He breathes in a big breath and his eyes widen. He drops his hands, taking slow backward steps like I scare him.
I step forward until we’re face-to-face once more. I reach up and hold his face in my hands. He has a little red blood drop on his bottom lip. My fingers move to his pink lips and I run them over the spot, removing my blood.
His blue eyes get huge and we stare at each other for a long time.
He blinks.
I blink faster.
Then he smiles and reaches up into my hair, plunking a green leaf. “I like your hair. It’s soft and smells good.” He leans in and kisses the tip of my nose.
I take in a big breath.
My tummy ache is getting worse.
His smile gets wider before it vanishes. “Now I have to go, Isabel.”
My brows pull together. “How do you know my name?”
He backs away from me, still smiling. “’Cause I know you,” he turns his back to me and jogs in the direction of the main road where I’m never allowed to play.
“Wait!”
He stops but doesn’t turn to look at me.
“What’s your name?”
“Hunter Knight.” He waves goodbye and then runs, disappearing from my sight.
“I think I love you, Hunter Knight,” I say to the wind, somehow hoping he hears me.
***
Hunter
The first three hours Hunter watched in agony as she tossed and turned, sweating and shaking. Isabel was finally coming down from the pills. How she got them, Falcon and Victor had no idea. They lost track of her back at Mayhem. It was a small mishap on their end but a monumental mistake in reality. She wants to die, he thinks. How the fuck did that stupid fucker fuck up?! How did Isabel slip out of Falcon’s reach? Does he not understand that she wants it to end? Nope. Not gonna happen. Not while I’m here. It’ll get better. She has to survive this.
“Baby?” Hunter presses an icepack wrapped in a small towel over her forehead. She’s burning up.
Isabel doesn’t respond. Her small body is racked with dry heaves. She spent an hour and a half just vomiting in a bag Hunter held open for her to spew in.
“I’m hurting. It hurts,” she mumbles, nuzzling her face in his chest.
He leans down and kisses her cheek, a gesture not-so new to him when involving Isabel. She doesn’t know the depth of despair and darkness he carries within himself. Only Sally Baker knows. Sally Baker knows very well what Hunter Knight is capable of. What he can destroy and tarnish within a blink of an eye. But Isabel isn’t Sally Baker, and she won’t be as long as Hunter can keep his daemons at by long enough for her to escape his wrath before it’s too late. Because weakness attracts darkness and darkness lures in fragile, sweet, beautiful things.
Isabel groans, circling her arms around his middle.
He pushes her long hair from her sweaty face, sliding the icepack down to her neck. Unable to resist, he leans in, placing a small kiss in the hollow of her neck. Hunter watches in amazement as tiny goose bumps cover her flesh.
It can be from the icepack, he thinks, lying back down beside her.
He stares at the girl who always had the will to break him from the very beginning. It’s going to be a battle of wills between the two, no doubt about it. He buries his nose in her hair, taking a huge whiff of dark berries.
“Which one of us will crack first?” he whispers to himself, closing his eyes, marveling at the sound of her steady heart.
Part II
Anonymously Known
Chapter eleven
Hazy Discomfort
Someone jabs me in the ribs. I groan and roll away. Hands grab me and drag me back. “Wake up, Isabel. You’ve been out of it for two days. Wake up or I’m taking you to the hospital,” Hunter declares.
My eyelids slowly open. Blinded by the fierce light of the sun, I squeeze my eyes shut and groan again. “Can you please close the curtains? My eyeballs feel like they’re about to melt and ooze from my skull.”
The bed springs squeak as he rises to draw them.
I open my eyes to a darken room and slide up against the headboard. I wince from the dull ache that pulses in my wrists and backside.
Hunter just sands and stares at me like the weirdo he is.
I yawn and scratch my head. “Why am I so sore? My ass hurts.”
His lips spread into a slow, malicious smile. “You’re bruised, but you’re healing quite nicely.”
My ear drops to my shoulder, and I blink. “Bruised from what?”
