by Cameron Dane
His heart ached as the truth settled into his soul once more.
I’m so sorry, Alex.
* * * *
“This is beyond generous,” Ty said to Alex, then whistled softly as he took another look at the check in his hand. “We’re just having lunch, and I was letting off some steam. I didn’t mean for you to hand over a donation.” The young man took another look at the dollar figure and then started to slide the check back across the table where they sat at the diner.
Alex stopped Ty mid-push. “Keep it. I know you didn’t invite me to lunch with any intention of parting me from some of my cash. It’s for more than revamping the bathrooms.” Ty had just finished explaining that a small plumbing issue in the boys’ bathroom at the youth center had unearthed a major issue with the pipes that the plumber had explained would be better to overhaul now than risk massive damage if left untended. “Think of it as something of a finder’s fee for the future Quick employees that come out of the stock market program here. In another ten years or so, I know I’m going to end up hiring at least a few of your kids.”
With a nod and a thank-you, Ty folded the check and slid it into his jeans’ pocket. “Does that mean you plan on being in Quinten in another decade?”
A familiar dull ache flared in Alex’s belly, and he murmured, “I hope I have a reason to be.” He had yet to do more than make brief eye contact with Hunter in the time they’d been apart, though. In those rare moments, it still appeared as if Hunter couldn’t bear to hold Alex’s gaze for more than a second. Alex knew the man well enough to read that guilt and horror still ate at Hunter for what he’d done to Alex, and it was all Alex could do to keep himself from barging his way back into Hunter’s life to demand answers and some control over Hunter’s care. The urge to help Hunter, the need to play an active role in his efforts to gain some peace in his life, pushed daily at Alex’s instincts to take action. Remaining in the background, when everything in him shouted to push his way into Hunter’s world, had become the greatest struggle of Alex’s life.
“Alex?” Softly saying Alex’s name, Ty also waved his hand in front of Alex’s face and brought Alex back into the diner. “Are you all right, man?”
Clearing his throat, getting out that awful, constant tightness, Alex grimaced. “I’m struggling to accept a situation I cannot control.” One that might not result in the outcome I want so badly. “It’s fucking hard.” To protect Hunter, Alex kept his answer vague.
Dark eyes, so full of awareness and empathy for such a young man, stared back at Alex. “If you ever need to talk,” Ty said, “or even if you just want someone to hang out with because you can’t stand to hear yourself think anymore, give me a call.” His attention slid toward the picture window at his right -- and Alex could guess to the sheriff’s station across the street. “I have something of a frustration that lives under my skin more than I wish it did too, and could use the company.”
“Still a no-go with Deputy Stuart, huh?” Alex asked. He’d been around the dark-haired young man enough now to understand his very real attraction to the beautiful, older Max.
“My blue balls would agree and tell you it’s time to start dating other people” -- his lips flattening to a hard line, Ty pulled his stare off the station and put the full glint of it back on Alex -- “and I’m starting to feel the rest of me murmur in agreement that it’s time to give up as well.”
Alex parted his lips to respond, but a breathtakingly beautiful sight across the street grabbed his complete attention. Hunter. On the other side of the road, Hunter walked up the sidewalk with his head down and his hands jammed into his pockets. He still wore a long-sleeved shirt, even in the middle of August, and that tell of his continued shame sliced a deep cut right through Alex’s heart. Watching, unable to tear his gaze away, Alex stayed with Hunter as he put his hand on the door to the sheriff’s station. At the last moment, Hunter looked up, through the glass windows on the upper half of the double doors, shook his head, and then turned away. Just as fast as Hunter had lifted his head, he turned it back down and strode away in the direction from which he had just come.
No. No. No. He’s faltering. You’re letting him drown again. Moving on automatic, Alex slid out of his seat, guided by a gut-level instinct to hold and help his man. “Excuse me.” Still keeping an eye outside, while also leaving money for his lunch on the table, Alex noticed Sarah exit the station and race down the street in Hunter’s direction. One step away from the booth, Alex turned back to the guy he was ditching, a person he now considered a real friend. “Don’t give up.” He kept his voice low and added, “Not if you really want her. Bye.”
