“You!” he yells.
“Shit!” I say.
Before I know it, Hunter’s already grabbed my hand and we’re running.
Chapter 14
Unraveling the Secrets
Hunter and I go our separate ways when we reach our dorm. I’m still a little shaken by everything that happened. Breaking into a movie theatre. Bumping into one of those guys that scared the shit out of me. Hunter and his brother. Our almost kiss.
It’s not that I’m afraid. It’s more like a jittery, butterfly-like feeling.
I want to jump and dance, grab Hunter and just kiss him already.
But I can’t. I’m such a freaking wuss, I can’t even stand the idea of feeling his cock underneath me.
Well, that part was a bit shocking. Not sure if it was positive or negative.
Scary as hell. But a compliment, too … I think.
Still, I’m like a frolicking girl when I run upstairs and storm into my room.
“Oh my God,” I scream as I enter the room.
Evie jolts up from her bed and looks spooked.
“Jesus! You almost gave me a heart attack there,” she says.
“I can’t believe it,” I say, and I slam the door shut behind me.
“What?”
“Hunter and I went to the movies.”
“So that’s what you were doing. I was already starting to think you’d never come back, and … Hey, wait a minute. Did you just say ‘Hunter’?”
I sit down next to her and squeeze my own hands together out of pure delight. “Yes, Hunter. We snuck inside, and it was totally against the law, and I loved every second of it.”
She just gapes at me, her eyebrows askew.
“Holy shit, I almost kissed him,” I say.
I flop down on her bed and slap my hand across my mouth out of disbelief. “This is so unreal.”
“Hold on. You went with him without buying a ticket?” She turns around and looks at me. “Autumn Blakewood went to the movies without paying? You? I can’t believe my ears.”
“I know, right … And the weirdest thing is that I liked it, too! Now I get why people do stuff that’s against the rules. It’s so freaking exciting!”
I start rolling around in the bed because I have too much energy. I try to pull Evie with me, but she won’t budge.
“Are you serious? The real Autumn would never do that.”
“It was only one time,” I say. “Don’t worry about it so much. I had fun. That’s important.”
“Hunter’s changing you. Can’t you see? Before you know it, you’ll be just like Brody.”
I snort. “No. I’m not a pot smoker.”
She chuckles and shakes her head. “Well, I still think it’s not a good idea to hang out with Hunter.”
“I … I think I’m starting to fall for him,” I say softly.
Her confused face turns into an angry frown. “What? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I’m not.” I sit up again and grab her hand. “I know it when I feel it. I like him, Evie. I really, really like him.”
She jerks her hand away. “Please tell me this is a joke.”
I get up from the bed and change into my pajamas. “No … I’m serious.”
She sighs and gets under the blankets without speaking another word.
“I don’t get why you’re acting like this,” I say, trying not to sound harsh.
She just shrugs and buries her head in her pillow.
“Evie …” I say, as I crawl into my own bed.
“I don’t want to talk right now,” she says softly.
“Okay.”
I really don’t know what else to say. I don’t get why she’s so mad at me. Does she really hate it so much that I’m hanging around Hunter?
Why can’t she just be happy for me?
“Good night,” she says.
“’Night,” I say, and we turn off our lights and go to sleep.
♥♥♥
The next morning Evie’s already gone when I wake up. She’s never an early bird, and it surprises me she managed to get out of bed without my help. On her bedside table I find a note with a scribbling on it.
A.
I’m hanging with Scar today. She’s payin’ up today, plus I’m getting extras if I stay longer, so …
See you tonight, I guess.
E.
The note crumples in my hand. I know what this is. She’s really avoiding me.
Reading this makes me so goddamn sad, I could cry.
Someone knocks on my door, and I immediately brush away the single tear dripping from my eye.
I turn around with the note clenched firmly between my fingers. It’s Hunter.
“Hey,” he says. At first he looks confident, but then his gaze turns compassionate and worrisome. “Everything okay?” He glances at my fist that holds the note.
I briefly close my eyes and sigh. “Not sure.”
“I was gonna ask you to be my study buddy today, but if you’re feeling crappy, I can come back another time.”
He’s already turning around, but I walk toward him and grab his hand. “No, wait.”
He turns back around, and only then do I realize I’m actually holding his hand. A flush spreads across my cheeks, and I quickly release him from my grip. “Um … I could use some distraction.”
He smiles. “You sure? I mean, studying isn’t really a distraction, more a bore.”
I shake my head and laugh. “To you it is. I think it’s fun.”
Chuckling, he walks back to his room, and I follow him. “I can think of a few more things that are way more fun to do …” The low, intimate tone of his voice gives me the shivers, because I always hear these sexual innuendos in his sentences that I just can’t ignore.
Maybe I’m imagining things.
“Like having girls on my lap.”
Or maybe not.
I don’t think my temperature can get any higher. It’s so hot, I’m practically swimming in my clothes right now. And I know it’s not a heating problem; it’s me.
There are books spread out across his bed, but they’re all closed. It makes me think he just put them there so I’d see he’s doing his best. Or at least trying.
