Page 127 of Dark Little Game
What I don’t expect is for him to take his uninjured hand and bring it up quickly against my neck, pushing me back up onto the tiled wall of the bathroom.
He doesn’t crush my windpipe.
He just holds his hand against me like he’s cuffing me in place, and then leans in to kiss me.
Even when I want toshakehim, his kiss is able to bring me back down to Earth.
Even when I’m so worried for all of us that I’m two moments away from panic at any time.
The feeling of his lips on mine makes it all go away, even for just an instant.
“I’ve got a lot of work to do,” he says near my lips as he pulls back a moment later. “I’m not sleeping tonight.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I’m going to find out who left those notes for the Confessional.”
His hand is gone now.
And I miss it.
When I glance up at myself in the mirror, I see a ruddy streak of blood on my neck, now. His blood, streaked along my skin because it was all over both of his hands.
“It feels impossible. It feels like we’re never going to be able to fix this. Never going to find who it is until they’re already attacking us.”
Hunter is silent for a moment.
He’s stretching out his hand, trying to get a feel for his movement underneath the gauze.
“Is my brother okay?” he finally asks.
And there it is.
A shred of proof.
Proof that Hunter cares.
That he’s not some purely cold, calculating monster. He doesn’t want his brother dead, and that means something.
“No. But he will be. Eventually.”
“Always wondered if he loved you,” Hunter murmurs, still looking down at his gauzed hand.
“He does. But I don’t think he wasinlove with me. Not that it matters, anyway.”
“Why doesn’t it matter?”
“Because he can’t have me,” I tell him, meeting his eyes before I leave the bathroom. “I belong to someone else.”
22
Hunter
Things were never simple, really.
But it seems like they were.
In my memory.
