Chapter 29

Hunter

Kade drives us back to Weston, and I don’t know why I let him drive my car. I don’t even know why he asked. He hates old things.

“Is this an actual fucking radio?” He presses each knob, the dial darting left to right as he searches for music. “Not like a satellite radio or anything?”

He looks at me with an expression somewhere between confusion and pain etched on his brow. I shake with a quiet laugh and look out the window.

“Bench seats are useful, though,” he adds with a playful tone.

Yes, they are.

We drive back through town and cruise down High Street, toward the river.

“Why didn’t you wait for her?” he asks.

“She’s going to be celebrating.” I take out my phone and start scrolling. “Her friends and family are there.”

“You’re her friend,” he points out the obvious, “and her family.”

I turn to face him. “I wasn’t invited.”

“Her boyfriend doesn’t need an invitation.”

“I’m not her boyfriend.”

I don’t mean to sound defeatist, but she didn’t send anyone with a message, telling me to meet her at Fallstown. She said she’d be late. That’s it. It was me who decided I wanted to be there for her. She didn’t ask.

“Hunter…” he chides.

But I cut him off. “Look, I know, all right? But I also know I’ve told her I loved her twice, and she hasn’t said it back. Whatever the hell we’re doing is confusing for her or some shit. I’ll fight with her another day. Not tonight. She’s feeling too good.”

She looked incredible on that track.

But if she felt the same way I do, she would’ve said so.

“Girls don’t like to be the one chasing a guy,” he mumbles. “That’s all I’m saying.”

I rub my forehead and then exhale. “Why are you coming back with me?”

I sound aggravated, and I’m hoping he notices.

But he just grins. “What’s her name? Arlet?”

Oh, fuck no.

“We need to talk about that,” I say in a hard voice.

But he just laughs. “I didn’t mean to do it in your bed.”

“Bullshit.”

“She started getting handsy,” he tells me, “and when she found out I wasn’t you, she didn’t seem to care, and hey, neither did I.”

“So you decided to screw in my room on the off chance Dylan would see.”

It’s not a question.

He just kind of shrugs and winces at the same time. “You know I don’t think,” he explains. “I won’t do it again?”

Damn right, you won’t. Asshole.

But…the confrontation with Dylan about it ended pretty great, so I can’t complain too much. I see her in the back seat of my car again, feeling myself sliding all the way into her for the first time. The way her breathing shook against my body…

I’ll fucking take that one memory to my grave with me. I’m never letting it go.

It’s good to know that Kade is on my side. He wants me to love her.

We head down Frontage Road, toward the bridge, and I see an email pop up on my phone from Robert Cartridge from Clarke University.

I open the attachment, the essay Kade submitted loading on my phone.

I knew Cartridge would be confused about why I didn’t have it when I sent him an email, asking for a copy, so I gave him a story about being hacked. I hoped he didn’t need more detail.

The essay Kade submitted appears in my screen, and I almost download it and save it for later, but the first line catches my attention.

He’s put me in a new prison.

I glance at Kade, then back to my phone as he turns up the music.

That’s what he does with all of us, the essay reads. Hides us. Locks us up. All of his little treasures.

And there are so many of us. He’s grabbed, shoved, squeezed, bent, torn, and even bitten us, but he’s done that to me more than most, because I’m his favorite.

Or I used to be.

I narrow my eyes, unsure if I want to read more. This sounds a little creepy. Did he write this?

I remember the feel, you know? Watching him lick his fingers and slide them up my skin, touching me, turning me, and gazing at me for hours. Smiling while he chewed his lips and looked at me with wonder in his eyes.

I took him away. Far away to places he can only visit in his mind, but he got to go there, and that was enough.

And I wasn’t his just once, either. He picked me a lot. Out of all of them, I was the one he hid in his sheets the most after a long night and he got too tired to let me go. He mended my tears. Stitched my spine. Wrapped me in a band to keep me together. He loved me. Every scar he left me was proof of that.

It didn’t last, of course. New becomes old. Familiar becomes boring. He started trapping me in dark places with no room to move. Did he know I needed air? Time passed and I started to rot, but I’d see glimpses of him from time to time. When he flipped the lid on the case. When he opened the door. Light would spill in, cool air caressed me, and he’d run his hands over all of us, searching for whatever would feed his appetite. He never picked me again, though.

“What are you reading?” Kade asks.

I see him look over at me out of the corner of my eye, and it takes a minute to dislodge the lump in my throat.