After running out of the diner, Alex could barely hold his legs still while he waited thirty seconds for a gap in traffic to allow him to bolt across the street. In the distance, just after Alex got to the other side of the street, Hunter crossed the street as well, leaving Alex on the wrong side once more. With Sarah catching up to him, Hunter looked over his shoulder but clearly sidestepped out of her reach. Alex picked up speed, everything in him driven to intervene. Breaking into a sprint, Alex ran toward them both, his pulse skittering with wild panic as they turned and disappeared from Alex’s sight. He knew a parking lot existed beyond, and said a silent prayer that he could get to Hunter before he drove away.
Just as Alex started to cross the street again, he jerked himself to a stop midway to the other side. Spinning, Alex shouted an apology as a car swerved to avoid hitting him. Just as single-mindedly as Alex had taken off after Hunter, Alex turned and made his way to the sheriff’s station, then pushed his way inside. Things -- natural tendencies -- buzzed loudly and with passion in Alex’s head and gut, and he needed help before he did something that might lose him Hunter forever.
Alex found Jace doing paperwork at his desk; the man’s hard face became the lifeline Alex clung to in order to restore clear thinking. “I need five minutes,” he said, his voice unnaturally husky. “It can’t wait.”
It took but a second for Jace to narrow his stare and then stand. “Yeah, okay.” After moving out from behind his desk, Jace headed toward a narrow hallway. “Come with me.”
Jace led Alex to a familiar interrogation room -- one the very man had once used to accuse Alex of murder. Right now, Alex would trade the heat of that grilling and take it all over again for Hunter’s well-being.
“Talk to me,” Jace said as soon as he shut the door. “I can see you’re upset.”
“Remind me that staying away from Hunter and giving him the space he requested is the right thing to do.” Prowling around the table in the interrogation room, Alex threw a sideways glance at the big deputy stalled at the two-way mirror. “I just saw him try to come in here, change his mind, and then watched as Sarah chased after him. I was better than halfway to him before I remembered my promise that I would not interfere in his recovery.” Coming to a stop, Alex braced his hands on the table in the center of the room and allowed himself a moment to breathe before laying a hard stare on Jace again. “Tell me I’m incorrectly reading the pain in him every time I see him, and that I shouldn’t go to him. Tell me this therapy is helping him get better.”
Jace clasped one hand around the back of his neck and used the other to wipe at the deep brackets surrounding his mouth. “He’s struggling in a bad way right now. He’s fighting what he needs to do; I won’t lie to you about that. A few days ago Hunter wanted to give up the therapy and go it on his own, but Dr. Royan and Sarah convinced him to stick with it.”
“Shit, Jace.” Alex’s jaw ached with the desire to shout the walls off this place. “I can help Hunter. Since we’ve been apart, I’ve done nothing but read about the stuff going on in his head and his heart right now. I’m better equipped to understand him today. If he would let me in again, I could take care of --”
“No.” Jace swooped in and cut Alex off with one chop of his hand. “We don’t want Hunter to go from harming himself as a coping tool to relying completely upon you to get through every da
y. While that might be better for his physical well-being, it would be no better for his mental health.” Grimacing, Jace added in a softer tone, “He’s still too scared of what he could do to you anyway; he won’t let you back in right now. Respect that.”
Alex finally took a seat, but the fighter punching inside him wouldn’t yet accept defeat. He studied Jace again as his mind broke apart the situation at hand. “You must have made an assessment that he’s not dangerous to the people around him or you wouldn’t have let Sarah go after him alone just now.”
After dropping into a chair too, Jace scrubbed his face but didn’t take his focus off Alex. “You’re right. I no longer believe he would hurt anyone, especially not Sarah. But it doesn’t matter what I believe. It only matters what Hunter believes. And right now” -- Jace’s calm, certain tone and manner crushed Alex once more -- “Hunter will not let you near him and risk you. Please don’t go to him and force the issue. You might throw him so far off his axis that you’ll send him even deeper into retreat.”