His stunning, wicked smile broadens as he holds up his hands, palms up, playfully wiggling his fingers.
“Your hands?”
He nods.
“I don’t understand.”
Hunter comes closer and sits in the empty space beside me. “What do you remember?”
“I remember eating at the diner with Falcon and Vic. I wanted to go to Mayhem. Victor dressed me in a fairy gown and design beautiful henna…,” I trail off and raise my arms that are no longer detailed with fine, elegant art.
“What else?” His voice is urgent and strained.
“The club. Victor told me to stay close and keep my phone on.” A heavy pounding and fog begins to cloud my brain.
“Tell me more,” Hunter demands, his determined eyes locked on mine.
I close my eyes and drag my hands down my face, sighing. “I don’t know.”
“You do. Talk. Now.”
Leaning my head back against the headboard’s chilly metal rails and taking a deep inhale, I look at the angry purple discolorations wrapped around both wrists. They’re strangely even and stripe-like. My fingers trace along the bruised welt. “There was this guy. He gave me some ecstasy. I took some.”
“How many?”
I feel the heat of his eyes burning into me, making my stomach knot. “Two pills, a star and a peace sign. I felt warm and fuzzy. All I wanted to do was dance, I think.”
“Is that all?”
I press a finger into the strip of purple and watch as the blotch fades and slowly reappears from the indention, ignoring the throbbing pain I caused. “The rest is kind of hazy.”
He leans over and flips my hair over my shoulder. He jaw tenses and he swallows audibly. “How’d you get that bite mark?”
I follow his gaze to a red rugged ring.
He gingerly trails his fingers over the wound, and I shudder. “Uh…” The shroud that’s smothering my brain gets thicker.
“How’d you get it?” Hunter repeats, eyes narrowing and darkening all at once. He lets his hand fall to the bed, his fingers fisting in the sheets. “Did Max do that? Did he fuck you too?”
I jerk my head back, gazing up into the depths of his violent eyes. His bitter accusation surprises me.
My brows almost rise to my hairline. “Max?”
The asshole Max Gabai from high school?
Max Gabai, Hunter’s sworn enemy?
His eyes widen, an odd emotion I can’t place twisting his features. The control and patience he’s trying so hard to hold onto snaps. Before I can process any further, he hovers above me, his massive hands fully and painfully wrap around my upper arms. He starts to shake me like a lifeless ragdoll. His face is so very close to mine that I can see the flecks of aqua blue in his cornflower blue eyes. “Did he bite you, Isabel? Did he fuck you?! Did you let Max fuck you?!”
The more he shouts and thrashes me around the angrier I get. The forceful strength he uses to shake me is beginning to make me dizzy and weak. My teeth are clashing together and my bones feel like they’re rattling from within. I can almost feel my brain getting tossed inside my head as it bobs wildly.
His fingers tighten around my arms. “You let him fuck you, didn’t you? You fucked him! You fucked him!”
We’re nose to nose now.
He screams in my face, furiously shaking every breath of life out of me.
I squeeze my eyes shut to block him out, but he continues to mercilessly jerk me forward and backward.
<
br /> I feel lightheaded.
I think I’m getting whiplash.
Everything is twirling around me, spinning around and around.
My heart thunders in my ears.
Why do I feel sleepy?
The screaming slowly begins to fade and stream into eerie silence.
His tight fingers that sear my arms loosen. The gush of blood that passes through my waiting veins is so painful that I would yell if I didn’t feel so woozy.
“Isabel? Isabel? God, I don’t know…”
What?
What’s happening?
I feel tried.
“Baby, don’t go to sleep. Open your eyes. Open your eyes for me, Isabel. Please open your eyes…”
My eyes lazily flutter open to Hunter’s panic command.
He sounds worried and scared.
I don’t want him to me worried or scared, just full and happy.
My eyes open for a fraction of a second and through the black slits, Hunter’s glossy and horrified eyes are completely focused on me. “That’s it. Open your eyes.”
I’m sorry.
My eyelids are just too heavy, and I’m just too drowsy.
