Page 1 of Hunter
PROLOGUE
"You gonna tellme why I'm tattooing a pissed off black cat on your chest?" You don't seem like a cat guy," Alvi says as he presses into my skin. I flex under the needle and bite down on the inside of my cheek.That's it, make me fucking bleed.
"It's stupid," I spit out through clenched teeth as the needle drills black ink into my inflamed skin.This hurts like a motherfucker."You wouldn't understand, man."But I fucking love it.
"First off, I've tattooed a fuck ton of dumb shit onto people, myself included," he says, wiping away the excess ink. "And second, this isn't the first questionable tattoo that I've given you at 1 AM."He's not wrong about that.
I met Alvi on my first day in Havenwood. After my brother and I settled into the house, we went out for a run, and I saw the shop. On the loop back, I made him stop for two reasons; one, Chase can run for fucking ever if you let him, and two, I was feeling itchy again. I had been for a while, but it had started to gnaw through my bones, and I couldn't ignore it any longer. I needed ink therapy.
I got my first tattoo when I was sixteen at a house party. It was honestly a great fucking accident, and I have zero regrets. It wasn't planned, and it wasn't why I showed up there, but it ended up being exactly what I needed.
I used to buy weed off my teammate's older brother when I was in high school, and went to meet up with him one night. All I wanted to do was smoke a blunt, get my dick sucked, and try to chill the fuck out. I was in a terrible mood after having another fucking argument at home. I hated it there.
I had already busted up my knuckles from punching a walland my brother's face, and I really couldn't afford to do any more damage to my hand, but I also needed the fucking compensation of pain. I was trying to find a way to feel something other than the irreversible rage that had started to eat through my chest cavity. I needed the physical pain to overtake the emotional hurt.I still do.
I was so fucking angry that I didn't know what to do with all the pissed off feelings inside of me. A couple of months prior, our 'parents' had told my siblings and me that we were adopted after being given up at birth by a legit bio bucket of waste material.
She was so fucked up that we had to be cut out of her in order to stay alive. We were triplet babies that were safer being bornpremature and developing in a fucking plastic box in the NICU, than staying inside her fucking crackhead incubator body. We were all messed up when we were born, and so was she. She left a note and fled the fucking hospital after that; the same hospital that our 'parents' still work at.
We existed as A, B, and C for the fucking longest time before we were legally adopted by them. They took us home, gave us names, and gave us a whole ass life. But they never fucking told us.
The only reason they dropped that truth bomb on us is because I started smoking fucking weed in the off-season, they got scared that I'd become a raging addict like our biological egg donor. They had no other choice but to come clean about it all.
I had so many questions that had no fucking answers, and I fucking hated that shit.Like, what the fuck am I supposed to do with this information now? How do I fucking trust you after you spent sixteen years lying about our life? Who the fuck was she? Who the fuck was the sperm donor who got her pregnant?AND WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, MAN?!
I was so fucking wrecked. I didn't know how to reconcile being upset about the best thing that had happened to me. So I started hitting shit, and when that stopped working as an outlet, I fucked chicks for release and a way to pass the time. Both made me feel something other than fucking resentment, and I chased that shit down. I was fucking miserable. It was all festering inside of my guts, and I was rotting from the inside out.
When I got to that party, I saw my guy all set up with a fucking tattoo gun and a card table in the basement of the house. He had started apprenticing at a local shop. I watched him tattoo a girl who was legit moaning. All she kept saying was that tattoos made everything better. I paid him a hundred bucks for an eighth of weed and for him to tattoo A, B, C on the back of my right calf.
That girl was fucking right, and I told her so as I came down her throat. That needle scratched an itch that was buried deep down in my soul. It made me feel better.
So I started chasing that too. It also gave me an excuse to draw. So far, the bear that I drew and had inked on my right shoulder is my favorite.
My brother wasn't surprised that I made him stop to go in with me that night. I had dragged him to a few spots that would work on me before I turned eighteen. I was fucking itchy all the time. I needed it. But that night here at HU was different.
It had come on so fucking strong, and it was cellular. I felt it in my fucking blood, and I knew that my brother did too. It's why we’d been running in the first place. We were both dealing with the exact same thing, at the exact same time. A third of us were missing, and it was our fucking fault that she wasn't with us.
Chase and I both knew that we had hurt the one person that we should've protected at all costs. The guilt was growing, and it wasn't letting up. It was incurable. Zero chance of survival. It's why we agreed to keep our mouths shut about her even existing; she was ours and ours alone. The lack of bloodlines to our 'parents' proved that.Fucking liars.
We might've grown up as an intact family, but the truth severed what was once an unbreakable trust. And it's fucked up, because I still love them… I just don't trust them. They broke a part of me that will never be fully healed. The scars will always be there to remind me that I'll always feel fucking weird inside.
To me, my brother and sister are the only true family that I have. I told Chase that while we stood out on the sidewalk that night. We agreed that in order to keep Evie safe, we had to hide her away.
As far as anyone would fucking know, him and I were just twins. We spit-shook on it before we walked inside. And thenAlvi fucking Rossi laughed in my face when I asked him to tattoo a Taurus bull on my right bicep.
I told him to shut the fuck up and pointed to Chase when I said that it was in honor of our sister, who loved all that zodiac horoscope shit. And it was. It was for all three of us. He laughed and asked me if I wanted a bunch of stars instead. I knew that I had gained his respect when he held out his hand for me to shake, and instead I held down his stare.
I've been sitting in Alvi's chair to scratch that itch for ink therapy ever since. His shop,Rossi Ink, is right around the corner from campus and is on the main drag outside of HU. It's become my unexpected refuge and my favorite fucking place in the world outside of an ice rink.
I get to sketch in peace, and he tattoos them on me in exchange for some info on the different teams. We talk about the lineups, standings, team stats, shit like that. I'm not giving anything away that he wouldn't hear if he were a fly on the wall in the Athletic Center, or the locker rooms, or if he had offices bugged.
I'm not a fucking dumbass, I know that his family runs some serious sports betting spreads all over the country, along with a few casinos in Vegas, but he's never asked me to cross a line. It's more of an "in-depth discussion." He'll bet on games, make bank, and then he'll make sure to put it right back into the neighborhood.
Alvi loves it here, and it fucking shows. He's got me out here doing all sorts of community service shit. This dude has me putting together flower pots for the shop fronts on the street so that they look pretty for everyone to enjoy.
I've also nearly broken my back from hurling pumpkins and bales of hay outta the back of his pickup for the annual Havenwood Fall Festival like it's a fucking episode of that show Gilmore Girls that my sister used to watch.
I almost lost my fucking toes when I dropped one of the hundred frozen turkeys that he had me delivering for Thanksgiving two years ago. And the fucking Christmas lights. I've had to string them up all over this fucking town.
