally answered. “I just want some answers. You don’t have to tell me everything, but if you could just explain some of it, I’ll d-do my best to keep safe.”
Keep safe, huh? That sounded suspiciously like bargaining, and I’d be damned before she used her safety against me. She thought she could hold her wellbeing over my head and make me heel? Fuck that.