Kai

KAI

"Damn it!" I growled at the phone when it went to voicemail again, hurling it onto the couch. It bounced off and slid to the floor with a clatter, sending three cats sprinting in different directions. I winced, realizing I could have hit one of the damn things, and then I would have been a Grade-A asshole. "Answer your phone!"

It had been over two hours since Hunter left the club. I'd thought he'd get some fresh air and return to his place, but clearly, he had other plans. At least, I hoped it was because he'd come up with a different idea. I was trying to think about anything but him being waylaid by something else.

It wasn't helped by the guilt stewing away in my gut like acid. I had been so caught up in the moment I'd let my senses slip. I had been standing there, feeling awkward and out of place but entirely enraptured by Hunter. He had always been good at having a good time, even when his life wasn't great. The number of times I'd seen him get someone to laugh or make a situation brighter while sporting a new bruise was beyond counting.

Tonight, I finally saw the old Hunter surface again. He had managed to throw away all the cares and worries of the past couple of years and let himself have a good time. It was a side of him I'd missed dearly, and watching him dance had been more intoxicating than the drinks.

It felt like everything was on fire as he danced, his body pushed against mine. I had always been so careful to minimize our physical contact. There was no need to tempt fate after all. Yet tonight, I had thrown caution to the wind and let it happen. It only made it more tempting when I stared at his face and realized how badly I wanted to kiss him.

Stupid is what I'd been, selfish and stupid. Hunter, by his own admission, was just starting to feel like a normal person again and I had turned around and kissed him. The same man who had been dealing with the loss of his boyfriend, the same one who had been avoiding all intimate contact with anyone. I had seen that and apparently decided tonight was the night I needed to kiss him.

"Damn it," I groaned, sinking into the chair in the living room and gripping my forehead. As much as I wanted to apologize profusely for what I'd done, I would settle for him making it back in one piece. I couldn't say for sure, but I suspected he wasn't in a very good place. There had been a far-off look in his eyes among the panic and fear, and I was pretty sure there had also been some guilt.

One of the cats perked her head up from the chair, ears swiveling toward the glass wall. I glanced in that direction and tensed when I heard the thunk of the inner apartment door closing. Standing up, I listened closely for the sounds of the locks and frowned when I didn't hear them.

Remembering my promise to him, I made a noise as I got up from the chair and walked heavily into the hallway. I came to a stop when I saw someone standing by the door. The bright shorts gave away that it was Hunter, but somewhere in the past couple of hours, he had managed to grab a huge hoodie. Like not just big, but practically dangling to his knees as he stood with his back to me, staring at…the door?

"Hunter?" I said softly, approaching him with enough noise so he knew I was coming. "Are you okay?"

"How much…did you pick up?" he asked quietly, his shoulders hunched and his head bowed.

"I…what?"

"You said you picked up things from the medics in the military. How much did you pick up?"

"Shit, what happened?"

He turned finally, his hands shoved into the front of the hoodie. What I saw in his face turned my guts to ice water as I stared at him, wondering what could have possibly given him those dark circles and that gaze that said that while he was here physically, he was mentally miles away.

"Hunter?" I repeated, stepping closer to him.

"I've had a night," he said, and before I could ask him to clarify, he pulled his hands out of his pockets and pushed his sleeves up.

"Jesus Christ," I hissed as I saw the streaks of brownish-red on his hands and forearms. It was dried and peeling, but I recognized blood when I saw it. The entire inside of the sleeves were still darkened from the blood. "Holy fuck, we have to get you to the?—"

"No," he said, looking at his hands and frowning as if it was the first time he'd seen them, and they confused him. "No hospital. I'm…other than the wound on my side, I'm not the one who got…hurt."

"Fuck, were you attacked? We can go to the station after the?—"

"I said no fucking hospital !"

The sheer venom and heat in his voice made me stop short. He didn't appear badly injured, but one of his hands was holding his side carefully. It would be better if I just dragged him to the hospital, and I knew any number of people would chew me out if I didn't immediately do that. There was something else, an instinct inside me that warned of danger, not from Hunter, but it had to do with him.

"Okay, let's…let me see where you're hurt, and I'll tell you what I can do," I told him after a moment.