“Uh, this study on Gingko trees and their effect on—”

“Never mind,” he groans. “Jesus.”

I keep reading.

I didn’t see him at all for a long time.

I’d hear him, though. Laughter, shouts, music, and fighting… My boy’s life carried on, and even though his voice got deeper, I knew he hadn’t left me. A fact, I confirmed when one day, he pulled us all out of his closet, and I thought, maybe he was going to let us go. Maybe he was going to give us to someone new or take us to another part of the house.

This is written from the perspective of an object, not a person. I exhale a little.

But he didn’t take us to a new room. He put us in a new cage—steel, cold, and hard—but strangely enough, it wasn’t worse.

I could see him for a while through the vents as he laid on his bed and held a phone in his hand. I liked watching him. He found a new way to enjoy us that no one would know about. He’d scroll, I’d watch, he never smiled, and I’d stare at his thumb moving up the screen again and again and again.

Over and over and over.

He didn’t smile. He didn’t laugh. He didn’t fight. He just tapped.

Tap, tap, tap.

Summer came, and I could smell flowers through the vent in my prison. He opened a window, and a fly buzzed in. The others and me loved the warmth and the glimpses of sun. He was gone a lot, but sometimes there was music outside, and sometimes he didn’t come home at all, but we listened to the world, even as his little sister came in and set some new T-shirts on his bed. She left. We stayed. The fly stayed.

Buzz, buzz, buzz.

It’s the lockers in his room. Cold, steel, hard. Vents. Whatever’s in the lockers is telling the story.

He filled my cage with more little secrets, locked the door, and started piling more of us that he wanted to hide in the cage next to mine. I heard screams—rips and tears—and he’d curse, angry. The cage door would slam, he’d hit our box, growling, and then he’d charge out of the room. Where’s the one who looks like him? The one he fought with? I haven’t seen him in so long.

Football games played on his T.V. Friends would laugh and talk with him in his room. They’d howl and clap, a savory scent filling the air and reminding me of the same scent I had on a piece of me once. Pizza. He still doesn’t laugh, but he likes football.

Clap, clap, clap.

It’s cold now. So dark. I smell snow. He comes in late, crashes against my cage, and I’m scared. Is he hurt? Will he hurt me? He breathes hard, whimpers a little. Punches my cage. Slits of his face appear through the vent, and he looks like he’s in pain. He’s so big now. Grown. I missed everything. Why is he so sad? I can help. I’m here. I don’t see blood. He drinks from the bottle like he’s so thirsty.

Gulp, gulp, gulp.

I harden my jaw, trying to fight back the tears as I read.

Spring again. He has new friends. Lots of friends. He seems happy, and I smell and listen, because their scent is pretty and they sound soft, and he touches them too. Licks, bites, grabs, and bends. They don’t talk much. They play on his bed, the steady banging of the headboard against the wall.

Bang, bang, bang.

The summer goes on. All the same, all the time. Sometimes our doors open and some of us disappear and we don’t return. Where does he take us? Some of us stay. I lose sight of him, but I hear him drink and crash on his bed, and every once in a while, I hear the banging against the wall.

Gulp, gulp, crash.

Bang, gulp, crash.

Gulp, bang, bang.

Gulp, bang, crash.

He doesn’t love me anymore. I want to be loved. I want to go. Travel. Be in backpacks on a train. On a shelf in a sidewalk bookstore. On a picnic blanket in Central Park. Why doesn’t he release me? I can’t bear to watch him forget how close he is to being happy if he just opens my door.

And then…

He does.

It’s a book, I realize. He keeps books in those lockers.

It’s night, the house is quiet, and the cage swings open. He pushes all of us into a bag, pulls it closed, and carries us downstairs and outside. I smell the fresh-cut grass, hear fireworks in the distance, and feel the sighs of the others in the bag with me. They’re happy to be remembered.

Where is he taking us?

When the bag opens again, he’s reaching in and removing stacks of us, stuffing us into shelves.

Shelves! We’ll see people walking by. They’ll look at us, and even if they don’t ever touch us again, I long to be part of the world. To be seen. Considered.

One of us tears, pages spilling onto the grass. We’re still outside. What kind of shelf is this?

He puts us in, closes the door, and I see him through the glass. I don’t like the way he’s looking at us. Like it hurts for him. Why?

If he loves me, why did he hide me? Why was he ashamed? Is this goodbye?

He disappears, and moments later, someone else comes and picks a book out. They take it and leave one in its place, and I realize this is a place to trade stories.

