12. Evalee

EVALEE

“ B aby, come on; open your eyes.” Hunter’s strained voice clips through the darkness encasing me. “Come on; I know you can hear me.” His breath dusts my cheek. “Fuck, what have I done?”

I want to open my eyes and console him, but my eyelids are glued shut by some unforeseen force.

I’m so sorry I thought you lied to me.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, his lips kissing my ear. “I have been lying to you … Not about telling the hybrids about where Ryleigh was, but about other things. Not because I don’t trust you, but because I don’t want you getting hurt … And I don’t want to lose you. I can’t ever lose you …”

My eyes pop open, my body giving a harsh jerk as I suck in a sharp breath.

Hunter sits back, his eyes roaming up and down my body, inspecting every inch of me. When his gaze collides with mine, the storm of worry pouring from his eyes is so overpowering that my breath gets lodged in my throat.

“Tell me you’re okay.” His voice cracks.

I bob my head up and down. “I’m fine. I swear.” I start to sit up, but he places a hand on my shoulder and guides me back to the ground.

“Don’t sit up just yet,” he instructs. “I want to examine you and make sure you’re okay.”

“Aren’t we a little too old to play witch doctor?” I give a feeble laugh.

He doesn’t laugh with me, worry still creasing his brow. “I need to make sure the broken contract didn’t cause any permanent damage.”

Worry seizes my throat. “That’s what the pain was?”

He nods, slipping off his jacket. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking when I nodded.”

What the hell does he mean by “when he nodded”?

I’m so lost. And worried. And on edge. Plus, the pulsating headache from the broken spell isn’t helping, either.

“So, you were lying …? About what?”

Cupping the back of my neck, he slips the balled-up jacket beneath my head like a pillow. “You said you should’ve known better than to think I’d ever lie to you and”—he audibly gulps—“I nodded without thinking.”

I stare up at the shooting stars now blazing across the midnight blue sky as I attempt to process what happened before I blacked out. He’s right; the pain only came when I declared he hasn’t ever lied to me, and then he nodded.

“So … you have been lying to me about something else?”

He smashes his lips together and nods. “But I promise that every single one of them is for a good reason.”

My eyes enlarge. “ Every single one of them ? As in, you’ve been lying to me about more than one thing?” I move to sit up, needing some space, but his fingers splay across my shoulders, securing me in place.

“I don’t want you getting up until I examine you,” he says, keeping me pinned to the ground. “I want to make sure everything is healed from the contract breaking before you start moving around.”

I rub my aching chest. “You might want to check my heart first, because it hurts the worst.”

“Eva …” A heavy amount of remorse weighs in his tone as his hand finds my cheek. “What I lied about … I did that to protect you. And to protect our friendship. If you knew everything I’ve done … what I’m still doing … you’d probably hate me.”

I shake my head. “The only thing I could hate you for is if you did put my sister in harm’s way. These lies … do they have anything to do with her?”

“Not entirely... But that doesn’t make it any better.” He moves his hand away from my cheek, sits back on his heels, and stares out at the road in the distance. “I’ve been lying to you for years. What kind of friend does that make me?”

“The normal kind, probably.” I turn my head to look at him. He seems so haunted, so broken, so unlike the Hunter I see every day. Does this pain have anything to do with what he’s keeping from me ? “Besides, if you can deal with me possibly being a hybrid, then I can get over you telling me a few fibs.”

“Me being able to deal with that is part of the reason I’ve been lying to you,” he admits, turning his head toward me. If possible, his expression conveys even more guilt. The sight sends my heart thundering in my chest.

“What do you mean, it’s part of the reason? Wait … Have you known I might be one?”

He steadily carries my gaze, but his hands tremble. “I have.”

And just like that, my heart goes from being wounded to being completely shattered.