Page 25 of Possession

“Always.”

“You’re up, I see,” Hunter says as he carefully places his leather backpack down and pulls off his shoes.

“Can’t sleep forever.”

“Were you able to get a decent rest?”

“Yeah, it was good being back in my own bed.”

“Our bed,” he corrects me.

“Yes, our bed.”

“Are you glad to be home, Megan?” He turns to ask with a serious look on his face.

“What the hell kind of question is that? Of course, I’m glad.”

“Then why are you crying?”

“Sometimes people express emotion when they’ve been through something traumatic.”

“I found you laughing and eating a burrito with your driver. You didn’t seem that torn up to me.”

I wipe my face with the backs of my hands, pissed that I allowed myself to be this vulnerable. He doesn’t deserve my tears.

“You’ve misconstrued this entire situation. Parker wasn’t the one who took me.”

“He didn’t bring you home either.”

“You didn’t give him a chance. He was going to.”

“It didn’t look that way to me.”

“Well, how did it fucking look?” I stand in front of him now, hands on my hips, staring fiercely into his steely gray eyes.

“Watch your mouth, Megan.”

“No, you watch your mouth! I don’t appreciate what you’re insinuating. You think I planned to run away with Parker because he’s closer to my age than you are?”

Hunter glares at me. “That was a fucked up thing to say.”

“Why? It’s true.”

He steps an inch closer.

“Why do you keep bringing him into this?”

“I’m not! You are. The fact that you didn’t find me lying dead somewhere in a ditch and safe with Parker is blinding you. You’re focused on the wrong person right now.”

“Then who should I be focused on?”

“Me, asshole!”

“You? I am focused on you! This is what being focused on nothing but you looks like. Look at me. I mean really look at me, Megan. I tell you that I’ve bought you a house, and you storm out of here like I committed some sort of a crime, then someone snatches you right from the front door of our home, and you think, what? That I’m thinking about anything else but findingyou? Protecting you? You’re all I can think about every single moment of the fucking day. My life has been turned upside down since the day we met. My work is shit. My club is practically running itself. I don’t even recognize myself anymore. And you think I need to focus more on you?”

Hunter’s breathing is labored, almost violent. I can hear his heart pounding from where I’m standing, but I can also hear my own after the hundreds of tiny cuts his cruel words have just made into it.

“Forgive me for ruining your oh-so-perfect life. I’m glad we cleared that up before we made a huge mistake.”

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