But my boy didn’t take any of the books that were already here. He didn’t take anything new. Why?

Then, suddenly, he’s there. Again. He opens up the glass door, pulls me back out—just me—and I know I’m not new for him. He’s been rough with me, marked me, and bent me, but he’s remembering how he loved me. How he can’t give me up, and how I taught him so many things.

Like how mind-boggling big space is. Vastly! Hugely!

How dolphins are the second most intelligent species on Earth, second only to mice.

How digital watches are really pretty neat.

How the answer to the meaning of life is forty-two, and how a towel is really the most useful thing any interstellar space traveler will own.

I laugh, meeting Kade’s eyes as he looks at me like I’m crazy.

“Gingko trees are a trip,” he mumbles.

It’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. That’s the book that’s talking in the essay. I think our dad would agree that a towel is always useful.

I’m a part of him, and he can’t say goodbye just yet.

Maybe it wouldn’t have been better to stay on the free library shelf. To sit on someone’s coffee table for three months, collecting the smell of cigarettes and watching reruns of Friends, while issues of Cosmo and Golf Digest scatter around me.

But perhaps I would’ve gone to Africa or Paris or on a ship at sea, so I’m grateful some of us stayed on the little bookshelf, and I wish them well on their journeys.

My boy still needs me, though. My travels can wait, because I will live much longer than him.

He folds me in his fist, and once in a while I feel a drop of water from his face as we go back home.

Drip, drip, drip.

I turn my face out the window, so he can’t see my eyes. He submitted this with my application. Mine. Not his. He didn’t want anyone to know this about him. I raise my thumb to the corner of my eye, wiping away the wet.

I don’t need him to explain anything to me, but I’m glad I read this. He hides so much that I get used to thinking he’s not complicated, or that he never feels pain. He’ll blow it off if I bring it up, but I’m glad I know this. We don’t have to talk about it. Not yet anyway.

“Who is that?” he says.

I look ahead as he cruises across the bridge and see a girl standing up on the ledge. They need a damn fence. Most bridges have one.

The white hair flies in the breeze.

“It’s the Dietrich kid,” I tell him. “Stop for a second.”

He draws in a breath, impatient, but he cruises up to the side and stops.

“Thomasin,” I call.

She doesn’t turn, just stares down at the water dressed in jean shorts, black leggings underneath, and a big, yellow hoodie.

“Tommy,” I say her nickname instead.

She turns and looks at us over her shoulder. Her expression doesn’t change.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

She doesn’t reply, just stares at us.

“Do you need a ride?” I press.

She doesn’t respond, and I try to see if she has earbuds in, but then I hear Kade next to me.

“Get. Down,” he bites out slowly.

And very quietly.

I look over at him, his gaze only slightly turned toward her, but it’s stern.

I glance back at her, and she starts to spin, but then she wobbles. I grab the door handle, and I feel Kade jolt, but then she throws out her arms, twirls, and drops back down to the street next to my car.

I breathe hard, my pulse racing. She quirks a smile and walks back the way we just came, toward the Falls.

“Shit,” I grumble, laughing under my breath.

I look over at Kade, but he’s not smiling. Eyes flat, he shifts into Drive and hits the gas, any sign that he’s in a good mood now gone.

Reaching into the glovebox, I take out a coin and flip it over the bridge as we head into Weston.

By the time we get to school, the parking lot is packed. Most people have been here for a couple of hours already, and we stroll in, finding the gym crowded. People dance, surrounded by tables and balloons and whatever else parents were able to donate, and I spot Farrow and Constin hanging by the drinks.

Surprisingly, they’re in suits, which concerns me more than I would ever admit. They don’t look like students anymore.

A year from now, they’ll be far from it if Dewitt is correct.

Constin’s outfit is black, including his shirt, while Farrow’s shirt is white like mine. None of us wear ties.

I approach, and they eye my brother at my side. I realize that having him over here last night might’ve been okay, but maybe not twice.

In any case, Kade holds out his hand to Farrow, all of us sober now.

“No hard feelings,” Kade says.

Farrow quirks a smile and shakes hands with him. “Oh, there are lots of hard feelings, but…not tonight. Be our guest.”

Kade’s happy with that and spots Arlet off to our right, moving to join her, while Constin heads to the dance floor.

“So, what happens Monday?” Farrow asks me when we’re alone.

I move in closer. “I think I have to go home.” I stare out at the crowd with him. “I’m missing my little sister grow up. And I’m going to need my brother.”