His face remained blank, but he nodded, walking past me and heading toward the bathroom. I could see he favored his side as he walked steadily, if slowly. I didn't know precisely what kind of help he needed, but that instinct told me to fetch the small bag from the guest room I kept for emergencies that basic first aid kits didn't help with.

By the time I headed toward the bathroom, Hunter had already stripped out of his clothes except for his underwear. In any other context, the sight of him in underwear that clung to his thighs would have been a treat. The problem was, in this context, there was a large gash in his side that was still leaking blood as he sat on the toilet and stared at the opposite wall.

"Are there…any other wounds?" I asked softly, wondering what the hell I was supposed to do.

"No, just that one," he said, his mouth twitching like he was trying to smile. The attempt looked painful, but probably not nearly as much as the wound on his side.

"This isn't going to be fun. I'm not exactly the best at this."

"Do whatever you think needs to be done."

"Well, I'd prefer we took you into the hospital to have a professional do this…my stitchwork is messy."

"No."

"Fine, but when it hurts like hell and looks like shit, that's on you."

"I don't care."

"Right."

The first step was to clean the wound and the area around it—something Hunter tolerated with minimal grimacing. The wound was still bleeding, but it looked like the worst of it had passed. I had no idea how long ago he'd been wounded, so I cleaned it as thoroughly as possible, inspecting it to see how bad it was. It was clearly from a knife, the edges were too clean to have been anything else, and I didn't see fragments of anything like glass.

"This is going to suck," I said as I opened the bag. There was a whole kit for almost everything you could think of in an emergency. There was also medical-grade thread, the kind that would eventually dissolve.

If Hunter was bothered in the slightest, he never gave any indication as I began the stitch work. Not that I should have been surprised, he was no stranger to pain. A new cut or bruise would appear every other day when we were growing up. He had grown used to the pain and suffering. This was a different kind of wound, but he only flinched once as I stitched.

"We'll have to keep an eye on that for a few days to make sure it's not getting infected. And if it does?—"

"Maybe we'll cross that bridge when we get there…if we get there."

"Are you sure there's no other wounds?"

"No. He only got the knife in a little."

"Who is ‘he,' and why are you not going to the hospital when he obviously got you?"

His eyes drifted to the clothes he'd left on the floor beside the sink. His gaze was intense, staring down at what I thought might be the hoodie, but he didn't answer me. After a moment, I grabbed the hoodie, thinking he wanted it. A frown creased my brow when I felt something heavy. Reaching into the front pocket, my fingers felt a thick handle, and I slowly pulled out what I already knew was a knife.

It was a doozy of a knife as well, the edge honed and clear of any knicks or damage. The handle had been recently wrapped with new leather strips, and the grooves at the base of the knife were also clean and maintained. Well, except for the dried blood all over the blade and handle. Too much blood to have come from the wound I'd just sewn shut, and that wasn't counting the blood I could still see on his hands.

"I should wash up," he said faintly, standing up and hooking his fingers into his underwear to push them down. I was too busy staring at the knife in shock and horror to wonder why he was suddenly incredibly comfortable being naked around me.

"Wait," I said, setting the knife down and grabbing his first aid kid. "Let me cover the stitches. They should be alright in the shower, but better safe than sorry for the first week or so."

Back on track, I worked to cover up the stitching with some water-resistant gauze. If he was as aware of his nakedness around me as I was, he was doing a damn fine job of not showing it. Even now, confused and scared for him, I was distracted by his bare skin. I could tamp it down while I worked on trying to get him covered so he could wash, but the image of his naked body was searing its way into my thoughts.

"There," I said after a moment, almost giving him a pat but afraid to touch more than I already had.

"Thanks," he said, turning to open the door to the shower and stepping inside. The water flipped on, and I couldn't tell through the frosted glass, but it seemed he barely paid attention to the temperature as he began to wash.

I was tempted to leave him in peace, but something told me I should stay. Hunter was clearly in an extreme state of shock and I knew all too well he shouldn't be left unsupervised. Whatever happened had shaken him badly, and I hoped against hope the attack hadn't been too bad, and I wasn't going to witness him lose all the progress he had worked so hard for over the past couple of years.

