Hunter

by M. C. Adams

  And he’s not sleeping.

  ‘Fuck!’ I yell. ‘Someone help us!’

  There are people appearing on the street now, holding their mobile phones, calling the police, or tweeting, or making videos of the horrific scene.

  ‘Stop it,’ I cry. ‘Stop filming. Just help us. Please. My boyfriend is in there.’

  The blood is whooshing in my ears again, making a loud, screaming noise that’s almost like a…

  Oh god. It is. It’s a siren. Thank god.

  I run further up the road, waving to the fire engine, not that it needs me to direct it to where it’s going. I look towards my house. All those years of work. Everything I own is in that place. Everything I love.

  Now, I sprint back to the house. I don’t care who tries to stop me. I’ve got to find him. I slip away from the crowd of bouncers, who have managed to apprehend the guys that have made it out alive and are keeping them rounded up on the side of the road. I run around the back of my house, and then I stop dead in my tracks.

  Walking out of the back of the house, with a tea towel held over his mouth, is Hunter. He’s carrying a blonde guy I don’t recognise, and they’re both sopping wet.

  ‘Hunter,’ I cry out. ‘You’re okay. Are you okay?’

  ‘It’s Tyson. He’d been pushed into the pool,’ he says. ‘Passed out. I need to give him CPR. Hang on a second.’

  The guy is absolutely huge – how did Hunter even manage to carry him? Must be pure adrenaline.

  ‘Do you know how to do CPR?’

  Hunter looks up at me. ‘Nope. Do you?’

  I nod. ‘I’ve been to training courses. Never tried it, but…’ I crouch down.

  I’ve had to learn how to do this — it’s part of being allowed to work on a building site. Never thought I’d be doing it on anything other than a plastic dummy, though. I roll the man onto his back and place the heel of my hand on the centre of his chest.

  ‘Go and get help,’ I say. ‘I saw a fire engine. There should be an ambulance by now too.’

  Hunter runs around the back of the building, and I interlock my fingers, then start doing chest compressions.

  I was taught once to do this at the right tempo you have to imagine you’re doing it to the beat of the Bee Gees ‘Stayin’ Alive’. It’s ridiculous, but I try it anyway.

  There’s nothing, though. No breathing.

  I open the man’s airway, and then blow until I see his chest rise.

  Still nothing.

  Come on. Please.

  I blow into his mouth again, and suddenly, I hear spluttering, and he coughs up some water. His eyes open and he looks at me dizzily. ‘Did we do it?’ he asks. ‘Did we win?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘We won.’

  I look up at my house, burning with such fury it’s as if the whole thing was just made of straw.

  Someone taps me on the shoulder, and I whip around.

  ‘We’re paramedics,’ they say. ‘We’ll take over from here.’

  ‘He’s breathing,’ I tell them, just as Hunter appears. ‘He’s alive.’

  Hunter puts his hand to his head. ‘Oh my god. Klein. Thank god.’

  He takes my hand and we walk around to the front of the house, leaving the paramedics to carry the man back to the road on a stretcher. When we get to the front of the house, I see a line of four police cars behind the fire engine and ambulance.

  ‘Looks like they’ve decided to take us seriously after all,’ says Hunter, giving my hand a squeeze. ‘Good thing I managed to rescue the CCTV footage.’

  He points to a videotape in one of the policeman’s hands and puts his arms around me.

  ‘I’m so sorry I couldn’t stop them,’ he says.

  ‘What about Charlotte?’ I ask. ‘Is Charlotte okay?’

  ‘Charlotte is fine,’ Hunter says. ‘Rowan carried her out. Everyone’s okay. Even those two.’

  He points to a charred-looking couple, black as soot from head to toe, standing beside each other… handcuffed.

  ‘It’s Kitty,’ says the smaller of the two soot-figures. ‘My name is Kitty. It’s French. No, you arsehole. French.’

  The policeman is writing something in his notepad and sniggering. ‘Nice name,’ he says.

  ‘Come on,’ says Hunter. ‘The police want to talk to us. And then… we’re getting far away from here.’