Now that I know he wants me close to him and has always wanted that, I need to make up for lost time.

I try to tamp down my grin. “Of course, I’ll miss having you as a roommate…and a…”

I look to him, and he chuckles. “Don’t you fucking call me uncle.”

We laugh, the truth finally out. He’s Ciaran’s son. I’m guessing my grandfather didn’t know until Farrow was older, otherwise he would’ve raised him and Farrow would’ve been in our lives from the beginning.

“When did you know that I knew?” I ask him.

“Every damn time you looked at that picture too closely.”

“The resemblance is severe,” I admit, remembering the photo at the barber shop. “You think if we just invite you to dinner my mother will figure it out?”

He smiles, looking amused, but then his face falls a little, looking serious. “Don’t tell her.”

I stare at him.

Someone has to tell her.

“It’s not my place,” I point out. “It’s yours and Ciaran’s, but she needs to know.”

My mom grew up largely alone. She’d love to find out she has a sibling. I can’t keep something like that from her forever.

But Farrow shakes his head. “Knowing me won’t make her life better.”

I watch him, how his expression changes from serious to solemn, and I know he doesn’t want to complicate her life. He thinks he’ll be a burden, and it’s not an unreasonable concern, given how he makes money. Given that he’s following in their father’s footsteps.

But he should let my mom decide that. She knows how to say no to things she doesn’t want.

Just then, Farrow tips his chin, and I follow his gaze, seeing Dylan walk through the gym doors.

My whole body vibrates under my skin, and whatever we were talking about is suddenly forgotten.

She steps in, Coral, Mace, and Codi drifting in behind her. They move into the dance, but she stays close to the entrance, smoothing out the lumps in her hair, the remnants of curls still visible.

Wide-eyed, she looks around, fiddling with the little purse on her wrist, and when she sees me, she smiles.

My chest aches.

The dress leaves little to the imagination, showing off the curves of her breasts as they sit in tight fabric, her cleavage deep and wide. I can tell her back is nearly bare, and her legs are long and toned, and I smile at her feet in high-tops.

She moves her gaze to my left, and I look to see who she’s watching.

Kade stands with Arlet, leaning into her as he grins.

Dylan doesn’t move toward me.

She walks to him.

I breathe calm and slow—so slowly—as I watch her reach up and squeeze his shoulder. He turns, looking surprised, and I watch her lean in to whisper in his ear.

I lock my jaw.

He smiles and takes her hand, leading her to the dance floor.

“I’m about to take her over my knee,” Farrow grumbles through his teeth.

I watch them dance, my brother holding her, her arms around him, and she whispers in his ear again, this time for longer, and a wide smile spreads across his face.

I take a step, about to walk over, but then they move, she’s taking his hand and leading him out the other set of doors.

What the fuck just happened?

They disappear, the doors close, and Farrow sets down his cup. “Okay, tonight’s for fucking him up.”

I plant my hand on his chest, stopping him. “Stand by.”

Leaving him where he stands, I shoot off, charging after Dylan and my brother. I’m sick of this shit. This morning, she’s sitting on my dick, and now she’s ignoring me. I push through the doors, look both ways, and see the stairwell door to my left closing.

I run for it, shoving it open, and looking down the staircase, hearing another set of doors shut. Well, they’re not leaving. What the hell are they doing down there?

I grind my teeth, feeling like I want to bite something.

I head down, opening the doors to the bottom floor and moving toward the auto shop to the left.

But just then, Kade steps out of the shop, into the hallway, and smiles as he walks toward me.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer. He just reaches into my breast pocket, searching for something.

“What are you doing?” I blurt out.

He pulls out my keys. “Borrowing your car for an hour,” he says. “You’re not leaving anytime soon.”

His eyes flash to the room he just came out of—without Dylan—a mischievous grin on his face.

“I’ll be back later,” he tells me. “Have fun in there.”

What?

He walks away, and I glance to the auto shop door.

Dylan’s in there? For me?

I almost start to smile, but then realization hits at what he’s going off to do while he leaves me here with her.

“Hey, don’t have sex in my car!” I yell after him.

He pops his head back out the stairwell door. “Can I use your room then?”

I sigh hard, heading to the auto shop. “Have sex in my car.”

“Thanks!”

I shake my head and step into the dark auto shop, looking around to the cars and over the desks, but not seeing Dylan. The bay doors are closed, but the door leading to the cage is wide open. A light flickers inside the dark space, and I drift toward the door, my lungs emptying as Dylan appears.