Picking up the knife, I carefully set it on the edge of the sink and gathered the clothes. I still didn't know where the hell the hoodie had come from, but it was obvious he'd been wearing it to cover the blood. That presented several more questions I wasn't sure I would ever get answers to, but hopefully, they could wait.

I froze when I heard Hunter take a sharp breath, the sound shaky and uncertain. It was followed by a suppressed sob. Slowly, I dropped the clothes in the far corner, figuring Hunter would need me when whatever was going on in his head finally started moving into overdrive.

That moment came when he suddenly opened the door, feet slipping under him as he lunged to the toilet. Flinging himself down, he clung to the seat and vomited loudly. Grimacing, I gently touched his back, using a soothing sound when I felt him tense. He was far too engrossed in heaving up every drink he'd had earlier, and I held my hand to his wound, hoping it didn't split open.

When he finished, he gave a much more obvious sob as his head bowed. I pulled him back while I flushed the toilet so he didn't have to cry into his puke. There didn't seem to be anything else in his stomach to spew out, however, and he was more focused on sobbing while pressing his face against the seat.

I kept my peace as I let him get out whatever emotions had been bottled up in his head. I could only imagine what it must feel like to be attacked by someone else after the assault on him and losing Lucas. There was a lot more to the story, I knew that much, but right now, I could only hold him close as his sobs grew less intense.

It was almost ten minutes before his crying finally petered off into sniffles. After making sure he was calm again, I got him some water. Now he was a bit more like himself, I was careful to avert my eyes from his naked, wet body as he grabbed a robe off the back of the bathroom door. That done, he drained the glass before walking to the door.

He stared at me for several seconds, and I wondered what he was going to say, but when the words came, they weren't what I was expecting.

"I murdered someone tonight."

I stared, my expression probably as blank as my mind. I had no chance to say anything before he turned, walked out of the bathroom, and headed into the kitchen. I had a good idea where he was going and in all fairness, after that little bombshell, I could probably use a drink myself.

I sat in front of the toilet long enough to hear the clink of glasses. After a few more seconds of trying to understand….well, everything, I realized it was futile. Instead, I pushed to my feet and went into the kitchen to get answers.

Hunter was standing by the sink, a glass full of liquor in his hand. There was another glass on the counter. I took a sip, finding it was one of his other whiskeys.

"Hunter," I began, thinking of the state he'd been in and the knife. "Self-defense isn't murder."

"Murder, self-defense, it's all semantics. I killed someone. I killed someone. I…killed someone."

The repetition should have been a warning sign, but it felt less like he was breaking down and more like he was simply stating the truth, so he had to deal with it. He grew quiet as he stood there for a few minutes, occasionally taking a small sip. His hand shook enough to rattle the ice, but he never missed his lips.

"There were four of them," he began, his eyes locked onto the cabinets rather than looking in my direction. "Three trust fund guys. They met Lucas and me at the club, and we were…having a good night. They were buying drinks and…showing me a lot of attention. Lucas didn't like it, but I thought it was kind of cute. He wasn't the jealous type, so seeing him get upset over something like that was just…funny at the time."

That much I knew, and I knew the next part too. They had talked about having an after-party, but they'd needed to meet up with their dealer. I'd known that Hunter occasionally dabbled in party drugs, and while Lucas wasn't into it, he went along with it. The two had been lured to an abandoned building under the guise of it being the dealer's house.

"And they met up with their dealer and attacked you guys," I said, watching him closely. "You barely survived, and Lucas…didn't."

He nodded. "Right, that's what I told you."

"Is there something else you need to tell me?"

His eyes continued staring at the cabinets as if they were going to give him the answers he sought. "They raped me."

The glass in my hand shattered, showering the counter with twinkling shards and a few shots of liquor. He glanced at me in surprise, his eyes locked on the mess I'd made from squeezing the glass too hard.

"Shit," he said with a sigh. "You cut yourself."

I had to force myself to look at my hand to see the wounds as blood dripped onto the counter. None of them looked like they needed more than a bit of cleaning. Especially in the face of what he'd just said, a few cuts on my hand weren't going to bother me.

"They what?" I asked softly as he handed me a clean towel to wrap around my hand. I knew some details had been left out, which were too painful to dredge up, even if it was for me. Never in all my wildest, worst imaginings did I think those words would come out of his mouth.

