by Cameron Dane
Looking into Alex’s eyes, Hunter mouthed, his voice producing no sound, I’m sorry. He sank the razor into his skin, and then again and again, and fought down a cry as fire licked through his sliced flesh. The demons still slammed against his insides like battering rams, fighting to get free and wreak havoc, so Hunter cut into his chest a fourth and fifth time. Each small bloodletting temporarily focused Hunter and silenced the war raging inside him. But this time, with Alex watching him, the series of cuttings didn’t dull the storm the way it usually did.
Tears streamed down Alex’s cheeks, and wetness streaked Hunter’s face too. Horror at the atrocity he had become pushed at Hunter’s throat, choking him with bile, but he slipped the blade into his flesh again, deeper this time. Oh Christ. Oh Christ. Oh Christ. An inferno of scream-worthy pain exploded in his chest and down his stomach, and wet, slick blood coated his fingertips and the razor. Hunter stifled the screams within and began banging the side of his head into the wall to help dissipate the fiery pain. Inside him, he finally gained distance on the chaos, and smothered the impending doom.
ALEX STARED AT Hunter, absorbed what he did to himself, and couldn’t contain his cry of despair. Every time the man took the razor to his body, it killed Alex inside. Alex swore if he looked down, he would see mirroring cuts in his flesh and blood streaming down his own skin. When Hunter started hitting his head against the wall, Alex lost his control and scrambled away.
“This was a mistake.” Alex covered his mouth and had to use the wall to help him stay standing. Through the tears filming his eyes, Alex saw Hunter in fractured, blurry pieces. “I thought I could do this, but I can’t bear to see you hurt yourself while you tie my hands to stop it. Not right now.” Failure slammed Alex in the gut and doubled him over. Crying -- God, it felt like he hadn’t stopped since Helen’s phone call -- Alex broke with refreshed grief. “I just lost someone I loved and couldn’t save. I don’t think I can live through it again, never knowing when the worrying and fear will stop.” Alex looked at Hunter and saw another casket lowering into the ground. Anguish crashed over him, knocking out his legs. “Not knowing if you’ll be dead by the end.”
Alex found his footing and tore down the hall, away from more death. He ran through the living room and kitchen blindly, on memory alone, and pushed out through the back door onto the porch. Rain swelled the white painted wood and made it groan with every step Alex took across the screened area to another door and the steps beyond. The steady patter of rain continued to fall, saturating the sparse grass yard and turning the dirt into mud. Alex didn’t care. He welcomed the cold, wet earth sinking between his toes and the rain chilling his bare skin to as icy cold as his blood felt inside.
Oh God. Alex tipped his head up to the sky, letting the fat drops of rain hit his eyes, nose, and open mouth. How did this go so wrong so fast? He’d suffered the worst loss in his life mere days ago, but by some unfathomable miracle, it had seemed he’d gained a relationship with the potential to become the most profound one in his world. Which Mack would want for me. I thought Hunter wanted the same. Betrayal from two men -- one for dying on him without giving him more definitive advice about love, and the other for clinging to his path toward destruction rather than risking himself with Alex -- sent a wicked rage through Alex and had him roaring into the dark, thunderous night.
A circle of soft light suddenly haloed the backyard. Alex blinked the rain out of his eyes and found Hunter standing on the steps. Rain plastered his hair in a dark cap against his skull. Hunter remained as naked as Alex did, and his uncovered, scarred body only wrenched a painful reminder through Alex of the trust they’d developed tonight. Gauze dotted in pinks and reds covered the area where he’d cut himself. The sight of the bandage served as a gaping chasm between them, seemingly so deep and large Alex could not build a bridge strong enough to get to Hunter on the other side. He did not possess the skills.
Immediate denial gutted right through Alex, stealing his breath. He’d never been a quitter, and he’d never walked away from something he wanted to win. Maybe he needed to apply that drive to winning people now. To win one person. Alex took a step forward. Just as fast, Hunter took a step back. Shit. Alex moved again, and so did Hunter. Welling with pain, Alex didn’t take a third step.