With a growl, Alex mentally shoved the fighter back into his holding pen. Bleak as hell, he looked at Jace as the talons of defeat sank into his being. “This powerlessness is killing me,” he admitted. “I just want to help him.” Memories of Hunter’s helplessness leaked into Alex’s psyche and ate at him more. “I love him so much.”
Empathy openly filled every rough line in Jace’s harsh face. “I can see that. And believe me, even if he can’t let himself get near you right now, Hunter knows it too. You’re giving him strength every day, even though I know it’s hard for you to feel like you are. Part of why he’s sticking with this therapy is for you. He wouldn’t have any reason to go forward with it if some part of himself buried deep inside didn’t believe it could get him healthy and back to you.”
“I won’t go find him.” Speaking the promise out loud helped Alex solidify it as part of his reality. “Thank you for talking me off the ledge.”
“I know this is tough, man.” From across the table, Jace reached out and squeezed Alex’s forearm. “I admire you for digging in with him, even if you have to do it from the backseat.”
Exhaling an unsteady breath, Alex softly admitted, “I can’t imagine my life anymore without him in it. It’s so fucking scary to feel this way and know I might never get him back.”
“He will come back to you.” The strength in Jace’s tone helped to fill in the cracks of Alex’s uncertainty. “Stay busy, and keep believing.”
“I don’t know if I can live at my building site any more than I already am,” Alex shared as he stood, “but I guess I’ll go give it a try right now.”
“Good man.”
As they walked back through the station, Alex took heart in the solid thump of support Jace whacked against his back. Every big and small part of him still wanted to run to Hunter and take the man in his arms, but Alex fought and won out over that need to find Hunter and protect him with the full power of his strength and love. Instead Alex gave Ty a call and made arrangements to meet him for a beer later.
Right now, he needed every hand extended in friendship he could get.
* * * *
“No!” Hunched over in the visitors’ chair in Cain and Luke’s office in the red barn at Forrest-Hawk, Hunter curled his arms around his head, as if in physically blocking his brain from Dr. Royan’s sight, he could keep the man out of the excessive violence in his thoughts. “It doesn’t matter where we are.” As the terrible images came, the throbbing ripped through Hunter’s arms and fueled the need to crush his fist into something, anything, to make the ugliness retreat. “When it starts pushing inside me, I can’t hold it back.” The weight of the new knife in his pocket rippled through his flesh, calling Hunter home.
“Fight through the pictures you’re seeing, Hunter,” Dr. Royan said. “Don’t suppress them for another day. Don’t give them that power over you.”
This time Sarah entered into the rage inside Hunter’s mind’s eye. The moment he delivered the deathblow to beautiful Alex, he turned on his sister. No. Please. Shaking his head, unable to witness the vicious pictures in his head a second longer, Hunter said with a scrape of a voice, “I can’t.” Desperate to push back the atrocities in his thoughts, Hunter dug his hand into his pocket to retrieve his knife. “I need them to stop now.”
Before Hunter could slice into his arm, through his shirt and all, Dr. Royan grabbed his wrist. “No.” The man’s arm muscles visibly strained as he wrestled the knife successfully away from Hunter. “Don’t bury those thoughts with pain. You need to understand they aren’t real.”
As clearly as if Hunter lived inside his vision in real time, he ran at his sister with blood as his only appeasement and savagely attacked her with his fists. She covered her face and pleaded with him to stop, but Hunter only switched to beating the rest of her defenseless body. Stop. Make it stop. Please. Looking up at Dr. Royan, Hunter confessed, “I’m hurting her.” His knuckles felt swollen and bruised, and he knew if he looked down he would somehow see Sarah’s blood on his hands. “I can’t live with it.” Hunter surged out of his chair, lunging toward oblivion, but Dr. Royan grabbed Hunter from behind, halting his momentum before he slammed the side of his head into the wall.
“Don’t give in.” With the doctor’s size and control, he overpowered Hunter and pulled him to the door. “Come with me.” Dr. Royan let go of Hunter for just long enough to get the door open and then guided him to stand a half-dozen feet in front of Hercules’s stall. “Now keep talking, Hunter. Talk me through your dreams.”