"The dealer wasn't all that interested in that," he said as he carefully began picking up the pieces of glass. It seemed I'd inadvertently given him something to focus on while he regaled the horrible story.

I wanted to help him clean up the mess but didn't want to interrupt his fussing. Instead, I walked to the sink to clean the blood off my hand so I could see how much damage I'd done. That required me to pluck a few small pieces of glass out while he cleaned up.

"I think he was just enjoying the sadism," Hunter said in an eerily calm voice as I heard him open the garbage can. "He didn't even hesitate when things got ugly. I think he knew it would get ugly when they showed up with Lucas and me. Or maybe they pre-planned it. Hard to say."

I didn't think it was all that hard to predict. One of the poorly kept secrets of the military was that it tended to attract a certain type of person, the kind who looked forward to bloodshed and violence. The sort the rest of us had to keep an eye out for, and when we found them, keep an eye on them. They were the sort to actively look for when they could unleash their inner monsters, which was acceptable when a situation was life or death but less so when there was no need.

"I'm…not going to go into the details. I think what I've said covers it," he said behind me.

"You mentioned you were interviewed by the police after the…attack," God, I couldn't say what it was. It hadn't been a simple attack. It had been an atrocity that robbed Hunter of the love of his life, his sense of safety, his dignity, and almost his life. How the hell had he lived with it for two years? "But you stopped talking about that."

He let out a low laugh filled with more bitterness than I thought he was capable of. "Oh…yeah, I tried. See, the problem is three of the four were part of the richest of the rich in Port Dale. Members of ‘respected families' and my ‘wild accusations' were smearing their good names through the mud."

"Even with the evidence?" I asked between gritted teeth.

"Evidence disappears, paperwork gets messed up, people change their stories. In the end, it was me against the entire legal system. Well, a legal system backed by some of the founding families of Port Dale, anyway. No, see, I was mistaken in who I thought my attackers were…or maybe, just maybe, me and my boyfriend got into some rough play, and it got out of hand. Maybe I was part of the problem, and I attacked them, and they had to defend themselves."

Rage beyond anything I had ever felt before boiled up, made worse by helplessness. I knew exactly what he meant, what had happened while I'd been gone. He had gone through all this for a chunk of that first year. And then, when I'd come back for a while, he had kept it all to himself, only for me to have to leave again while he put the pieces of his life together without help.

Everything that should have been in place to help him, to protect him, was either gone or actively worked against him. It was even more amazing to me that he'd made as much progress as he had. Anyone knowing the whole story wouldn't have blamed him if he'd locked himself away from the world for good and never ventured back into civilization. Yet somehow, he had found the strength to fight for his chance to come back into the world.

"And tonight?" I asked softly as I cleaned my hand and wrapped the towel around it. A few of the cuts could use some bandages, but the wounds would heal fine if I didn't aggravate them. "What happened tonight?"

I turned to see him set another cup in front of me. This time, it was plastic and had liquor in it. I hadn't even heard him preparing the drink, and the sight of the colorful plastic made me give him a dirty look.

Amazingly, he managed a small smile as he pushed it toward me. "Less likely to hurt yourself this way."

Feeling slightly childish at his words but knowing he was probably right, I took the drink. "Thanks."

He sat on one of the stools at the end of the counter and wrapped his hand around his drink. "I ran into him again."

"Which one?"

"The dealer friend."

"Where?"

His fingers drummed on the glass as he chewed on his bottom lip. "I…went for a walk. After we…after the club."

"After I was an idiot, you mean?" I corrected a little more harshly than I meant to.

A frown crossed his face, almost scolding me without saying a word. "Ignoring that for now."

"Of course," I said with a sigh. He wasn't going to let me get away with anything. When we were younger, he'd always been diligent about not ‘letting me put myself down.' I had always seen it as holding myself responsible for the shit I did, but that was something we'd never seen eye to eye on.

"And I…" he grimaced, and for the first time since he'd shown up in the apartment, I could see guilt written clear as day on his face. "Well, I zoned out. I was mindlessly walking and not paying attention to where I was going. My feet just kind of…took me."

I didn't need him to explain where he ended up and why he was acting so guilty. "You went back to where you two were attacked."

The guilt didn't ease from his face, and he nodded. "Kind of just…woke up, and I was there."

