Page 133 of Hunger

I rub my hand with the fingers of another, realizing I should just be grateful that things may finally be over with my ex and I can walk down the street in safety again. I won’t have to keep telling the security guards who Grey paid to lurk outside my place to please go away, an order which they refuse to obey.

Hopefully now they’ll go away because I’ll finally be safe for the first time in a very long time.

“Have you seen him?” Hunter asks, searching my eyes most intently, and I can’t help but wonder what Grey said to him for him to ask such a strange question. “Since Cumberland Island?”

“No,” I respond, aware of the dull ache in my chest as I say it. “We’re just… friends, I guess, so…”

As he smiles, closing the beige file in front of him and scraping a black pen across the table, a thought occurs to me, one I've already brought up before but want to make sure he understands.

“I, um… I still haven’t told Greyson about… the…” I realize my breath is faltering as I try to speak, my throat closing, my chest tightening. I take a second before resuming. “The sexual stuff. On the last day. With Micah. I… I never want him to know that.”

“We’d never disclose something like that without your consent, Indigo. You don’t have to worry. I promise.”

“Thanks,” I reply, exhaling a long breath of relief.

“I, um, I don’t want to overstep the mark, but… Greyson’s a pretty open-minded man. Why don’t you want him to know?”

I shrug. “I don’t want to be seen as damaged goods.”

He shakes his head, concern etched into his handsome features. “That’s not howany decent manwould ever think, Indie.”

“No, I mean… emotionally. Like some victim. I’m not that. I want to be treated normally. And I just want to move on from it all now.”

I glance down at the black pen in his hand before lifting his gaze once again. “Indie, sometimes when we don’t face things, when we keep things in the dark, they come back when we least expect them to.”

I bristle at his words, biting back the urge to remind him that he’s not a therapist and has no right to dictate how we handle the things that happen to us in life, but out of sheer gratitude, I bite my tongue, nodding until he gets to his feet.

“You have my number. Call me if you need anything at all. Anything. Call any time.”

“Thank you.”

“We’ll keep you updated, okay?”

As he leaves, he pushes the door of this sterile gray room closed, not completely but enough to give me some breathing space for a few moments, to take in the relief of maybe finally getting free of my ex even if the relief was tainted by the specter of Grey who I felt so palpably, almost as if he were in the room, even to the point that I swear I smell that subtle singular cologne of his, laced with notes of lemon and wood.

Maybe now that it’s all over, I’ll be able to finally mourn for him too.

To finally move on.

That’s all I want…

* * *

Greyson

“How… how did she look?”

“She looked relieved,” Hunter replies after a moment, taking a seat opposite me after closing the door to his office behind him. “She… cried a little.”

“She did?” I drop my forehead, rubbing my forehead as I picture her little face and the tears rolling down her golden skin, teetering on the curve of her lip.

“Yeah. But by the end, she seemed just relieved that it may be over. At least for a while.”

I inhale a deep breath as I curse myself for not being in that room with her to help her through it. It’s only the thought of the inevitable damage I’ll do to her that’s stopping me.

“You know,” Hunter says, and I brace myself for one of his annoyingly accurate insights, “in the dozens of hours you’ve spent in my office and on the phone trying to get this sorted out, you could have visited her about twenty times over.”

I throw a wry smirk at the asshole Assistant D.A. who has always been a friend to me despite knowing full well that my family use nefarious means to protect powerful people around Washington.

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