  16

  HUNTER

  * * *

  No matter how hard I scrub, I still can’t seem to get the smell of smoke off my body. Still, I try, putting on more and more body wash, using the hotel’s fancy little nailbrush on my hands, my arms, my legs, my stomach. I scrub and scrub until my skin starts to go pink… and then I stop. I have to stop. It’s over.

  I close my eyes, letting the warm shower water fall over me, and those horrible images flash through my mind all over again. The glinting guns. The blazing flames. Klein’s wide, scared eyes.

  Fuck. It’s over.

  Just let it be over, Hunter.

  Problem is, I can’t stop raking over it all. Trying to figure out how I could have done it better. Stopped Klein’s house from burning down. Not put everyone’s lives at risk like that.

  I feel like such an idiot.

  Maybe I should have let Klein pay them the money in the first place, like he wanted to. Then he wouldn’t have lost his home.

  He barely said a word on the way to the hotel. I got him to take a shower first, and he looked a damn slight cleaner when he got out of it, but he still didn’t say a word.

  Now it’s my turn, and instead of refreshing me, the shower just feels like some kind of extra punishment. A failed attempt at scrubbing away the horrors of what just happened, literally and metaphorically.

  I switch off the shower and climb out of the bath, wondering if the smoke-smell is just inside my nostrils somehow, and maybe the rest of me is clean after all. I don’t know. I don’t know anything.

  I dry myself off and wrap myself in a towel, and look in the mirror.

  For all my strength, for all my muscle and confidence and bluster, I failed in keeping Klein safe. The only person I’ve ever really loved.

  Would it really be a blessing for Klein to know how I feel about him?

  Or is he just better off without me?

  I take a deep breath, and go back into the main hotel room. We’re in yet another five-star place, of course. This time, though, Klein didn’t book it. I did. He simply handed me a wad of cash and let me sort it out, so I tried to find somewhere he’d enjoy. I booked us a penthouse suite with a marble interior, silk wallpaper, and a private roof terrace.

  Klein isn’t in the bedroom, so I get dressed, hurriedly putting on the clean blue jeans and white t-shirt I bought on the way here. It’s a good job we found a shop open so late, but I felt like an abomination going into a clothes shop stinking of barbecue, in still-damp clothes. Never mind. We made it here, and the danger is over.

  I head into the living area, but Klein’s not there either, so that just leaves the roof terrace.

  For a split second, I freak out, thinking he’s run off and left me, but then I spot him.

  He’s sitting out there in his jeans and t-shirt, which match mine exactly except for the colour — I got myself a white tee and him a black one just so we’d be a little different. He has a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, and he’s looking out towards the London Eye.

  I take a seat next to him, and he offers me some of the blanket. I put it around my shoulders too, so that we’re wrapped up together.

  ‘This is a very nice hotel, Hunter,’ says Klein. He takes a long, slow breath. ‘And my house was a very nice house.’

  I lower my head. ‘I’m so sorry —’ I begin, but Klein stops me.

  ‘I don’t want any of it any more,’ says Klein. ‘I felt that way before my house burnt down, and I feel that way now. I don’t want it. I don’t want to stay in five-star hotels made of silk and marble. And I don’t want to live in a house that’s like an old part of me that died l
ong ago.’

  I bite my lip. Have I booked the wrong hotel? As well as letting his house burn down?

  ‘I had already been thinking about it before everything that happened tonight. This just confirmed it to me… Do you know how it felt to watch the culmination of all those years of work, burning to a cinder?

  ‘I can’t even begin to imagine —’

  ‘It felt liberating,’ Klein says, and then, for the first time since the fire, he looks at me. Properly. ‘I feel… liberated.’

  ‘It’s very early, days,’ I say, somewhat dumbly. ‘You might start to feel differently once you have time to process —’

  ‘No. I won’t. I’m glad to be rid of that house. All those years I spent, carefully building that shell around myself. It wasn’t the right home for me, Hunter. I was living a lie.’

  ‘Then,’ I swallow, ‘what’s the truth? Your truth?’

  ‘Well, it’s not this hotel, for one thing. Do you know I recently discovered that silk isn’t vegan? And marble… well, don’t even get me started on the environmental impact of marble. It’s an awful substance, ecologically-speaking.’

