Page 47 of Hunt Me
Fauna looks at me as if I’ve grown another head.
‘If you don’t like beans, I’m sure there’s something else…’ I look around the empty building.‘We store some dried foods upstairs. I can look to see what we have there.’
She shakes her head, staring down at the beans.
Panic runs through me.
They are just fucking beans. How have I gotten this so wrong? I should have let the fucker Vish cook them if I’d known it was going to go down this badly. Then, another realisation hits me.
‘You’re allergic, aren’t you. I’m so sorry, I’ll throw them out right now.’I shift to take the steaming hot can, but just as my fingertips brush the burning hot metal, her hand lashes out, slapping mine away.
‘No!’Fauna shouts.
Ok... So she likes beans?
Fauna grabs the piping hot tin can, bringing it into her lap and digging into its contents, hardly stopping for air as she wolfs down the food. Little droplets of juice hit the corners of her mouth.
So shereallylikes beans. Noted.
A cold object hits my hand where it is placed on the floor beside me, and I look down to find that Vish has discretely rolled another tin of sausage and beans my way. I look up to see him give me a sad smile, eyes flicking towards Fauna who is now using her finger to scrape out the last of the sauce and then plopping it between her lips to suck.
Usually the sight of her sucking her finger would be seductive and I’d be turned on but right now watching her a cold realisation dawns on me and any pain I’d felt earlier is nothing compared to the devastation I feel now.
I take the time to look her over fully, noticing how her cheekbones stand out a little and how her hands appear large and long in contrast to the thinness of her arms. I remember how she’d had to roll over the waistband of her borrowed trousers to keep them up even though I’d picked out the smallest ones we’d had. The tape across her boots that were concealing her battered and bruised feet now on show for me to see.
My girl is starving.
Bile rises in my throat. She was so happy — snarky and reserved, yes — but I put that down to me being a stranger and a Skull. But she never once complained, never once let it show how much she must be struggling… apart from her drunken confession last night.
I mentally swear that Fauna will never struggle again.
Metal creeps against metal as I open the tin with my Swiss Army knife, turning the heat up on the burner while Fauna is consumed by licking the previous tin clean. After a few minutes, I drop the new tin in front of her, this time with a cloth wrapped around the outside so that she doesn’t burn herself further.
Fauna drops the empty tin to her lap, not giving it away as she picks up the next one. Her wide eyes looking to me in question.
I give her a genuine smile, letting her know it is all hers, and she digs in.
Chapter Twenty-one
??
Fauna
The sound of metal on metal has become a sense of comfort for me in the past few years. Not the type that is associated with weapons, not the sound of a knife fight or of a bar clinking off of something in attempts to scare others. What I’m on about is the beautiful sound of a can opening. It is music to my ears.
Despite all the times I’d heard that type of metal on metal and the terror that came with it, I still managed to hold out a positive attitude when it came to something so simple.
Something as simple as a metal spoon clinking against a tin can has a level of anxiety in me that is soothing. It’s as if my soul registers that I’ve done it. I’ve fed them again.
Only this time, it feels different.
This time, I’m filled with the undeniable satisfaction of being full myself. The fullest I’ve felt in years, maybe even before the world went to shit. Ruaridh kept supplying me with beans, to the point where when he brought the most recent tin out, I stopped him from giving it to me and made sure he ate some himself.
Usually, I wouldn’t be so selfish and gobble down so much before I made sure others had eaten. Normally, I’d be the last to eat, making sure others ate before me, but something about this situation made me feel... free. Free to put my needs first and not have the burden of responsibility.
This time, it was like I was the one being looked after, and not only did it feel like they knew exactly how much they could afford to let me eat. I trusted them to make that decision.
I realised I was right once I’d had my fill and watched Ruaridh and Vish dig into their own.
