Present day
He guides me up the stairs, a gentle hand at the base of my spine which grounds me enough to keep the demons at bay. I steady my breath, but I feel that panic clawing at my chest, at my throat as we walk down the narrow corridor and up the stairs, that stench following me. We’re just at the door when Hunter presses a gentle kiss to the side of my neck, and then lifts my thumb and presses it to the pad.
The pad beeps and then turns green, the locks disengaging.
I’m so shocked for the minute that everything else is forgotten, and I stare at him.
“You were never trapped, Snow, you should have known that,” Hunter smooths his thumb down my cheek, down the curve of my jaw to press it against my bottom lip, “You will always be free with me.”
He doesn’t give me a chance to answer before he pushes the door open, and coaxes me through it, back into the warmth of the house with the smell of our breakfast still wafting through from the kitchen. The light of day leaks in through the windows and chases away my shadows.
He doesn’t wait for me to follow, and I don’t. I just stand there for a second, right at that door, next to the security pad that I had the key to this entire time. Funnily enough, my first thought isn’t to escape.
Shaking off the confusion, I follow him into the kitchen, finding him making coffee at the side, our breakfast, which had long gone cold, discarded on the counter near the trash.
“How?”
Hunter glances over his shoulder, “You really think I don’t have my ways?”
“Well, I still have my thumb so that’s not it,” I say sarcastically.
“The pads are linked to my phone,” he explains, finishing off the coffee, “I added your print when you were…sleeping.”
When he sedated me, he means.
I accept the coffee he hands me.
“You’ve been hunting them.”
“I have.”
“All of them?”
“Every single one.”
I fall silent, taking a sip of my too hot coffee and stifling the wince when the scalding liquid burns my tongue.
“You truly still believe me your villain?” His question rattles my brain and I snap my gaze up to his. He stares at me, fingers holding tight to his mug, so tight I’m shocked it doesn’t break under his white knuckled grip. “I’m not the villain, Snow. For you, I never was.”
“You’re a monster.”
“I’m yours. I have always been yours. Your monster, your villain. I’ll be whatever you need me to be. I’ll be your weapon and your freedom.”
He takes a step towards me, and I back up. Another step, and I backtrack until I have nowhere else to go. My spine hits the wall and I become paralyzed, my heart in my throat.
“Hm,” he muses, placing his coffee down to flex his fingers, “You tell yourself all these things, Snow, about how much you hate me. You despise me, you wish to kill me, and yet, you react in such a peculiar way for someone who claims such things. I know the truth, Snow.”
I tilt my chin up.
“So defiant,” he cocks his head, “But I know it’s a lie. Maybe everyone else believes it, but me, I know the truth. I know you.”
My hand thuds against his chest, holding him at bay. He’s too close.
“You’ve spent the past three years hating me, but it’s not me you hate, it’s them. It’s what they did, not what I did. I will forever spend my life regretting my actions against you, but I never lied about how I felt. I am a monster. I never claimed to be anything else, but them, they are the true villains in your story and me, I’m your blade.”
“You’re wrong.”
“I’m not. You don’t hate me, Isobel. Everything I’ve done these past three years has been for you, so you can have that vengeance I know you crave. It’s them, it’s not me.”
“No, it’s you too!” I snap.
“My sweet, Snow,” Regardless of the hand attempting to hold him at bay, he lifts his hand and trails a finger down my face before saying, “Okay.”
I’m too busy keeping an eye on his face to realize he’d taken something from his pocket until he’s pushing the object into my hand. I risk a glance down to find the blade I’d had the same day I came looking for him being coaxed into my palm.
“You hate me. I’m like them. Then kill me, Snow, because I can’t be without you, and I won’t be. The only way I leave is if I’m dead. So, kill me, Snow, and put me out the damn misery I’ve been in without you.”
My fingers curl around the handle, palms suddenly sweaty. My heart beats rapidly inside my chest, a heavy thump, thump, thump that I feel in my throat and in my ears as blood rushes.
“Kill me, Snow. Now.”
I lift the knife, tracing the very tip of it over his skin, following the contour of his body and getting caught on each ridge of his abdomen. The blade cuts every time and beneath the shirt he’s wearing, I see small blooms of red begin to seep through where the tip cut through cloth and then skin.
He doesn’t wince once.
I stop at his chest, over his heart.
His eyes hold mine.
My hand shakes.
“Come on, baby,” He whispers, his hand still cupping my face, “You can do it.”
Flesh yields beneath the knife, I hear it as it slices through cloth and skin. I see the blood, it wells around where the tip of the blade is imbedded into his body, rolling down the edge before dripping to the floor.
He hisses, “That’s it.”
My breathing comes out in harsh, rough pants and the tremor in my hand only becomes more obvious. All my muscles feel tight, a cord ready to snap.
I watch the blood, his blood, my Hunter’s blood.
It goes in just a little deeper and as it does, Hunter leans forward, pressing it in more just so he can rest his brow against mine. My gaze jumps to his only to see him closing his own as if in relief. He really was going to let me do this. He’d rather me kill him than be without me.
“I loved you then, I love you now,” he whispers, “I will love you forever, Snow”
Tears spring to my eyes.
“Take away the pain, Snow. Take away how lonely I have been without you.”
Loneliness.
That word, it stops everything. It stops the racing heart and the shake to my hand, it ceases the rushing of my blood and tears that want to fall. I was lonely.
I had been for a long time. For three years. I had people with me, all around me. They loved me, they wanted me to be happy however way it came, they supported everything I did, but I was still lonely. I was still locked in my head, revisiting the past. But I was never lonely with Hunter. Even when I was alone in that cell beneath the Syndicate’s HQ, even when he betrayed me, I knew I was never alone. He would always be there…until he wasn’t.
“Hunter,” my voice cracks.
He opens his eyes.
“Help me,” I cry and then I crumble, I feel the blade slip from my hand, exiting his body, I hear it hit the floor, but it doesn’t register, not as my knees buckle and my hands cling to his arms.
“I’ve got you, baby,” Hunter wraps his arms around me, holding me close. His blood, blood I’d spilled soaks through my shirt, “I’ve got you.”
He lowers us to the ground, pulling me into his lap. His hand cradles me, pulling my face into the crook of his neck and he holds me. He holds me as if he can fit all those broken pieces back together, as if he is the glue and maybe he is, and I’ve been wrong.
He speaks as he holds me, but I don’t register the words, not as I feel as if I am falling apart. The tears wet his skin and the sobs wrack my body. It felt like I was crying for the first time in years, the dam that held it all in place had been blown open. I’d felt it crumbling the entire time I had been here with him. I hadn’t truly let myself feel and now I was. Because of him. always because of him.
I should hate him. I had every right to hate him, to want him dead and I was given the opportunity to do it, to end him and I couldn’t.
I knew why.
I knew he was right.
I still blamed him for my broken heart, there was no fixing that but everything else, all this hate, it wasn’t at him, not entirely.
It was at them.
For what they had done, what they put me through. I’d been so focused on Hunter that they became second in line.
But he never forgot.
He always remembered who it was that needed to pay for their crimes against me, and he’d been enacting justice on my behalf for three years.
My face wet with tears, I pull away from him. He doesn’t stop me. His brows pull down, but I don’t let myself rethink this.
I crash my mouth against his, and for the first time in three years, I taste him on my tongue.