Alex tunneled his hands through his wet hair, scratching his frustration into his scalp. “You have to give me something here, Hunt. My head is a minefield of contradictory next moves for us, and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing anymore.”
Hunter had never looked more like unmovable stone. “I’m sorry I did this to you. I wanted to help, but I’ve fucked with your head and made everything harder for you.”
“You were a help,” Alex said, passion for this man infusing his words. “You were a rock. I don’t think I could have gotten through these last few days without you. I thought we got close. I know we did. If you deny it, I will know you are a liar and never believe another word out of your mouth.”
Somehow Hunter went even more still. Right now, Alex clung to that silence as an agreement.
More embers inside Alex started to flicker and flame, and he couldn’t contain them. “For the life of me, though” -- he shot Hunter a sideways glance as he started to prowl the backyard -- “I cannot understand the huge swings in you. If you were always hot and aggressive with me, or always cold and remote, I would understand it and even learn to work with what you could give me. But you’re solid with me for three whole days, and then you go cold. We have intimacy, which I think you want, but then you freak out and run away. More than once,” he reminded the man, jabbing his finger in Hunter’s direction. “Your emotions and actions are all over the map, and I have never liked working with a person or stepping into a situation where I can’t see the outcome before I start. I tend to avoid -- personally and professionally -- people I can’t read. It is a weakness of mine; I admit it. And you, Hunter, God help me, you are in a foreign language I’ve never seen or heard before.”
Alex landed at the bottom of the steps, so very near to Hunter, and his arms ached to reach out and touch him. “I’m a fucking smart man, though,” he went on, not backing off this time. “I can learn to read and speak you fluently, if you will only guide me where I need to go to learn. Tell me, Hunter. I don’t want this to end, but I don’t know how in the hell to proceed.”
Hunter averted his stare. He stood more rigid than the first day they crashed into each other.
Sighing, Alex pleaded, “You have to give me something more, or we are lost.”
With his arms locked at his sides, Hunter finally turned and found Alex’s gaze. The cold in his eyes punched the air out of Alex’s lungs. “I can’t care about people anymore,” Hunter said, his voice monotone. “At least not more than peripherally. And I definitely can’t let myself love them. I have to maintain distance. There’s too much ugliness inside me, and when I start to feel, things go bad in my head.” He spoke as if reading from an instruction manual, no emotion at all. “The twisted stuff gets mixed in with the good stuff. It’s like a tornado and a hurricane and an earthquake of emotions all going off at the same time. The feelings either drive me to claw at you and bite you or tie you up so I can be as rough with you as I need to be in order to release it, or I can run away and turn it on myself before I do so much physical damage to you -- or someone else -- you can’t ever recover from it. I can’t let sex or even just being with you become too personal. When it does, the destructive places inside me take over. I can’t stop them. I’ve tried.”
Alex leaped up the steps and grabbed Hunter’s arm. “But you didn’t stumble once the entire time you were helping me take care of everything for Mack.” His voice held a begging quality he’d only used with his deceased loved one. “I know you haven’t hurt yourself in the time we’ve been here -- at least until just now. I saw you naked. I’m looking right now. I’ve touched your scars and burns.” Hunter’s body called to Alex, and Alex ran his fingertips over faded scars on the man’s bell
y and chest, memorizing the grooves. “None of these are fresh.”
Trembling, Hunter squeezed his eyes shut. He exhaled, suddenly unsteady. “I was successful as long as I kept refocusing myself and treated helping you like a military mission.” It sounded like he pushed each word through rust. “The goal was to get you through this week and make sure you were okay. Then tonight we started confessing secrets to each other, and you kept challenging me and made the sex so fucking intimate…”
As he’d done in the living room, Alex grazed Hunter’s mouth with his. “I told you I loved you.”
“Stop saying that.” Hunter turned his head and retreated onto the porch, putting the screen door between them. The screen couldn’t hide Hunter’s bleak, dark eyes from Alex’s scrutiny. “I don’t want you to love me, because I can’t love you back. I won’t let myself. I won’t risk hurting you. We have to stay casual, or I can’t do this.”