I knew he was expecting me to give him shit. In any normal circumstances, I would have done precisely that. Going back to the scene of the crime was asking to be hurt all over again. Not only that, but I remembered where he'd said it happened, and it wasn't the best part of town. Even back then, I would have told the two of them to stay away from there and reminded Hunter he should know better than to be there while drunk.

"Continue," I said after a moment, shaking my head to show I wasn't happy with his choices, but I wasn't going to give him shit over it right now.

"I don't know why my brain led me back there, but shit, with how everything went…I can't help but wonder if life or fate is trying to screw with me."

That got my attention. Hunter had never believed in a higher power or an intelligent design in the universe. I had always held onto a sliver of belief in something other than the world we had. As far as he was concerned, life was what you made it, and luck was much like the universe, indifferent to your suffering or success. Everything you got was either because you managed to grab it, or luck just worked in your favor.

"Fate?" I wondered aloud, watching him now.

He looked at me and then shrugged. "Just…what are the chances? That the one night I go back there after everything that happened, it would be the right time for him to see me."

"He recognized you?"

"Not at first. Thought I was some junkie or something, I guess. Was looking to make a sale. Then he recognized me, and everything went to hell."

It had probably been the guy's normal area, but I wasn't going to try to dissuade Hunter from his apparent newfound beliefs. For all I knew, some outside force was at play in what happened tonight. Of course, I didn't know why something would be so interested in making Hunter deal with one of his worst nightmares when he was starting to get back to normal.

"Okay," I said slowly, wanting to reach for him but sensing he needed to get through the story first. "So, he recognized you. I'm guessing he wasn't thrilled."

Hunter snorted harshly. "No. He got off just like those assholes did. Probably protected him for…whatever reason. Probably didn't trust him not to turn on them if they tried to let him go through the police alone."

"Makes sense."

"He was pissed still. I guess my attempts with the cops had caused him some trouble. I don't know how much, but it wasn't enough. Which is when he decided to attack me."

"And you got stabbed."

"Not as much as him."

The coldness in his voice was new, but the quiet pleasure in his words worried me. "How'd that happen?"

He wrinkled his nose before taking a drink. "I…fought back. Well, I got pissed first. I mean, look at my life. Look at what they turned my life into. I couldn't even enjoy the guy of my dreams giving me what I'd always wanted without losing my mind over a simple kiss. And then, when I was trying to get my shit together, one of those monsters decided what they'd done wasn't enough, that more shit had to be heaped onto me."

A scrambling sort of panic blossomed in my head at his words. I didn't think he even realized what he'd just admitted as he ran through the story. It seemed it was a night for revelations because I had never considered that he had been remotely interested in me. Like a few other things, that would have to wait until another time.

"So I got pissed," he said, completely oblivious. "I got…shit, I don't even know if there's a word for how I felt. I thought about everything they'd done to me and what had happened over the past two years because of them. Two years of my life. Two years of my happiness robbed, my safety completely gone, my ability to be intimate with anyone or ever want to, my goddamn dignity . And I just…something in me broke."

I could tell him what it was and that it wasn't so much that something had broken as much as something had broken free. It was inside every human being, as far as I was concerned. In each and every one of us, there was something with teeth and claws ready to rip and shred when threatened in the right way. It was fury incarnate, fueled by the desire to love with a desperation that most felt only at the precipice of death.

It was the thing inside us that few people ever discovered, at least not in the modern world, in civilized places. It was the same thing that could turn us into monsters if we let it, yet it was the one thing that could keep us alive when the chips were down, and your number could be up. The hard part came after it woke up when you had to figure out how to live with yourself after doing whatever was necessary to survive.

"I hit him," Hunter said after silently staring at the counter for a moment. His eyes dragged up to me and rested on my face, mild concern on his features. "I barely remembered all the self-defense I had been taught. I just…hit him with my forehead. I guess he wasn't expecting it and let me go. After that, I kept hitting him until he went down, and I-I saw the knife lying there and?—"

"You stabbed him."

"Repeatedly."

"Repeatedly?"

"Over and over again. By the time I stopped, you wouldn't even know it had been a person from the neck down and the waist up. I stabbed him so many times, and it was like…I don't know. Like something from a horrible dream and the best dream you'd ever had at the same time."

