by Cameron Dane
Alex scratched at Hunter’s hand on his throat, barely eeking out “Stop it” through the compromised air space. Hunter continued to squeeze, and he moved to strike again. He brought his fist down, aiming straight for Alex’s heart. A split second before Hunter made contact, something familiar washed across his gaze, and he tripped over himself in his scramble to get away.
“Jesus Christ.” Clearly wild and terrified now, Hunter started to shake. He gathered up his clothes and boots, holding them against his body like a shield. “This is why I needed the knife.” Not holding eye contact, Hunter stayed as far away from Alex as he could as he edged to the door. “This is why I have to stay away.”
“Hunter.” Alex sprang up and grabbed his arm. “Stop.”
Hunter tore out of Alex’s hold and his trailer in one agitated move. “Don’t touch me. Please. I still feel like I could kill you right now. The ugliness is still ripping at me.” Barely pausing in his strides, Hunter swiped one of the knives off the ground as he rushed to his truck. “I have to get away.”
Alex chased after him. “Hunter, you can’t keep running.”
“Look at what I did to you!” Hunter’s torment battered Alex worse than his fists had. “I don’t have any choice. I could hurt you again. I will hurt you again, and next time… Jesus.” Hunter wiped his face, his hand still trembling. “I can’t even think about what I could do to you.”
“You stopped yourself,” Alex reminded him.
“Barely. And not soon enough.” Hunter kept the truck between them. Once he started pulling on his clothes, it felt like he erected another barrier between them. “I might not next time.”
Alex remained rooted in place when he wanted nothing more than to leap over the broken-down vehicle and take Hunter into his arms. “You would,” he said gently instead. “I know it.”
Hunter shook his head, and the unreachable darkness again clouded his stare. “I have more than watched my fellow soldiers die. I have killed too. Do you understand?” Through the windshield, Alex watched Hunter stab the knife into the dashboard. “I have killed the enemy,” he growled in a savage tone, “so don’t say I’m not capable of snapping your neck before I even realize I have my hands on you. It is possible. You can’t know what it’s like to have that inside you unless you’ve done it yourself, so don’t act like you know me better than I know myself. Your arrogance that you can fix me only makes me want to rip your head off even more.”
True shame, something Alex rarely felt, twisted his gut. “You’re right,” he admitted. “I’ve never been in war, so I can’t truly understand that part of you.” Alex took a step closer but then immediately halted when Hunter’s nostrils flared dangerously. Alex looked into Hunter’s shuttered eyes instead and tried to get closer another way. “But don’t ask me to give up on you just because there’s risk involved. I’m not built that way. I don’t know how to stop working toward something I want. For the first time since confessing my feelings about Mack, I want a person more than any success or money in the world.” A little raspy, he said, “I want you.”
Hunter became like a block of stone. “You can’t have me. I will never let you again.” He climbed in behind the wheel and slammed the door. “Good-bye.”
Without looking back, Hunter drove away. Alex stayed planted in place until he could no longer see Hunter’s truck. Right then, instantly, adrenaline wore off, and his face and torso throbbed with fire, painfully reminding him of Hunter’s lapse in control. Good God. An invisible weight held Alex down and made his steps back into the trailer slow and heavy. What in the hell happened here today?
Alex trudged into the bathroom and got the first good look at his face in the tiny mirror. His cheek and jaw flamed bright red, and blood flowed from his split lip. He didn’t have to see his ribs and stomach to know soreness and bruising would set in before the day ended.
Gut instinct told Alex that Hunter would never hit him again, and Alex always trusted his gut. At the same time, Hunter did know himself better than Alex possibly could. Alex’s intelligence told him when a person cautioned another away, the smart man heeded the warning. His stomach churned nastily once more, but this time he knew it came on the heels of possibly never sharing intimacy with Hunter again. Alex studied the damage Hunter had rained on his face and torso, but he couldn’t forget Hunter allowing Alex into his body without a condom -- and the mind-blowing love coursing through him when he’d come in Hunter’s ass. Alex had never done that with anyone in his life. And as he’d told Hunter, something in Alex knew Hunter had never gone bare with another person either.
