Page 33 of Passion and Payback

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. “Ignoringthatfor 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 toldthe 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 hadneverbelieved 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.

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