After all the other surprises tonight, it was the least shocking. I could only imagine what it must have felt like to face one of your greatest nightmares. He must have been terrified before the beast finally broke from the cage inside him. As horrible as it had started, it had to have been liberating. To slay the monster that had haunted his dreams and ensure it would never hurt another person again.

"Did anyone see you?" I asked now the worst of the story was out.

He shook his head. "That alley is…pretty deep and not the best lit. Plus, I knocked out what little light there was while I stayed there trying to figure out what to do."

"What did you do?"

"Took the knife with me so it wouldn't be left behind. Chucked the pipe I used to break the light into a dumpster a few blocks down."

"You…carried a pipe and knife while covered in blood?"

"No," he said with a sudden laugh, the imagery apparently funny to him. "There's this place not far from the alley. People are supposed to dump their donations into the drop box, but most people just drop them wherever. Found the hoodie in there. It was big enough to cover the mess, and I stuck the knife in the front pocket to keep it out of sight. The pipe I stuck down the back of my pants. Made it awkward to walk."

"And you just left?"

"Yeah."

I nodded, thinking for a moment. "The pipe probably wasn't necessary, but the knife was a good idea. The cops probably aren't going to look too heavily into the death of a known drug dealer. They're pretty good at making enemies, and it's way too much work for them to hunt down a specific killer when there are dozens of potential suspects."

"I wouldn't be high on the list?" he asked in the same tone someone would ask about the difference between shirt fabrics.

"If this had happened a few months after you were attacked, probably. But over two years later? When you've done nothing but quietly live your life? No, they're going to see the mess, talk about how the city keeps going to shit, and then chuck him into the ground and move on, probably glad someone did the hard work for them."

A new light flashed into his eyes as he looked at me. "Their hard work for them."

I gave him a dry smile. "Come on, Hunter, we grew up in this city. You know how many dirtbags, dealers, rapists, and killers there are. Too many get away with never seeing the business end of the law. What good cops are left end up burned out as they watch all their work go to shit or go nowhere. The burned-out ones don't care anymore. The corrupt ones are always looking for the next one to line their pockets and keep the wheel turning."

"I wonder how many pockets I emptied tonight," he wondered casually.

"Enough to piss some people off, but not enough to make a difference," I told him with a shrug. "In the end, the cycle's going to keep going. Someone else will take the bastard's place, and the wheel turns again."

"Kind of a shame, isn't it?" he asked with a shake of his head. "Having people out there who get away with all this shit."

"We've known that since we were kids, Hunter. Nothing short of death will stop some of these shitheads."

"Yeah. I wonder how many other people they've hurt…ruined."

"They?"

"The other three."

"The…three that attacked you and Lucas."

"Yes," it came out as a hiss, and that strange light returned to his eyes.

"I don't know," I admitted, feeling I had no choice but to give him the truth. I didn't think the truth would do him much good, but a lie would serve him even less. "Probably more. They'll probably do it again. They're protected, you saw that."

"That I did," he said, draining his glass and setting it down with a thoughtful expression.

"Hunter…" I began, wondering where his head was at.

The light cleared as he looked at me, and some of the familiar Hunter returned. This one was nervous and worried, but it was still the man I recognized. "You don't seem bothered by what I just told you."

"Oh! Oh, trust me, I'm plenty bothered by just about everything you told me. From the truth of the night of your attack all the way down to you being in that goddamn alley by yourself."

"Yeah, I figured I'd get chewed out for that."

"At some point in the future," I told him with a brief flash of a smile. "But if you're asking if I'm bothered by the fact that you ended someone tonight…well, yes, I am bothered, but not in the way you might be worried about."

"I don't even know what I'm worried about," he said with a snort. "Trying to figure out what's going on in my head is like trying to solve a puzzle, and someone keeps knocking the table."

"Look," I began, moving toward him now it felt like he was ready for someone to be closer. "I hate that you had to go through that tonight. I hate that you had to deal with the horror of facing that bastard alone. I hate that you were attacked. And most of all, I hate that it came down to you having to choose between your life and his. But I don't hate that he's dead."

"Me either," he admitted softly. Then, the icy fog around him broke, and he slid his arm across the counter, turning his palm upward. "I don't know what to do."

