Page 51 of Hunter

With brown hair and dark tan skin, he was the kind of man who only made an impression after the second or third meeting.

Unlike Xavier.

Who I really shouldn’t be comparing to a stranger.

His brown eyes moved to me, and I quickly looked away just as he pressed the button to the floor above mine.

We stood in silence as the elevator ascended, and I shifted around in awkwardness until, finally, the doors opened to my floor.

I quickly got out without looking back, moving to my apartment door and going in. Afterward, I leaned back against the door and thought of dark brown eyes that I was sure would fuel my fantasies for days to come… until I saw him again.

Hopefully, soon.

12

RYLEIGH

My furniture arrivedthe next day and was brought up by the two delivery men from the store where I had gotten everything from.

I hadn’t taken anything from the apartment I had been living in a while still in school, mostly because my parents bought it, and in a bitter bid to show them just what I thought about them not showing up to my graduation, I left everything behind, save for the stuff in my bedroom.

It was immature, but it made me feel good at the time.

I wished I had taken it with me, considering how empty my place looked, even with all the furniture.

Everything was brand new, so it didn’t look lived-in yet, and there weren’t little knick-knacks around to make it feel like this apartment was truly mine.

Hopefully, it wouldn’t take too long for me to finally settle in.

I stood in my kitchen while the men worked to assemble my coffee table, which, impressively, didn’t take them all that long. Then, finally, they pulled off the clear plastic covering the two sofas I had placed adjacent to each other and looked over at me.

“All done, Miss.”

“Thank you,” I said, walking them out to the front door and holding it open for them. They smiled at me before walking to the elevators. One of the men even tipped his red hat at me.

I stood at the threshold for a beat after the doors closed behind them, somehow feeling reluctant to return to my apartment.

I didn’t know what I would do with myself now that this was checked off my short list of to-dos today.

I had finished work early for the day, and now, all that was left was to find something to eat for dinner, get ready for bed,thinkabout Xavier, and go to sleep.

It was barely three in the afternoon.

I didn’t remember my life becoming so monotonous, but that was exactly the case now that I no longer had school to distract me.

My phone rang from inside my pocket, and I pulled it out to see the letters MOM flashing across the screen.

I silenced it and put it back in my pocket, feeling surprised that she had reached out to me first.

That was rarely ever the case.

I wasn’t ready to talk to her or my dad.

It still hurt to think about them not showing up for my graduation to punish me for not falling in line with how they wanted me to live my life.

And I had spent the last two years trying so hard not to be scared.

To not let what I had witnessed from the alleyway, and even from my abduction and brought to the cliffside when I was fourteen, affect me any more than it already had.

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