Unbroken

“I’m sick in thehead.”

I parted my lips, lost for words. “You’re not.”

“You don’t know...”

“Know what?”

“How sick I am.”

I felt a strange feeling wash over me as I probed. “Why are you sick in the head, Hunt?”

He took a few shuddering breaths. “Because I’m capable of terrible things.”

Had he gotten into a fight and beaten someone to a pulp again? He never liked when he did that, and most times it was people taking the first punch at him.

“Whoever you hurt probably deserved it,” I said, searching for his hand. He jerked from my touch the second I found it. But I felt it, the wet stickiness that transferred from his palm to my fingers. My spine straightened. “What’s on your hand?”

His entire body broke out in shakes as I hurried to my feet and turned on the lamp next to my bed. The second I laid eyes on him, I froze, and my breath died in my throat.

Hunter was covered in dirt andblood; it looked like he had rolled around in both. He wouldn’t look up to meet my eyes, but I saw his panic, his lips quivering along with his body. His dark eyes were bloodshot as he stared at his hands, raising them up to me to say loudly, “Skye, I’m scared of myself—”

“Shh,” I hushed quickly, racing to him.

But I was panicking too.

I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t want to touch his hand (whose blood was that?) but this was Hunter, and I couldn’t not touch him.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I whispered quickly, leaning down to squeeze his shoulder.

“It’s not okay.”

“Shh, shh, okay, it’s okay.” It really wasn’t okay, but I was wigging out because I had never seen this before, and what the fuck?

I was tempted to call Leo, ask him to come over and help me out, but Hunter was vulnerable, and he never liked for anyone to see that. Except me. He always showed himself to me. And right now, he was dirty and bloody and—

“We gotta clean you up, Hunt, but you need to be quiet for me, okay?”

It was one thing for Kurt to come breaking the door down to beat his ass again for being in my room in the middle of the night. It was totally another thing for him to do that and see this fucked up sight. He might call the cops, and I didn’t want Hunter jailed; I had a feeling he did somethingverybad.

I took control of the situation, dropping down to tug his muddy boots off. Then I grabbed at his overalls and started unbuttoning them. I couldn’t have him walking around like this to the bathroom; he’d leave a trail of it in the hallway, and I didn’t want to clean it up while Mom and Kurt slept feet away. Thankfully, they’d passed out drunk, but I wasn’t going to take any risks.

His plain tee had blood around the collar, so I tugged that off, too. Then I pulled him up to his feet and tugged his jeans and underwear off. I was going to be dragging a very nude Hunter to my bathroom down the hall. Kurt was going to kill us both and bury us in the hills if he caught us—and that’s if we were lucky.

I quickly looked him over, making sure that blood wasn’t coming from him, but it wasn’t. He was completely unscathed, except for the usual scars and bruises.

“Come on,” I whispered, before pleading, “Please, please, no words, okay?”

Hunter just stared at me, his expression eerily empty. I cracked my bedroom door open, and we inched down the hall to the bathroom. Once we made it safely inside, I ran the shower and tugged him into the tub. I was immediately disturbed by the swirling vortex of dirt and blood going down the drain.

“Sit down,” I demanded.

He sat down under the shower head, but his legs were bent, and his knees were up. Hunter wouldn’t stop growing. I stood over him, getting drenched as I squeezed shampoo into my hand and scrubbed the gunk out of his hair. I destroyed my loofah as I ran it over every inch of his body, including his most private parts. But Hunter had literally detached. He didn’t look at me, didn’t look at anything as I washed him, his face still vacant, his eyes staring off into nothing.

When I finished, I wrapped the towel around him and nudged him in the direction of my room. Thankfully, he trudged quietly back to it while I ran the water over the tub, destroying all evidence of blood and dirt and…I bent down, running my fingers into the drain to pull out a few strands of red hair.What the hecksicle?

After watching so many crime shows in my phase of despair, I knew to razzle-dazzle my clean up with some bleach. Then I flushed the red hair—ew—down the toilet.

I am now an accomplice.If Hunter went down, I’d go down with him. And that was alright—