She’s inside the cage, between the lat tower and the chest press, pressed into the chain-link fence with her wrists bound above her head. I gaze up at the handcuffs—my handcuffs that she must’ve snatched from my room tonight—and quietly approach our Pirate hostage for her last night here.

“Hunter?” she asks, sensing me.

Her hair spills down her back, and I look up to the fingers clenched around the fence. Her phone sits on the weight machine to my left, an app with candlelight running.

Kade saw her like this? Tsk, tsk, tsk…

Sliding my hands up her dress, I yank her ass into my body as I whisper in her ear. “What if someone else had found you?”

But I guess that’s why she took Kade with her. To lure me to follow and to make sure no one else came in here before me.

I roam her body, seeing goosebumps break out on her arms as I caress the tiny fabric between her legs. Her naked hips are only covered by the thin string of her thong, and I keep going, gliding my hand up her bare back.

My cock strains against my pants. “Where’s the key?”

She groans, letting her head fall back. “Somewhere on me.”

Fuck.

I kneel, removing her shoes and tipping them to see if anything falls out. Leaving her barefoot, I leave little kisses as I move up and lick the backs of her thighs, touching every inch of her I can reach.

Rising, I slip my hands farther up her dress, over her stomach, before I slip my fingers up the back of her scalp. She breathes hard, and I close my fist around her hair, pulling her back and nibbling her mouth. I bite and kiss as I unzip the back of her dress with my other hand.

“Where’s the fucking key, baby?” I murmur.

She just smiles.

I pull away from her mouth and slide my hands inside her dress, cupping her breasts.

She moans, and I look into her eyes and she looks into mine, and I hold them as I tear one of the spaghetti straps off her shoulder. Fire lights in her eyes, and I do the same fucking thing to the other one.

The dress falls, pooling on the floor at her feet, and I let my eyes glide up her body, trussed up in cuffs. My dick is throbbing.

“It’s awfully dangerous,” she taunts as I slide my finger inside the string of her thong. “Someone’s going to come in.”

“Then give me the key.”

I tug her panties down over her ass.

All she says is, “You’re so close.”

I wind the string around my fingers and yank, ripping the thong clean off her body.

She shakes with a whimper, and I grab her hips, pulling her ass into my groin as I bite her earlobe and massage a breast.

Someone’s going to fucking come in. This isn’t funny. Not really. I know for a fact that members of the team like to bring their dates in here to screw around. Where’s the goddamn key? She’s naked. I just need her uncuffed, and I’ll take her into one of the cars in the auto shop, or into the locker room and one of the shower stalls.

I back away from her and leave the cage, taking in the view of her long brown hair falling down her back as it gives way to her beautiful waist and gorgeous ass.

Walking around, I come to the other side and face her, taking in her body and her wet lips.

She presses herself into the fence, her nipples peeking through the diamonds in the pattern.

“I like it here,” she whispers. “My last chance to see it before you give me back tomorrow.”

I lean down and lick her nipple before I catch it between my teeth. She gasps excitedly, clawing at the cage and pressing her body against the chain-link. I kiss her tits through the metal holes, sucking as I move from one breast to the other.

Squatting down, I slide my tongue inside of her, running the tip up and down her clit.

“Hunter,” she moans.

I suck her little nub into my mouth, and I’m swelling and hard, about fucking ready to make her twist around so I can fuck her through the fence right now.

“I know where I didn’t search yet,” I tease, biting her flesh.

Standing up tall, I sink my fingers through the hole and into her pussy.

She grunts, pressing against the metal as I feed her long, slow strokes, and I keep going long after I realize there’s no key there, either.

Thrusting against the fence, she rides my hand, and I can’t take it anymore. I need my body on hers.

“You’re so wet.” I kiss and lick her mouth through the fence. “I think you like it here.”

She bites her bottom lip, but I see the smile. Moving back around and into the cage, I strip off my jacket, rip open my shirt, and unfasten my belt.

Taking myself out, I look up to her fingers clutching the thick wires of the fence before I yank her ass back and turn out her thigh.

I nudge the head of my cock at her entrance. “How many times can I fuck you before I give you back tomorrow?”

I thrust—once, then twice—burying myself inside of her as I cover her mouth with mine.

Her head turned over her shoulder, she returns the kiss as I slide my tongue in slow, soft, and touching the sharp metal of the key.

Lips on her, I meet her eyes as I take it from her mouth and see her smile.

“I love you, Hunter,” she says.