“Oh God, Mack.” Alex swallowed down thickness in his throat, his grief at losing his lifeline still fresh and cutting. “I need you more than ever right now.” He tipped his head back, maybe hoping for a miracle. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”
Silence reigned. As Alex slid down the wall to the floor, it truly hit him for the first time that he was on his own.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A half hour later, Hunter slipped into the red barn at work, still rattled by what he’d done to Alex. Only the occasional shuffle of hooves and snorts from the horses greeted him, and for that Hunter was grateful. He didn’t think he could face his bosses yet, and he needed to figure out how to stop shaking or he would give himself away. Maybe everyone will see it anyway. Hunter braced himself against Herc’s stall, his limbs unsteady. They’ll take one look at me and know I beat a man I just said I loved.
Hunter exhaled and covered his face with his hands, as if hiding his eyes could block out the never-ending loop of what he’d just done from playing in his mind. He could still feel his fist connecting with Alex’s flesh, and the cracking sound continued to ring in his ears. Worse than that, for Hunter’s sanity, was the flood of endorphins that had drenched his system while hitting Alex, and the knowledge that if he could have kept pounding on Alex, he would have achieved the same calm that always centered him when he cut into his own flesh. Brutalizing Alex with his fists some more would have eventually settled the chaos inside Hunter. I’m a monster.
Unsure what to do -- maybe turn himself in for assault -- Hunter almost slid to the floor when something cool and wet nudged his shoulder. Hunter pulled his fingers from his eyes and looked over his shoulder into Hercules’s warm, curious stare. The horse bumped Hunter through the bars on the upper half of his stall door as best he could again, and Hunter actually chuckled. It sounded rough as hell, but it came from his gut.
“Thanks, boy.” He rubbed the bridge of Herc’s nose up to his forelock, just the way the animal liked it. “I need the bucking up today.” Hunter pressed his face to the bars, and whispered, “You have no idea how much.” With Hunter’s confession, Herc gently nudged his nose into Hunter’s forehead and whinnied, throwing spittle on Hunter’s face.
Hunter wrinkled his nose and cocked a brow at the animal. “Gee, thanks. I didn’t know I needed another shower.” He wiped his face with his sleeve but stayed close to the bars and Herc. For the first time since seeing Alex on the side of the road such a short while ago, Hunter actually felt the calm inside him regaining control.
“Oh my God, Hunter.” Cain’s hushed voice drew Hunter’s attention to the barn entrance. At the open doors, Cain stood with one hand over his mouth. “Look at that.” Muffled sounding, Cain put his hand back at his side but didn’t move. “What happened?” For a split second, Hunter’s heart started to seize -- he can see, he knows -- but Cain quickly added, “He’s nuzzling you. Hercules is actually nuzzling you,” and killed the shot of adrenaline before it punctured his heart.
Holy shit. Hunter took a second look at Hercules, and his chest swelled. “I didn’t even think,” he admitted. “I was just here, having a minute to myself before I started working, and he came to me.” Careful now, Hunter barely moved as he slid a glance Cain’s way. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Something changed.” Assessing from where he stood, Cain held command now but didn’t take a step into the stable.
“Open the stall door a bit and see if you can approach.”
Hunter slid the bolts out of their latches and pushed the door open to the width of his frame. The moment he stepped one foot over the threshold into Hercules’s territory, the horse rolled his eyes and scrambled backward until he’d plastered himself to the back of his stall. Shit. Sighing, Hunter moved into the walkway once more and locked the animal back into the safety of his small home.
As Cain entered the barn, Hunter grimaced. “I’m sorry it wasn’t the miracle you were hoping for.”
Cain braced his legs, crossed his arms, and put his full attention on the horse. “I’m not hoping for miracles. I just pray for progress, and look at him.” He jerked his head toward Hercules. “Not only did he come to you, touch you himself, and let you rub him, but he didn’t freak out nearly as much as he has been when we’ve tried to enter the stall in the past.” They’d had to tranq Hercules twice more so the vet could pull blood for more tests. They still had no medical reason for the horse’s retreat into himself. “He’s in the corner, but he didn’t make that terrible scream, and he didn’t rear up and try to ward you off with his front quarters.” Cain clapped Hunter’s shoulder, nodding. “It’s progress.”