Alex laughed, welcoming the cynical, hollow sound. He didn’t have another tear in him to shed. Timing truly was everything. He forced himself to remain standing, facing this man who’d stumbled into his life and changed it forever, who now didn’t want any part of it. “You need impersonal, and I’m at a place in my life where I want more than empty sex. I need it. I want to trust the man I’m with. I want to wake up with him in the morning and kiss him good-bye as we leave for work. I want to laugh with him and tell him embarrassing stories about how nerdy I was when I was a kid.” Losing the battle, grief over Mack’s death mixing in with this one, Alex wiped an errant tear before he could go on. “I want him to share secrets about his childhood too. I want to make love to him with so much intimacy we’re scared it will kill both of us. I want to go to his sister’s house for Christmas so her boyfriends can glare at me and act like they don’t like me, but feel secure I’m a member of their family because they all love the man I’m with and want him to be happy. That’s what I want.” Alex tried to hold his emotions in check, but his voice quivered terribly. “And it’s all pretty damn personal.”
Hunter fingered the gauze covering his scars, and the hint of light still shining went out in his eyes. “I can’t give you that,” he murmured scratchily. “I’m sorry.”
At least he’s honest. Alex turned away, needing to hide what remained of his tattered pride. “Then I think you need to go.”
“I’ll pack a bag and leave. Good-bye.”
Behind Alex, the kitchen door softly clicked closed. Alex couldn’t face Hunter again. Not right now. Rather than go back inside to some warm, dry clothes and a roof over his head, Alex stepped into the yard, right into a drilling, stinging heavier rain.
“Thanks a lot, Mack.” Alex glared at the black sky. “Is that you pissing on me from heaven and having a good laugh at how bad I am at this?” Without a clear target, Alex raged at the very heavens themselves. “It’s my fault, right? Maybe I’d know how to spring ‘I love you’ on a guy if I’d let myself experience just one emotion in my other relationships, right? Is that what you’re thinking?”
Rain continued to pour down on Alex, but he didn’t move. He welcomed the cold. Maybe if he could ice himself over well enough, then he could present himself to Hunter again with nary a warm feeling left inside him. The guy would love that. Then they could fuck all they wanted without any consequences at all. Alex used to crave a similar situation himself. He could find a way to get the indifference back. Then he and Hunter could become just a couple of cold bastards making each other’s asses sore a couple of nights a week and then slip right back into their everyday lives with no one the wiser. Not even the two of them would think about what they did to each other until “fuck night” came up on the calendar again. That sounded good. Just like what Hunter wanted.
Alex stayed in the rain, berating himself and snarking at Hunter for a good long while. By the time a horn honked -- presumably Hunter’s cab -- Alex had worked himself up a good head of steam. Not only at himself either. Royally pissed now, Alex blasted a great deal of the fire inside him at Hunter too.
* * * *
JULY
Hunter opened his door to find Jace with his hand poised to bang on the wood.
Fuck. Hunter pushed past his uniformed friend, slamming the door behind him. “I don’t have time for you right now,” he muttered on his way to his truck.
Not technically true. Hunter didn’t officially have to be at work for hours. He’d taken to going in early to spend time with Hercules, though. Burying himself in work also served as an effective way to avoid Sarah and Jace’s questions; he knew they still had a thousand about why he’d gone to Georgia with Alex, as well as why he’d returned without him. Up till now, Hunter had successfully avoided them for nearly two weeks. Work also seemed to be the only place Hunter could exist where he successfully controlled his emotions.
Contrary to what Hunter had thought, coming home alone had not helped to center him. By trying to avoid Sarah and Jace, he’d increased his tension tenfold. And when he wasn’t knee-deep in work, Hunter did nothing but think about Alex. Where he was. Why he hadn’t returned to Quinten yet when he should have come back ten days ago. If he was okay. If he regretted telling Hunter “I love you.” Christ. As much as Hunter needed to forget for his sanity, he could not get that raw confession out of his head. He could not forget what it felt like to have Alex’s hands on his body -- complete physical contact the likes of which Hunter had not allowed himself in years.
