Unbroken

“That’s not true—”

“No, you know it is. I’m just a skint boy, another Brown Bay reject. You know everyone looks at me funny. I got no place in this town. I’mnothing.”

My chest constricted painfully from his words. I held my tears in, whispering raggedly, “You’re not nothing tome.”

His back stilled from my response. Silence stretched between us, broken finally when I ran my hand up his back. He immediately spun around and dropped down over me, his eyes staring into my own.

“I love you, Skye,” he let out in a rush. “I’ve always loved you. I can’t stop loving you. I think it’s the only thing I do right.”

My heart burst. I clutched him tightly, whispering, “I love you, Hunt.”

It felt so right to love him. It also made me scared. I felt like I was loving an ever-vanishing light. One day he might get into so much trouble, might let the dark in too far, and I might not be there to hold him.

He placed his forehead against mine, and then he shut his eyes and just breathed. And, oh, it felt so good to have him over me like this, touching me, breathing in my air while the scent of him—buried beneath my shower wash—shrouded me.

“Can I kiss you, Skye?” he asked me suddenly, and it was so quiet, he may as well have mouthed the words to me.

My heart jumped and my blood raced through me. In an equally small voice, I responded, “Yes.” I’d hardly finished uttering the word when he took my mouth and kissed me desperately.

Right then and there, I saw another stark difference between Hunter and Leo.

Leo had kissed me methodically, attentive to my cues as he explored my mouth.

Hunter kissed me without restraint, taking what he could as though he might never get the chance to again.

Both versions of a kiss hit deep inside me. At the time, I didn’t quake between the legs in a needy fashion with either boy. Instead, I felt a deep warmth at the pit of me. It was a comforting sort of pleasure that made me feel like I belonged to someone in this world.

In this case, I felt like I belonged to two someones.

Our kiss was interrupted suddenly when the bedroom door whipped open and Kurt came bursting in, hollering at the top of his lungs, “What have I said about you coming into my daughter’s room?!”

Hunter pulled back, ripping apart our kiss as he looked up at Kurt. There was no fear in Hunter’s eyes. He simply looked resigned as he shuffled off me, his mouth flat as though peeved from the interruption.

A belt was whipped into the air, but Kurt purposely never struck Hunter with it. He just liked the way it cracked loudly, striking near Hunter’s head, bursting our eardrums in the process.

Hunter leaped to his feet, calmly saying, “Nothing happened, Kurt—I swear it—”

“You swear it?”

CRACK!

“Where’s your clothes if nothing happened—”

Kurt roared, red and still swaying on drunken legs as Hunter tried to skirt around him to grab at his clean clothes.

CRACK! CRACK!

“You can run yourself home in your birthday suit, boy!”

And Hunter did just that.

He glanced quickly at me right before he fled, his eyes still loaded with emotion, but his expression was lighter. He abandoned his clothes as Kurt closed in on him. At the nick of time, Hunt raced to the window, shoving it open before jumping out into the cold, completely naked. My heart raced wildly in my chest as I buried my flaming face under the covers, groaning inwardly.

Once he was gone, I could feel Kurt’s presence at my side. Could hear his heavy, angry breaths as he growled, “You’re so unbelievably grounded, Skye, I think you’ll be a withered old lady when you finally step out into the light of day—”

“What is going on here?” Mom cut in, sounding like she, too, was in my room. “What’s all this ruckus?”

“That boy was back in her room.”