Hercules nickered as he lifted his head in Hunter’s direction. He trotted right up to his stall door, and the horse’s inability to comprehend its danger terrified Hunter to his core. “Let me go.” His voice so stripped he almost couldn’t hear himself speak, Hunter battled against Dr. Royan’s hold on his arms. “I can’t be here. I’ll scare him.” The horse’s nostrils flared, showing that his interest in Hunter had already been piqued. “I’ll terrify him and make him regress.”
“No, you won’t.” Dr. Royan kept his voice low, but his confidence rang in Hunter’s ears. “You won’t let yourself frighten or harm him, even if you think it means your own sanity. Your bosses would not have agreed to let me talk to you here if they believed you were a danger to their animals. Keep looking at Hercules and find a way to walk through your nightmare without hurting either one of you.”
“No.” Hunter struggled against Dr. Royan even as the screams of his sister still rang in his head. He closed his eyes, but blocking out his surroundings only made the images in his mind more vivid. He brutalized Sarah and then turned on Jace as he appeared, but even bloodying the two of them wouldn’t make the nightmare end. Already torn to shreds by Hunter in his dreams, Will and Trey and Alex returned with dead eyes but mouths that repeatedly moved with silent questions about why Hunter had killed them. They got closer and closer and closer, filling Hunter’s vision, until Hunter could not turn away and look upon anything other than the results of his destruction.
No! Stop! Hunter somehow kept the screams inside, but the panic still thundered through his being. The deafening roar of blood speeding through his body and in his ears reminded him of hearing bombs explode during his time overseas. Hunter opened his eyes, unable to bear the pictures living inside him. Desperate for a way to quiet the chaos burning through his body, Hunter searched for a weapon or freedom but found neither within the limits of Dr. Royan’s restraints.
The bloodcurdling cries from the emotion railing inside Hunter demanded payment, and Hunter’s lack of ability to give it to them knocked his legs out from under him. Dr. Royan took the brunt of Hunter’s weight, though, and kept him on his feet. Hunter’s heart raced so fast he could feel it in his throat, and his mouth filled with the beginnings of a scream that would tear down the walls of this barn. In his efforts to keep the destruction that would surely kill him buried, Hunter shook violently as tremor after tremor rocked through him, hurting him so deeply in his bones he knew
without a doubt he would lose this battle and die, right here in this place he so loved.
Just as Hunter saw the sweet bliss of death in the form of leaping into Hercules’s stall to incite the wrath of an animal that could crush him -- anything to stop the havoc tearing through his mind and body -- Dr. Royan shook Hunter and forced his head up high. “Look at him, Hunter.” He contracted his muscles and put an even more powerful grip on Hunter’s frame. “Don’t give up. He needs you to stay with him and fight. Don’t make him get better without you.”
Hunter looked to Hercules with a silent plea for forgiveness trapped in his throat, and instead the brightness in the animal’s black eyes locked him in its hold and rammed him in the gut. Right at his stall door, Hercules seemed to ask Hunter not to leave him. Hunter couldn’t look away, and he silently apologized to the horse for even thinking of putting his death on the animal’s conscience. The longer Hunter stared and the more he tried to slip into the horse’s physiology to bring their breathing into sync, the softer and softer the screams in Hunter’s head became. Hercules’s skittish prancing came to a halt too.
Eventually -- God only knew how long Hunter stood there -- Dr. Royan let Hunter go. “You did it,” he said, pride in his voice. “You lived through a vision that triggered every destructive place inside you, and you survived without succumbing.”
For a brief moment, a wash of victory started to push through Hunter’s body, replenishing his exhausted muscles. Then the incessant voice of reality shoved its way in, and Hunter rounded on Dr. Royan. “Great. So I managed to suppress the need to cut myself one time by connecting with Hercules and thinking of his helplessness above myself. How does that help me? I can’t put him on a leash and take him everywhere with me so that I always have him close by when I’m on the verge of self-destructing.”