I fail and they close.
The warm and soothing darkness envelopes me in caressing silk wings that’s very pleasant around my body.
Finally it’s taking me.
Finally it’s quiet.
Finally I can breathe again.
That’s all I ever wanted.
Voices are muffled somewhere far away.
Hands tug clothes over my limbs.
Cold air whips pass my face.
Someone places me in a warm backseat of a car.
The engine starts and darkness swallows me up.
Chapter twelve
Something to Live For
The dark mint green walls and black curtains let me know I’m in Falcon’s bedroom. I blink the sleep from my eyes, toss the thick puffy comforter off and slide up the bed, resting my back on the wooden headboard. A pale pink silk gown skates up my legs. Vic. Victor Martinez has everything to do with this girly thing that clings to me. I notice Tyler’s teddy lies on the pillow next to me. My heart clenches tight in my chest. Hunter remembered that this little nameless worn brown bear is essential to me.
Bringing my hands up to my face and resting my sticky forehead in my palms, I try to recall what happened and why I’m in Falcon’s bedroom. I remember Hunter. He was shaking me and yelling at me. He was furious. He thought I slept with Max. Max? Max. And then all the memories of the night at Mayhem come to me in a clear collage of many things: getting bit by an asshole. Dancing and trying to catch the sparkling confetti. The asshole was laughing. He was groping me. I bit him. He yelled at me and stormed off. Max. Max wanted to take me home. I didn’t want to go home. We went to his house, and I dance and drank hot coco. And then I…felt him up. Oh, God. He said no, and I fondled him anyway. I watched him shower. We talked about Tyler. I sang to him. I sang my mother’s lullaby. I wanted to count his freckles, but Hunter stopped me. He took me back to his house. He…he spanked me. And then he put his mouth on me. It was phenomenal. He bit me afterwards.
My hand absently touches the healing faint red bite mark in the inside of my thigh. Heat rushes to my face and my chest swells with a strange warmth and pride. “That fucker,” I mumble under my breath. Though I’m angry, I’m aroused too, which is so fucked up and confusing to me.
Hunter, you’re making it difficult to be numb and feel nothing.
My eyes dart to a black duffle bag in a tall cream-colored cushioned chair. My brother’s laptop is tucked beside the bag. Tiptoeing, I lift myself from the bed and snatch up the laptop, sitting back in the middle of the bed.
His laptop is decorated in numerous skulls, music notes, little heart stickers, among various things. Some of them are scribbled on and scratched up. I run my fingers over the stickers and sigh, then open up the lid and power it up. I type in his password: Hero 1996. My brother and I think alike. His password is his first love, his only love, and the year Tyler was born.
A black and white picture if Albert Einstein is his background and it floods my vision as I watch the tiny icons load. I’m looking for something, something that Tyler must have left. We made a blood oath after mom took her life. We promised we’d never do the same and leave one another stranded and alone. We took that oath very seriously, so there has to be more than my brother being depressed and leaping off The Sluiced Bridge. I’m sure from the outside looking in people thought Tyler was just a nervous-emo-weirdo-loner bomb waiting to explode. But they didn’t know the Tyler I knew. They never got to see the remarkable beauty that was him.
A ding and small black window opens in the middle of the screen. I glance at the words at the bottom of the small box that says: GreenFrog is typing…
Tyler’s username is PureIllusion. It’s a children’s book my father used to read us when we were little.
GreenFrog: Hey sweet Isabel.
PureIllusion: Who is this??
GreenFrog: Does it really matter? Listen, I’ve waited so long to freaking talk to you. I have some good news for you.
PureIllusion: Is this a joke? I’m not up for this BS!!!! Leave me the hell ALONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Shaking my head, I click on the small X and exit the chat room, but the little black window pops back up.
GreenFrog: No. This is definitely not a joke or prank of any kind. And that was extremely rude of you, Miss Isabel. For future reference, don’t close the window. It’s useless when I can just make it open back up. I’m only her to help. I will not harass you or anything like that. Anyway, this is some heavy shit I’m about to unload on you and you have no absolute reason to believe me. The only thing I have is my word, which might not mean much to you, but I’m hoping you just keep an open mind.