Grabbing one of the books, he sits down on his bed and flips through the pages. “I tried this morning,” he says.
I sit down across from him, on his pillow, and can still smell his scent drifting in the air. It’s such an intoxicating scent, I just want to sniff and take it in. It’s a mix of aftershave and his body, but I love the two mixed together. I just love smelling him.
God, I feel so stupid right now for thinking about how he smells. As if that’s all that matters. As if I can’t resist his presence, in any form.
I hate to admit it, but I really can’t.
“Could you tell me how you do it?” he says, holding up the book.
I wake up from my trance and look at him. “Yeah, of course.”
We work on his homework for the next couple of hours. Now that I’m spending so much time with him, I can clearly see why he was cheating the other day. He has so much trouble remembering things he reads. And not only that; reading itself is hard for him to do, too. It amazes me he went through all those Harry Potter books with his reading skills. It must’ve cost him a lot of perseverance.
He keeps insisting he tries it, though. He doesn’t want me to tell him the answers, even when he tried peeking at my notes before. He’s too stubborn to admit he can’t do it on his own. Or just too embarrassed by the fact that he fails every time.
It takes him such a long time to find the answer, but he keeps trying, never giving up. I admire his tenacity. His willpower. I admire a lot of things about him.
“I can’t do this,” he says after a while. He puffs and throws the book aside, dropping his head between his arms.
I pat him on the back. “Don’t say that. You’ll get it eventually.”
“No, I won’t.” He looks at me with sad eyes, ones t
hat make me want to hug him tight. “Goddammit … I tried everything. Asking you to help me out was one of the few things I thought would help.”
“But it can, if you give it some more time. It takes a little more effort to really get the hang of how to do it fast.”
“No! You don’t get it. I …,” he stammers.
It’s unusual for him not to know what to say.
“You what?”
He shuts his mouth and starts grating his teeth again. Seems like he’s hiding something again.
“What, Hunter? You can tell me.” I lower my head so I can look at him. Only peeking a few times, he’s hesitant to look back at me. After a while, he lets out a huge breath and opens his mouth. “I think I have a learning disability. Trouble with remembering …”
My mouth drops open. I don’t know what to say, but I linger on the words ‘I think,’ which he said.
“Are you sure?” I say.
“Yes, I’m sure,” he says, sighing. “I just can’t prove it. That’s why I can’t use it as an excuse.”
“But how do you know then?”
He frowns. “I’m not really in the mood to tell my entire history, all right?”
I bite my lip. “Sorry … I didn’t mean to be so pushy. I just …”
“I know …” he says. “You want to help me. You think it’s pitiful, and that’s exactly why I do not tell anyone. Ever.”
I swallow. I can’t believe he’s telling me this.
However, I feel flattered. It sounds like something you’d keep to yourself. Especially in college.
I understand what he means, though. I hate it when people do the same to me. Feel sorry for me because I’ve been teased. And then they want to help me like they can magically make all the hurt disappear.
It’s more of an insult to the injury, really.
So I won’t do that to him. I refuse to be like that. I will not make him feel bad for having this condition by feeling sorry for him.
“I don’t think it’s pitiful. It doesn’t make you weak. You have to work twice as hard as anyone else to memorize the same material,” I say, smiling. “The only thing it does is make you more powerful, because you have to overcome this and become stronger in order to survive.”
It’s quiet for a few seconds. Then he opens his mouth. “Thanks.”
The smile he flashes back at me makes me blush so much I feel too embarrassed to look at him. Turning my head, I notice a framed photograph standing on his desk. It’s a guy with the same hair, only much longer. He looks older than Hunter, but they share so many features, I wonder if they’re related.
Before I realize it, I’ve already leaned forward and grabbed the photo.
My fingers drift over the face that looks so recognizable, even though I’ve never seen it before. Must be …
“My brother, Jessie,” Hunter says, his voice switching in tone.
“You two really look alike.”
Hunter chortles. “You’re not the first to say that.”
“He looks nice.”
He muffles a pathetic laugh. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew him.”
“Why not? Does he fight everyone he meets, too?” I say, putting the frame back on his desk.
He squints, carefully assessing my movements as if he’s not too sure what to say. Or not too sure if he can trust me.
“Something like that.”
“Worse?”
“Way, way worse.”
I purse my lips and nod in bewilderment.
“He’s in jail.”
And now my jaw drops, too.
“I told you I’d love to trade my life with someone else,” he says.
“But I thought you said you had to save your brother, Jessie?”
“Yes, I have to get him out of jail.” He frowns and cracks his knuckles. “But it’s fucking difficult to get it done, and it’s fucking hard to deal with right now.”
“Wow … What did he do?” I say, too curious not to ask. I shouldn’t actually be surprised about this, considering Hunter’s shady behavior, but I am.
“Does it matter? I just want to get him out of there as fast as possible. You don’t know how terrible it is in there.” He gets up from the bed and starts pacing around.