Hunter studied Hercules more closely, searching for the truth in everything Cain had said. “I guess it is,” he murmured, admiring the animal when he shuffled the very smallest distance from the back wall of his stall.
“Keep talking to him like you’ve been doing,” Cain instructed. “He has bonded to you for some reason, and I believe you’re the one who is going to bring him all the way back to us.”
Shaking his head, Hunter backed away. “I happened to be here. I think it was just a coincidence.”
“I don’t, and I trust my instincts. Listen” -- Cain moved to his office -- “I want you to spend the morning working with Boudicca. Luke and I feel good that she’s ready for work with our clients, but we’d like to get a few other people on her to test her first. Then, I’m sorry, but I need you mucking stalls.”
“No problem. I’ll go get Boudicca now.”
“Good man.” Pointing, Cain added, “And don’t forget to take lunch.”
Hunter basked in the respect of his boss for about a second. Then he curled his fingers and the soreness in his knuckles slammed home for him the white-hot blind spot that had wrested control from him and the beating Alex had suffered at his hands this morning as a result. Suddenly wretchedly ill, Hunter managed to make it around the side of the barn before he violently threw up.
Again.
* * * *
Knee-deep in the second half of his workday, Hunter hauled manure in a wheelbarrow to a tarp-lined truck he would eventually drive to a centralized compost area on the main Hawkins property. The Hawkins brothers consolidated their manure and biodegradable organic waste, which they then used to create fertilizer they sold to nurseries all over the country.
The sun shone bright in the sky, not a cloud in sight to block the power of its rays. Perspiration already had Hunter’s shirt attached to his back and arms, and sweat continued to run down his spine, saturating the waistband of his jeans. His hat blocked the light from his face, but he still had to stop for a minute anyway and wipe his bandana across his forehead. Jesus. He did not remember summers in Montana being quite this hot.
Hooves thundered against the packed earth beneath Hunter’s feet. A moment later Luke veered his horse to a stop at Hunter’s side. He looked down at Hunter from his mount, his pale stare shadowed by the brim of his Stetson. Hunter, however, could not mistake the unforgiving twist of his boss’s mouth.
“Go to the stable and get one of Cain’s T-shirts from the bedroom there,” Luke said, his tone clipped. “I could see from a half mile away that you are about to drop.”
Talons of panic latched onto Hunter’s heart. “That’s okay. I’m all right.” His head buzzed with nightmare scenarios, making him dizzy. “I just need some water.”
Luke assessed Hunter openly for another second and then slid off his horse. Letting the animal take its lead, Luke took off his hat, handed it to Hunter, and then grabbed the hem of his T-shirt. “Let me show you something.” He drew the shirt over his head and bared a very fine chest and flat belly. “Because I think you need to see it.” Luke turned around, and Hunter gasped. Dozens of long, faded scars criss-crossed the man’s back, and he even had some circular burns.
Once Luke turned around and donned his T-shirt again, he laid a penetrating stare on Hunter. “If I were willing to drop trou,” he went on, “you would see those scars continue all the way down my backside, down to my ankles. Let me explain something to you, Hunter. We all have scars here. Cain also has some. And while you might not be able to see them on the outside, everyone else who works here has at least a few on the inside too. Beyond that” -- Luke righted his Stetson over his forehead -- “we welcome people to Forrest-Hawk who face serious challenges, and who often aren’t given a chance because they’re in a chair, or they live in a brace, or they suffer from a disease that limits their mobility.” Luke drew his beat-up-looking stallion to him, smiled up at the animal, and rubbed his shoulder. “We give horses a second lease on life and a chance to prove they still have great hearts and spirits in them. With the right care, they once again become eager to please a master. So here’s the deal. Whatever you’re hiding under that shirt” -- he waved his finger at Hunter’s drenched cotton mess -- “is your business. Unless you want to tell us, nobody will ask or speculate behind your back about whatever scars you possess. While you’re here at Forrest-Hawk, you are free from questions and double takes. We’re all here to do a job, but I can’t do mine if I’m constantly worrying I’m going to find you passed out from heatstroke somewhere on my property. Now I’m telling you to work without a shirt entirely or go get a T-shirt and put it on.” His voice held the tone of one used to being obeyed. “Do you understand?”