"What you need to do is try to eat something on top of that alcohol and everything else that happened tonight," I told him, taking his hand and giving it a firm squeeze before easing off. "Then you need to get some rest because you've had a long day."

"I keep thinking there was something else I should have done."

"What do you mean?"

"Should I have left him there? Should I have tried to hide the evidence?"

I noticed he wasn't worried about the legal trouble that could easily come from killing someone. Not that I thought he should be worried. I had meant it when I said there was little to no chance of anyone tracing the killing back to him. But it made me think he wasn't bothered by the moral problems of having taken another life. Either that, or he'd convinced himself he wasn't bothered. I knew killing someone, especially up close and personal, that violently, had a way of coming back on you even when you knew what you'd done was the only option and possibly even right.

"No, you got the hell out of there and kept attention off you. Let him rot there until someone finds him and the cops get involved. I give it a couple of days after that before they lose interest in trying to figure out who did it."

His expression went blank, and I wondered if I was about to see a moment of panic over the cops coming to his door. "I…damn, I didn't even think about that."

"What?"

"The person who finds his body."

"What about them?"

", I…God, I made a mess of him. Imagine some random person finding his body like that. Some old lady in the morning doing her shopping. Some kid on his way to school. Or just…anyone."

"It'll most likely be a junkie or homeless person who finds it first."

"That's not much better. Those are people too."

"Yeah, I'm aware. And I'm also aware they're the kind of people who see all sorts of fucked up shit in this city. Out of anyone who isn't a cop, EMT, firefighter, nurse, or doctor, those are the least likely to be scarred by that."

His worry was absurd only because it was so out of place with all the things he wasn't worried about. Of all those things, the police, the effect on his mental state, the fact that he could have died, no, it was some random person finding the body that bothered him the most. Just as absurd was the fact that I took some measure of comfort from that because it was a very Hunter thing for him to be worried about.

"Look, there's nothing you can do about it now. Unless you want to drag yourself down there and move the body. Or turn yourself in and make it so someone else doesn't find the body."

His eyes widened, his lip curling. "What, and go to prison for that fucker? No. If I could have, I would have thrown him into some hole in the city and let him rot there forever."

It was much more heated than I expected, but I shouldn't have been surprised. "Why don't you make yourself something to eat? I'm going to clean up the mess we left in the bathroom."

"The mess I left," he said with a sigh. "I don't even know if I can stomach anything to eat."

"You'd be surprised what you can put away. You probably won't taste it, but the point is to have something in your stomach."

"Yeah."

It wasn't exactly an agreement, but he wasn't arguing with me as he slid off the stool. Reluctantly, I let go of his hand and let him go to the fridge as I turned to do what I'd promised. It also gave me the chance to look at my hand again without him breathing over my shoulder.

Without worrying about him, I could see my hand needed more than just cleaning and a towel wrapped around it. No sooner had I realized that than I heard Hunter call from the kitchen. "And wrap your hand with some ointment and that gauze."

Jesus, he'd just gone through hell and back and was still worrying about what I was doing with myself. It was enough to make me roll my eyes as I turned to consider what to do next. There were the clothes, as well as the knife and the blood on the floor. I couldn't remember how long bloodborne pathogens could survive in the open air, but it was probably best not to risk anything with my hand sliced up.

I was still petty enough to grumble as I applied antibiotic ointment to the cuts and scratches and then used gauze to wrap them because bandages would have been useless. To assuage my paranoia about the blood, I also threw on the largest latex gloves I could find. The guy had been a dealer and probably a user as well. I wouldn't trust his blood with a two-mile pole.

With that done, I went about cleaning up the mess. The hoodie and his socks went into a garbage bag for me to figure out what to do with later. The rest could still be washed, and the floor was easy to clean. When I returned from dumping his unbloodied clothes in the hamper, I noticed the knife was missing.

Confused, I looked and realized it was nowhere to be seen. I had left it on the edge of the sink before we'd left the bathroom after his shower. The only answer was that Hunter had taken it.

I found him sitting quietly at the counter with a bowl of cereal. His eyes slid to my hand, and he smirked. "I wondered if you were going to listen or not."

I held up my hand. "Yeah, well, I didn't want to risk catching anything from him."