  ‘But I thought you had marble counter tops in your old house…’

  ‘That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. My double-standards. I spent my days designing these eco-friendly homes for people, sweating over details like greywater recycling, solar panels, carbon footprints. While all the while, I turned a blind eye in my own home. I was in denial. Like I was about my sexuality.’

  ‘I get what you’re saying, Klein. I really do. I think it’s fantastic you’re open to change, and you’re thinking about ways to better yourself all the time. But… you don’t have to do everything at once, you know? You don’t have to burn all the old stuff down before you can start again.’ I wince at my terrible turn of phrasing. ‘What I mean is, you can make changes in manageable, incremental steps. Know what I’m saying? Take things bit by bit.’

  Klein runs his fingers through his hair and sighs. ‘I’m tired,’ he says. ‘Trying to understand who you are is tiring.’

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘What was that phrase you said to me, about learning to control my anger? It’s the project of a lifetime. So… pace yourself is all I’m saying.’

  Tears collect in Klein’s eyes, and then he kisses my cheek. ‘I lost everything today,’ he says. ‘Except for the one thing I really care about.’

  I nod. ‘I’m so glad we both made it out of there alive. If anything had happened to you…’

  ‘You saved my life,’ says Klein.

  ‘I really didn’t. My stupid plan almost got us all killed.’

  ‘Your stupid plan also saved us.’

  I smile weakly. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Definitely.’

  I hold Klein tight. ‘Fuck, I hate bullies.’

  ‘I spoke to my lawyer,’ Klein says, suddenly pulling away. He leaves me wrapped up in the blanket and gets to his feet, looking down at me. ‘There’s no longer a house for me to take legal ownership of.’

  ‘So getting married was… a waste of time?’

  ‘Well, actually, the insurance is automatically in my name now So the insurance money from the fire is mine.’

  ‘I see. Well, that’s something.’

  Klein laughs. ‘Yeah. You could call thirty-million pounds something.’

  ‘Thirty-what?’ My jaw drops.

  ‘It’s actually not quite as much as the house was worth, but that’s okay. It’ll do, don’t you think?’

  I laugh. ‘Uh. Yeah. You should be able to survive on that for a couple of weeks… Depending on how many penthouses you want to rent in that time.’ I give him a wink.

  ‘And… what about you, Hunter?’ asks Klein.

  ‘Me? Oh, I’ll be fine. I’ve saved up a good amount of cash from the last few weeks of working for you.’

  ‘Don’t forget you’re owed that million.’

  I shake my head. ‘Honestly, I really wouldn’t feel right taking it. I wouldn’t even know what to do with a million pounds. You know me. I’d spend it all on burgers.’

  Klein laughs. ‘Of course you must take the money. And, as soon as you want, we can get the divorce sorted.’

  That word stings my gut. ‘I see. The divorce. Yeah.’

  Klein looks at me differently now, his blue eyes suddenly sparkling. ‘You know what, Hunter? I’ve had enough of talking about all that stuff for one day. Money. Contracts. Identity. I’m exhausted.’

  ‘Yeah. Me too.’

  ‘How about we just snuggle up in bed for a while?’

  I smirk slightly. ‘Snuggle up?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Klein. ‘That bed looks really cosy.’

  ‘There are two bedrooms, you know. I’m happy with the smaller one.’

  ‘You’re not my butler, Hunter. You’re my boyfriend. And my husband. Come to bed with me, hubby. We’re not divorced yet.’ He reaches out his hand to me and I take it, feeling sparks shoot up my arm.

  We walk together into the bedroom and close the terrace door. It’s good to be in the warm room.

  ‘Let’s take off all our clothes,’ Klein. ‘They’re our only clothes in the world, so we ought to wear them as little as possible.’

  I laugh. ‘We definitely should. And maybe tomorrow we’ll buy another set of clothes, eh? Really treat ourselves.’

  Klein smiles as he takes off his t-shirt. I take mine off, too. We stand facing each other, mirror images, in matching jeans, but still so different from one another. Him with his longer, blonde hair; his slim frame; his delicate, neat shape. Me with my spiky black hair; my muscles.

