Page 34 of Passion and Payback

He looked at me and then shrugged. “Just…what are the chances? That the one night I go back there after everything that happened, it would be the right time for him to see me.”

“He recognized you?”

“Not at first. Thought I was some junkie or something, I guess. Was looking to make a sale. Then he recognized me, and everything went to hell.”

It had probably been the guy's normal area, but I wasn’t going to try to dissuade Hunter from his apparent newfound beliefs. For all I knew, some outside force was at play in what happened tonight. Of course, I didn’t know why something would be so interested in making Hunter deal with one of his worst nightmares when he was starting to get back to normal.

“Okay,” I said slowly, wanting to reach for him but sensing he needed to get through the story first. “So, he recognized you. I’m guessing he wasn’t thrilled.”

Hunter snorted harshly. “No. He got off just like those assholes did. Probably protected him for…whatever reason. Probably didn’t trust him not to turn on them if they tried to let him go through the police alone.”

“Makes sense.”

“He was pissed still. I guess my attempts with the copshadcaused him some trouble. I don’t know how much, but it wasn’t enough. Which is when he decided to attack me.”

“And you got stabbed.”

“Not as much as him.”

The coldness in his voice was new, but the quiet pleasure in his words worried me. “How’d that happen?”

He wrinkled his nose before taking a drink. “I…fought back. Well, I got pissed first. I mean, look at my life. Look at whattheyturned my life into. I couldn’t even enjoy the guy of my dreams giving me what I’d always wanted without losing my mind over a simple kiss. And then, when I was trying to get my shit together, one of those monsters decided what they’d done wasn’t enough, that more shit had to be heaped onto me.”

A scrambling sort of panic blossomed in my head at his words. I didn’t think he even realized what he’d just admitted as he ran through the story. It seemed it was a night for revelations because I had never considered that he had been remotely interested in me. Like a few other things, that would have to wait until another time.

“So I got pissed,” he said, completely oblivious. “I got…shit, I don’t even know if there’s a word for how I felt. I thought about everything they’d done to me and what had happened over the past two years because of them. Two years of my life. Two years of my happiness robbed, my safety completely gone, my ability to be intimate with anyone or ever want to, my goddamndignity. And I just…something in me broke.”

I could tell him what it was and that it wasn’t so much that something had broken as much as something had broken free. It was inside every human being, as far as I was concerned. In each and every one of us, there was something with teeth and claws ready to rip and shred when threatened in the right way. It was fury incarnate, fueled by the desire to love with a desperation that most felt only at the precipice of death.

It was the thing inside us that few people ever discovered, at least not in the modern world, in civilized places. It was the same thing that could turn us into monsters if we let it, yet it was the one thing that could keep us alive when the chips were down, and your number could be up. The hard part came after it woke up when you had to figure out how to live with yourself after doing whatever was necessary to survive.

“I hit him,” Hunter said after silently staring at the counter for a moment. His eyes dragged up to me and rested on my face, mild concern on his features. “I barely remembered all the self-defense I had been taught. I just…hit him with my forehead. I guess he wasn’t expecting it and let me go. After that, I kept hitting him until he went down, and I-I saw the knife lying there and?—”

“You stabbed him.”

“Repeatedly.”

“Repeatedly?”

“Over and over again. By the time I stopped, you wouldn’t even know it had been a person from the neck down and the waist up. I stabbed him so many times, and it was like…I don’t know. Like something from a horrible dream and the best dream you’d ever had at the same time.”

After all the other surprises tonight, it was the least shocking. I could only imagine what it must have felt like to face one of your greatest nightmares. He must have been terrified before the beast finally broke from the cage inside him. As horrible as it hadstarted, it had to have been liberating. To slay the monster that had haunted his dreams and ensure it would never hurt another person again.

“Did anyone see you?” I asked now the worst of the story was out.

He shook his head. “That alley is…pretty deep and not the best lit. Plus, I knocked out what little light there was while I stayed there trying to figure out what to do.”

“Whatdidyou do?”

“Took the knife with me so it wouldn’t be left behind. Chucked the pipe I used to break the light into a dumpster a few blocks down.”

“You…carried a pipe and knife while covered in blood?”

“No,” he said with a sudden laugh, the imagery apparently funny to him. “There’s this place not far from the alley. People are supposed to dump their donations into the drop box, but most people just drop them wherever. Found the hoodie in there. It was big enough to cover the mess, and I stuck the knife in the front pocket to keep it out of sight. The pipe I stuck down the back of my pants. Made it awkward to walk.”

“And you just left?”

“Yeah.”

---