PureIllusion: Okay…What’s this news about?
An endless minute passes before I see the green words flash on the screen.
GreenFrog: Tyler didn’t jump off The Suicide Bridge. He was murdered. Someone pushed him off.
My eyes squint as I read the three sentences over and over again. Tyler didn’t jump of The Suicide Bridge. He was murdered. Someone pushed him. I’m tempted to exit out the chat room again, but I don’t because hope I can’t afford to lose blooms in my chest. If Tyler didn’t kill himself then someone did and he didn’t renege on his promise. Retrieving the teddy from the pillow, I nuzzle my nose into the soft fur and cotton, overwhelmed with the scent of Hunter. It smells just like him as if he washed it in his pleasant fragrance.
Inhaling deeply, I begin typing.
PureIllusion: Who did then?
GreenFrog: I’m not a hundred percent sure. I have a few suspects in mind, though. I’ve been secretly working this case shortly after Tyler passed. He didn’t leave many clues, but the ones he left are substantial enough to gather information from. I’ll keep you posted when I learn more. In the meantime, do not trust anyone, especially the ones you think you can. Tell no one of me, or else you’ll ruin everything.
Before I can type something, the words GreenFrog has logged off appears at the bottom of the blank window.
After an half hour goes by, I come up with nothing. Zero. Tyler’s emails are all cleared and deleted. His pictures are gone too. It’s like everything has been wiped clean and erased for good. Running a frustrated hand through my hair, I turn off the laptop and close it. I close my eyes and take a deep breath in through my nose and releasing it out my mouth and into the teddy. A spark of life takes root inside me and it’s growing…
Muffled thuds and erotic sounds are echoing down the hall. Careful to not to make any noise, I hop out of bed and place the laptop and Tyler’s bear in the chair with my duffle bag. Inching to the door, I place my hand on the latch and slowly pull it downward. The grunts get louder and whiner. Intrigued, I follow the soft noises to the guest bedroom that’s only two doors away. The wooden door is ajar as I approach it.
“…you�
��ve been a bad boy, little lamb.”
Pressing my face into the slit of golden glow, my eyes expand and my mouth drops open at the sight before me. Falcon’s hand is fisted tight into Vic’s dark hair while Vic is pushed harshly against the wall by Falcon’s powerful frame. Falcon is fully dressed in dark jeans and an olive-colored cashmere sweater, but Victor is shirtless, his grey pants are pooled around his ankles, and his tanned legs are splayed apart. Victor appears so helpless. His body looks very small and vulnerable against Falcon’s broad, muscled one.
“I’m sorry.” Victor’s voice is airy and breathless.
Falcon roughly jerks Vic’s head in response. “Not good enough. You’re going to have to do way better than that. Or else, I might not let you come at all.” Falcon gives Vic another shove. Victor’s face is smashed against the wall. I can hear the air whistling from his lungs from the impact as Vic starts to wheeze.
“Please.” Victor attempts to bring his legs together but Falcon wedges a heavy black boot between them, forcefully preventing it.
He growls, yanking Vic’s hair, Vic groans and winces. “What did I say, slut? You’re going have to do better. Make me believe you.”
“Baby, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. She disappeared from my view. I didn’t…I couldn’t find her. Honey, believe me. I called her phone and looked everywhere in the fucking club, searching high and low, coming up with nothing. I didn’t mean to fuck up, but I did. I did, and I’m sorry.”
At this point, I realize my chest is heaving like the both of theirs and something inside my stomach tightens. Liquid, scorching desire surges through my veins, gathering between my thighs. Falcon is punishing Vic because of me.
Falcon presses his lips to Vic’s ear, grabbing a fistful of dark hair. Falcon tugs Vic’s head backward, exposing his throat. “I don’t think you’re getting the gist of what I’m saying. I should teach you a lesson, huh?”
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