  ‘I love your body,’ says Klein.

  He takes off his jeans and briefs now, and I do the same.

  We look at each other for a while, our eyes trailing up and down each other’s bodies. Not in a lascivious way. In fact, it’s very gentle, full of quiet admiration. We’re taking each other in, without shyness or embarrassment. His body is saying ‘look at me’, and I’m looking. It feels simple and beautiful and honest.

  We get into bed, lying on our sides, facing each other.

  ‘I don’t think I could have sex tonight,’ Klein says. ‘It’s been so overwhelming today.’

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘I feel like I stink of smoke anyway.’

  Klein smiles. ‘You smell good to me.’

  His fingers stroke the tattoos on my arm, making my skin prickle as I shiver with pleasure.

  ‘I like you, Hunter,’ says Klein. ‘My protector.’

  ‘I like you too,’ I say, as I begin to stroke his back, using the same gentle movements that he’s using on me.

  ‘Light touch massage,’ Klein says softly, ‘is the name for this. Helps release your body’s natural painkillers. Gives you a rush of endorphins.’

  ‘It feels good,’ I murmur, sighing. ‘Even though, technically, I’m not in any pain.’

  ‘I think you are,’ says Klein. ‘And I think it’s time we both released it.’

  I nod, looking into his eyes. ‘Klein,’ I say. ‘I love you.’

  Klein looks at me for a long time, not saying anything.

  Eventually, he closes his eyes, and falls asleep.

  I pull the covers over us, and then lie watching my boyfriend for a while.

  Did I say the wrong thing?

  Did I pick the wrong moment?

  Have I messed things up yet again?

  I’m so full of so many different emotions that I feel as though I’ll never fall asleep… but eventually, I do.

  And it’s the deepest, blackest sleep of my life.

  17

  KLEIN

  * * *

  ‘Morning, sleepyhead,’ I say, walking over to the bed.

  Hunter rubs his eyes. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘It’s almost ten o’clock. You’re very good at sleeping in late. I’m impressed.’

  ‘It took me a while to drop off last night. You know. Crazy day. Stuff going round my head.’

  I nod. I
wonder if Hunter couldn’t sleep after telling me that he loved me. I should have said something to him. I really should. But I was just so exhausted. It’s okay, though. I’m going to make it up to him. Just as soon as I’ve got us out of this hotel room.

  ‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Lovely as these incredibly un-vegan silken walls are, I fancy some fresh air. What do you say?’

  ‘Where shall we go?’

  ‘Well, I’m taking indefinite leave from work. They’ll cope without me. I recently finished that big project, and there’s nothing urgent that needs dealing with, so… screw it. I’m the boss.’

  Hunter looks shocked. ‘Don’t think I’ve ever heard you say “screw it” before. I like this new side to you.’

  ‘So, since I’m not working… we can go anywhere. And do anything. As long as it’s in this country, because I know my passport burned to a crisp in the house, and if yours was there too…’

  ‘Yep. Everything I owned was there.’

  ‘Marvellous. I mean, terrible. But what I mean is… we’re in the same boat. We’re both foot-loose and fancy-free. No possessions dragging us down.’

  I laugh. ‘Yeah. Who needs stuff anyway?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Hunter gets out of bed and pulls on his clothes. I love watching him get dressed almost as much as I love seeing him take his clothes off. There’s something so haphazard about the way he throws his outfits on, and even though we’re wearing very similar things, somehow, my clothes look neat and orderly on my body. On him, they look casual, loose, rebellious.

  ‘I’m starving,’ says Hunter.

  ‘Me too. That’s what we’ll do first. Breakfast, and then…’

  ‘Then…’

  ‘Then anything.’

  Hunter smiles. ‘You sure you didn’t get a bang on the head yesterday?’

  I take his hand and we leave the hotel room.

  ‘I love walking around hotels, don’t you?’ Hunter says. ‘All the different lives going on behind every door. My favourite thing is when room service are cleaning one of the rooms, and they leave the door open, and you can peek inside and try and guess what sort of person’s been staying in that room.’