If I don’t, I won’t have a job tomorrow. “Yes, sir.” Hunter barely scratched the agreement out through the tightness squeezing his throat.
“Good.” In one smooth move, Luke pulled himself back into the saddle. “I’m meeting Cain in a few minutes, and we’re going to take a couple of the horses on a good run. If you need us, we have the walkies.” He tapped the one on his belt as he guided his horse toward the lush, green mountains that backdropped their land.
Shit. Crazy, ridiculous thoughts swamped Hunter’s brain as Luke put his animal into a trot. Jesus fucking shit. “Luke!” The shout left his mouth, even as every scratching instinct in him tried to yank it back in.
Luke circled back to Hunter’s side. “Yep?”
His heartbeat erratic, and now sweating for reasons that had nothing to do with the temperature, Hunter said scratchily, “You showed me something private just now. It’s only right for you to see why I wear what I do.” Hunter unbuttoned his long-sleeved shirt and peeled it, along with his black leather glove, off his scar-riddled body. Not even the immediate wash of fresh air across his overheated skin could quell his fear, but he stood still in the face of scrutiny.
Luke gave Hunter a once-over and nodded. “Okay.” He met Hunter’s gaze. Knowledge of the self-inflicted scars lived in his gray eyes, but the respect Hunter had always seen there remained. “Now if you need the glove to protect the scar tissue from where you lost your fingers, then put it back on. Otherwise, go get a T-shirt and get back to work.” He canted his horse backward a dozen steps. “Call us if you need us.” Luke then rode off without another word.
Hunter stood stock-still for the longest stretch of minutes, unable to process what had just happened. Slowly, though, against the crazy thumping still knocking in his chest, his mouth hitched at the edge, and he almost smiled. He had a place where he could walk around without fear of questions or judgment, and his bosses even had their own secrets just for themselves too.
Alex didn’t judge you either. The insidious ugliness constantly living in Hunter’s head instantly showed itself. And l
ook what you did to him.
Hunter did an about-face and began taking big strides to the red barn. Each step spurred a faster one, until Hunter went from walking to running, trying with everything in him to outpace that destructive place inside him. Cain and Luke had each given Hunter good feedback today, more than intimated they were pleased with his work and wanted him at Forrest-Hawk. Hunter just wanted five minutes of peace inside his head to enjoy it.
Exhaustion ruled Hunter’s life. He could not remember the last time he’d experienced a full night of deep, peaceful sleep. Before his time in Afghanistan and Iraq, he knew that much at least. Returning stateside had not brought him closer to sleep or ease. If anything, he’d gotten worse. Hunter sometimes thought if he could reenlist, he would have done it by now, and right this minute he would be entrenched in the chaos of battle once more. At least then the chaos and insanity would make sense and the shit in his head would simply become part of the noise.
Once inside the stable, Hunter paused at Herc’s stall. The horse trotted up and whinnied a hello. Hunter did not attempt to enter the animal’s sanctuary this time. Instead he held his hand out, waited, and sweet heaven, Hercules nudged him for a rub.
“You’re getting there, boy.” Through the bars, Hunter scratched the horse’s shoulder. “I wish I could too,” he admitted softly.
The horse gently bumped Hunter’s arm and neighed again. Bittersweet affection banded Hunter’s chest, and he leaned his face against the bars. “You can be supportive because you didn’t see what I did to a very good man this morning.” Confession, even a vague one to a horse, burned his chest even more. “At least you didn’t trample anybody” -- Christ, Hunter couldn’t forget Alex’s face as he threw punch after punch on him -- “or God knows if you ever would have let anyone near you again.”