Page 109 of Altered

Breathless and panting, I forced myself to straighten my spine, and even though I didn’t have an ounce of energy left inside of my body, I continued to put one foot in front of the other.

I wasn’t sure why I was still moving.

He was long gone by now, but I couldn’t give up.

I couldn’t stop my feet from chasing after him.

This was probably the dumbest thing I could do considering I had a tiny bean-sized intruder residing inside of my womb, but what could I do?

So I walked.

And I walked.

And I walked until I turned a corner and saw a faint set of dipped headlights in the distance, coming towards me.

What I had thought was a car turned out to be a truck.

A black truck.

A Ford Explorer.

Wrapping my arms around my stomach, I shivered violently, and watched as the truck came to a sudden halt on the side of the road about fifty yards up the road from where I was standing.

The hazard lights came on and then the driver's side door flew open.

"Hope? Is that you?" Hunter called out to me in the darkness. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"I love you," I called out, my pace quickening to a half run, half stumble. "Oh god…"

"What?" I could hear him running towards me, the pounding of feet on the concrete getting louder and louder.

"I said I love you!" I screamed at the top of my lungs seconds before he came into sight. "I'm so in love with you!" I bit out just as his arms enveloped my body. "I love you. I love you. Oh god, I love you..."

"Are you insane?" Cupping my face in his hands, he looked down at me. "Are you fucking crazy?"

I shook my head and curled my fingers around the fabric of his shirt. "You came back." My whole body shook violently as I looked up at his face. "You were coming back, right?"

"Yeah," he confirmed, tone gruff. "I was almost to my apartment when I remembered something. Idon’trun from my problems."

"Is th-that wh-what I am to you?" My teeth chattered as my entire body shivered from the cold. "A pr-problem?"

"When you're running around the roads in a storm like a drowned kitten, then yeah. You absolutely are," he countered heatedly without a hint of hesitation. "You are one huge, mother fucking complication in my life, Hope Carter."

"Take me back," I begged. "Please don’t… please just keep loving me."

"What are you trying to do to me?" he choked out, blue eyes burning into my soul. He exhaled a ragged breath and wiped the rain from my face with his thumbs. "You told me you didn’t want this…" his words broke off and he looked up to the sky and then back at me. "You went back tohim."

"I know." I nodded, pressing my cheek into his touch. "I'm sorry."

"Fuck, what do you want from me, HC?" he groaned, voice pained and thick with emotion. "I don’t… I can't… Goddamn, you confuse the hell out of me…"

"Iwantyou to keep me." Reaching up, I wrapped my arms around his neck and whispered, "I want you to love me even when I'm not lovable." My heart was racing so hard in my chest I feared he could feel it. "And I want you to forgive me when I make hideous mistakes, and believe me when I tell you that all I've been trying to do is keepyousafe." Shivering, I whispered, "I want you to take me back."

"Don’t ask me to take you back when Ineverlet you go in the first place."

"But you –"

"Being mad at you doesn’t mean I stoppedloving you."

---