“But … if he’s in there, he’s safe, right?”
Now his nostrils start flaring again, and I’m feeling antsy already. Shit. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.
“No. Life in prison is hard. Especially if you don’t deserve it.” He’s breathing quite loudly now.
Suddenly a roar comes from his mouth. “Fuck! He’s my fucking big brother, and he’s fucking locked up with murderers just because he tried to take care of me.”
His fists are so tensed up he’s holding them up in the air. And then he slams them into the wall.
“Don’t!” I say, and I almost come up from the bed until I see the vicious look on his face.
“Goddammit!” he screams, and he smashes his hands into the wall a couple more times. “It’s so hard without him. I just can’t …”
When he finally calms down, his body rests against the wall, and he sinks down to the floor after a while.
My heart is beating fast, but I can’t just keep watching him from a distance, even if I’m scared.
He needs someone. I want to be there for him.
I crawl up from the edge of the bed and walk over to him. I put my hand on his shoulder and sink down to the floor, too.
“He’s the only one I have. The only one. There’s no one else. And now he’s gone, too.”
I shush him and pat him on the back, trying to get him to stop fuming.
Suddenly, he turns around and pulls me toward him. My eyes widen as he buries his face in the nape of my neck, sniffing.
My thighs squeeze together in anticipation, because I can’t handle him touching me. It heats me up so much, I feel it in my core. And I feel terrible that I’m feeling this way right now.
“The day I got the phone call I was so mad I smashed it to pieces,” he mutters.
So that’s what was going on the day he kicked the wall … Now I get it.
I’m overwhelmed with the feeling that I need to care for him. “It’s okay,” I say. “I’m here for you if you need me.”
I didn’t know it was this bad. If I had, I would never have asked about it. I don’t want him to be reminded of something this horrible.
I can’t imagine what it’s like to have your last family member behind bars. What would I do if I had nobody else?
I’d turn into a nervous wreck and pray to God someone saved me and my family.
Maybe he’s doing the same. Maybe he’s fighting his way through his misery, trying to make sense of it all. I don’t know what the reason behind all of it is. All I know is that he’s put up this barrier to protect himself, and that he’s breaking right here, right now.
“Look at me,” he says, sighing. “Spilling all my beans to some girl on campus.” He lifts his head to look at me with his adorable gray eyes.
“I’m not some girl,” I say, winking. “I’m the Leafy.”
He chuckles, and I’m glad his mood has improved. “Sounds better coming from your mouth.”
He takes a deep breath and stretches, his muscles straining to the limit, making me gulp. “God, if any one of the guys finds out about this, I’m dead meat.”
“Why?”
He laughs as we get up from the floor. “The guys I hang out with aren’t as innocent and sweet as you are, Leafy,” he says jokily.
“What do you do with them anyway?”
“Nothing good,” he says.
Suddenly the door opens.
Immediately Hunter and I let each other go and stare at the person standing in the doorway.
“Crap, sorry,” the guy says.
The moment he catches my eye, my heart stops beating for a second. It’s that guy with the flowerpot hairdo, the guy who hangs around Hunter a lot. The guy Brody talked with.
So t
his is the guy who they both know.
“No, it’s no problem, dude,” Hunter says, clearing his throat.
We both get up and Hunter signals to me. “That’s my roommate.”
“Jaret Paxon.”
“Autumn Blakewood,” I stammer.
We shake hands, but soon he diverts his attention back to Hunter.
“Sorry, dude, but I don’t have much time for small talk. I’ve got another delivery for you to make, and something else.”
A darkness looms over Hunters face, and it sends a cold shiver down my spine.
“Now?”
“Yes, the boss wants it done today.”
The boss? What the hell?
Hunter sighs as Jaret walks out again. “Fine. Let’s go.”
“Huh? Where are you guys going? What’s going on?” I say, terrified of the answer. Is this the part where they beat up some dude? And what do they mean by ‘delivery’?
When Hunter said he had a roommate, I didn’t expect him to be part of this.
I don’t like this Jaret guy. Not one bit.
Before I have a chance to make them answer, they’re already running down the stairs.
Well, Hunter’s wrong if he thinks I’m going to let him leave me like that. Not with all those questions. Not that quick. No matter if I know about his brother, it doesn’t mean he can just go around beating people up for God knows what reason.
So I grab my things and bolt after them.
Chapter 15
Out with the Old, in with the New
I make my way down the stairs, trying not to produce any sound. Hiding behind a wall, I check if the coast is clear. I don’t want them to see me. They have to feel secure enough to go about their business, so I can finally find out what they’re really doing. What Hunter is really up to all those times he’s with them.
What kind of shit he’s gotten himself into.
Lurking behind a pillar, I watch them walk into an alley behind the building. I run after them, making sure I don’t get seen. There’s a guy in the alley, and they’re shaking hands.
“Got the stuff?”
“Yeah.” Hunter fishes in his pockets and takes out a tiny plastic bag filled with some white powder.
Images of Brody organizing those exact same plastic bags flash through my mind.
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