Jesus. Hunter grabbed his abdomen. The blowback of unearthed emotions still hit him with the force of a roadside bomb. He dug into his pocket and clasped his hand around his knife, his constant friend since returning home. Hunter had slipped back to cutting himself on an almost daily basis.
Reaching their trucks, Jace grabbed Hunter before he could open his door. “What the hell is going on with you?” Jace hissed, leaning into Hunter’s space. “Because I’m about one excuse away from hauling you in to the station and locking you up just so Sarah can have two words with you.”
The urge to slam his fist into Jace’s face had Hunter rubbing furiously at his pocketknife. “Cain and Luke were generous to give me that time off,” he explained in clipped tones. “I’m making it up to them by working extra hours. I’ve been busy.”
Jace’s mouth twisted in a frown. “Don’t keep doing this to your sister. Call her and give her fifteen minutes of your time.” Jace clenched his hands in front of him but then pursed his lips, shook his head, and opened his fists, spreading his fingers. “She waited forever for you to come home, and she never once complained. She deserves time with you.”
Guilt leeched into Hunter’s gut, mixing with the other turmoil. “I know.”
“Then make it happen!” Jace smacked his hand against the roof of the truck. “I’m not kidding. I love you, but I am about this close” -- he pinched two fingers with less than a centimeter between them -- “to getting ugly with you. Right now, I don’t even think it’s a close bet as to who would win. Call Sarah.” As Jace backed up to his patrol SUV, he stabbed a finger Hunter’s way. “And call one of those psychiatrists I told you about too. Don’t make me come find you at the crack of dawn again.”
Hunter shut his door carefully when everything in him itched to slam it right off its hinges. He hated facing Jace, hated the truth his friend could throw in his face without fear of retaliation, and hated the way Jace expected results or face his consequences.
Growling and jamming his hand against his window, Hunter then peeled out of the parking lot for work. He would call Sarah later -- when he wasn’t still fucking spoiling to beat the hell out of Jace.
* * * *
Darkness still beating back the dawn, Alex turned at the two-mile point in his run and began trekking back toward his trailer. He hadn’t slept much during the extra time he’d remained in Georgia, and returning to Quinten around midnight last night hadn’t helped him relax and catch any z’s either. After hours staring at the ceiling, alternating between worrying about Hunter and cursing his very exist
ence, Alex had given up the pretense and gotten up to run. At least at this earlier hour, he wouldn’t cross paths with Hunter. Right now, at a time when Alex was more aware than ever he needed Mack and the man wasn’t here for him anymore, Alex couldn’t predict how he would react to seeing Hunter. Alex fucking hated his inability to foresee his actions these days, and he put more than a little of the blame on a stubborn, closed-off, dark-haired cowboy.
Alex growled as a truck came into view, and then breathed a sigh of relief when he recognized the newer model with the Quick Holdings logo on the side panel. A moment later, Rand pulled onto the shoulder of the road.
Rand rolled down the window. “Sir. You didn’t inform me of your return.” His stormy eyes clouded, and he dipped his head. “My condolences.”
“Thank you.” Alex squeezed Rand’s forearm, careful not to wrinkle the guy’s suit. “I got in late last night. It was an impulsive decision to return, so I didn’t want anyone to feel obligated to pick me up in Bozeman.” He raised a brow at his impeccably mannered right-hand man.
“Yes, sir.” The guy didn’t so much as blush. “It’s fortuitous that you’re here. I debated informing you about a major setback at our Miami project. I made the decision to trust one of the local men here, Jarvis Hammett -- I think you’ve met him -- to oversee the Quinten project for a few days while I go handle the Miami mess. I leave this afternoon.”
Alex slid the image of a gray-haired Quinten man with foreman experience into place. “I remember Jarvis.”
A truck slowed for a heartbeat on the road right then. Through the windshield of Rand’s truck, Alex met a dark, unapproachable gaze, and his pulse immediately kicked into high gear. It’s him. Fuck.
Distracted, unable to break away from Hunter’s stare, Alex discreetly adjusted his growing bulge. “What’s going on in Miami?” he asked, swearing silently as Hunter sped up and gave Alex his taillights.