"Good call," he said, kicking his legs restlessly as he chewed. "I am."

"You are what?"

"Clean."

"I…" For a moment, I wondered if that was some sort of proposition. Which really would have topped the night with the cherry for all the weirdness it was already filled with.

"Yeah," he said with a humorless smile. "I've been tested every few months since they gang-raped me."

"Jesus," I said quietly. I had to appreciate his cavalier attitude toward what happened. I had seen what happened when you were so caught up in the horrors you forgot how to let it go.

"It's kind of funny," he said in a voice that said he found very little funny about any of it. "But I would never have been able to say something like that before, you know? I guess murdering the guy who tried to murder me has a way of putting things into perspective."

"He was the one who tried to kill you?"

"Yeah. Funny, he was only an inch or so away from where he stabbed me the last time."

I had seen the old scar when I'd been patching him up. Hunter had always stayed dressed after the attack, and there was no way in hell I was going to be insensitive enough to ask to see his wound. What struck me as odd about both wounds was that neither of them would have been enough to kill someone…at least not quickly. It only further cemented in my head that Hunter had been right. The man had been a sadist who got a kick out of knowing he'd left Hunter to die a slow, agonizing death as he bled out near his boyfriend.

Then again, that meant the other three had probably known. That wasn't surprising. The three of them had taken turns raping Hunter while he had been helpless, knowing Lucas was either dying or dead, only feet away. That took a special kind of evil, and now I wondered if I should have been as blasé about how many more victims those men had.

"This doesn't taste like anything," he said, looking down into the bowl. "The most sugar-heavy thing I have in this apartment, and I might as well be eating cardboard sprinkled with dirt."

"Pretty sure dirt has a taste," I said, now seeing the toll the night had taken on him. The dark circles had grown even darker, and there was a haggardness about his face that hadn't been there before. "Let's get you to bed. I can clean up out here and let you rest."

He opened his mouth in what I thought would be a protest, but he surprised me with, "Will you sleep with me tonight?"

"You want me to sleep with you?"

The first genuine smile curled at the corner of his lips. "Literally. Not…sexually."

"I…yeah, I figured that. I'm just surprised," I said, feeling my face warm at the implication that I thought he was asking to have sex with me.

He chuckled, giving a slight nod. "Then let's go lay down and deal with all this crap in the morning, what do you say?"

"Sure," I said, pulling the glove off the bandages and tossing it in the trash to follow him into the nearby bedroom. I'd seen his room when I first visited, but only a glance, and the one thing I'd focused on was the small gun safe under the bed.

He didn't bother changing the lights as we walked into the dark room and led me to the bed. There were about five bodies already there, curled up in various positions. Though the floofy orange spot on the bed made him chuckle as he bent down to scratch gently at Clem's cheeks.

"He never sleeps in here," Hunter explained. "I guess he knew you'd end up in here with me."

"Or you're reading a little too much into the small brain of a cat," I told him, even as I scooped Clem up to move him from the center of the bed.

"You'd be surprised what they can come up with when they finally manage to squeeze a few brain cells together," he said with a chuckle as he wiggled his way under the comforter. The cats all began to move around him to make themselves comfortable again, and I knew if I wanted to get a spot, I would have to move quickly.

Thankfully, I managed to get under the comforter before the cats could settle in for the night again. They still shifted around us, but I was able to reach out and put an arm around Hunter. His eyes closed before he rolled over, putting his back to me and scooting backward.

"I didn't think I'd be tired, but I'm exhausted," he said in the middle of a heavy yawn.

"Then don't fight it, just let it happen."

"I don't think I have much choice."

"Good."

He grew quiet, and I felt his breathing even out quickly. The day's toll was being taken, dragging him down to sleep. I knew I wasn't going to sleep anytime soon as I ran the whole day through my head. It would hit him tomorrow, probably when he woke up or shortly after, and I needed to be prepared for that.

His voice rose from the darkness, thick and heavy but discernible. "This day fucking sucked, but I'm glad you kissed me. Be nice to…do it again."

I waited in the darkness until he finally gave a soft snore. It seemed he wasn't content to leave me with just the worries about what he'd done. He had to throw in that last comment for good measure for me to chew on.

What was I going to do with him?