Page 18 of Hunter
Uh,all I wanted was those stupid peanut butter crackers. I should have known better. I fucked with my energy by lifting.Hecate y Lilith, lamento lo que hice. Hecate and Lilith, I'm sorry for what I did.
I spent a lot of time with Señora Úrsula, who lived across the hall from where me and theabuelaslived. She was the neighborhoodbrujaand watched me a few days a week.
She did tarot card readings outta her place, and the OG’s had her under their protection, just like they did thepinche pedafilos.Fucking pedafiles.I low-key think they were more afraid of her than those fucking priests.
There was something about her that screamed,“No me jodas. Don’t fuck with me.”I wanted that. I wanted to be like her. And when she found me with one of her books onBrujería,she encouraged me to keep reading.Y lo hice. And I did.
She introduced me to HecateyLilith and gave me something to believe in. I loved that they were women that no God could contain. And for me, that meant it was something that the X couldn’t take away from me.
They couldn’t interfere with me practicing in my own way. And it was a fucking bonus that it didn’t require a fucking church and all that patriarchal bullshit.
“Hecate y Lilith, lo siento mucho (Hecate and Lilith, I’m so sorry).”I feel fucking guilty and don’t want to go to sleep like that and whisper how sorry I am to the universe. I’m really fucking tired and turn over on my side; I can’t keep my eyes open for much longer.
But instead of falling asleep, my bladder decides now is the perfect time to start screaming at me. I have no fucking choice but to get up and figure out where the bathroom is.¡Puta madre! Shit!
I get myself up and stick my foot into my boot and feel around for the other one before remembering that I threw it at the door.¡Chingado! Fuck!
I’m starting to get aggravated. I hobble over to my boot before leaning on the back of the door to pull it on. I’m not putting my sock-covered foot down on this fucking floor. I refuse.
My laces are buried inside my shoe, and I’m so fucking tired that I could cry. But when I hear the noises from the other side of the door, I consider raging the fuck out instead.¡Qué carajo, wey! What the fuck?!
I frown at the annoying noise. The soft snores from the other side of the door might as well be a fucking chainsaw.
I don’t hesitate and yank open the door, not expecting the most infuriating man that I’ve ever met to be lying across the floor.No mames, wey. Are you kidding me?
ELEVEN
I takeoff my hat and run my hands through my hair, twirling it around my fingers before pulling on the roots to release the built-up tension.
I’d have to rip every single hair outta my head to get rid of all the fucking stress, and that would just be to purge the past twelve hours. It’s all her fault; Edison literally makes my fucking head hurt.
I dig my fingers into my skull in some dumbass attempt to poke holes into the parts of me that she’s taken over. The truth is, I could have multiple brain bleeds and she’d still be there.
I’ve never had a girl invade my head like she has. She went from zero to fucking nuclear and took over like a little fucking dictator. And if that wasn’t enough for her, the fucking savage that she is, started feasting on my lungs the second she saw me today. I couldn’t fucking take a breath.
She’s the only person that I’ve ever met who can rip my heart out just by existing. When she ran inside here, scared outta her fucking mind, and ready to defend herself to the fucking death, I knew I’d bleed out for her. I’d drown in my own blood if it meant that she could breathe.
I squeeze my eyes shut and pinch the bridge of my nose. I can still see her behind my eyelids. She’s gotta be the only woman besides my sister and mother that I can see without directly looking at them. It’s like she’s this folded-up photograph I keep in my wallet that I can’t stop looking at.
“Come on, man, take a chair, you’ve got practice in three hours.”I could give a flying fuck about hockey right now.And hockey’s my fucking life. I’ve only ever felt like that once before, and that’s when those sick fucking bastard pussys targeted my sister. Both times.
It only takes a nanosecond for my brain to make the connection to B. My mind instantly takes me back to the night she and Edison were attacked. I can’t look at my sister without seeing her unconscious and hurt in Max’s arms. It broke my brain, and I felt like I was losing my fucking mind trying to understand how this had happened again.
I had tried to stop it. I tried to keep her safe. But it didn’t fucking matter when it actually mattered most. And all because I ignored the most important call of my life.
Then the unthinkable happened. I saw my math tutor left for dead between the blood-splattered cinder block wall and the red-stained bed. That’s when my heart bottomed out. It splattered into a fucking mess in my ribcage when it crashed into the deepest parts of me. It was the worst day of my life.
I’ve done stupid shit and made awful fucking decisions that have hurt the people that I care about. Leaving Edison to go to practice isn’t going to be one of them. She means more than hockey does today.
Fuck. Me. She means more than hockey.I can’t stop thinking about that. Nothing mattered more before. Just my family. And now her.Fucking hell, this girl.
I tug on my hair as hard as I fucking can, a last-ditch effort, to see if I can pull the “care” outta me. It burns like hell. My scalp feels like she’s lighting a match inside my head to let me know that even fucking fire won’t burn away the feelings I have for her.Fucking demon.
“Nah, man, I’m good, I’m not going,” I tell him while pulling out my phone to tell the guys that I’m out for practice this morning. There’s no fucking way that I’m leaving this door.
“Just like that? You’re not gonna go?” He questions me with a‘what the fuck?’look on his face before yawning loudly again.
“You expect me to leave her like this?” I ask him like he’s lost his fucking mind for questioning whether or not leaving is even something I’d consider. There’s no fucking way I’m moving from this spot.
