HUNTER (3 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

I don’t know why I went down to that airstrip. I don’t know what I was hoping to see. I guess I just had to see him with my own eyes—see that it was true, that he really was still alive.

I didn’t think seeing him would make me so angry. So many people were down at that airstrip, friends and family of those poor, dead soldiers, all just looking for a little bit of closure. And what did Hunter do, the moment he stepped off that plane? He starts drooling over the first skimpy hoe he sees.

Even more aggravating, there wasn’t a single pitchfork in that crowd—not one lynching rope. No one cared that Hunter slept with Sammy’s girlfriend.

It took five years to shed my status as the Witch of Nintipi, and I was still dealing with the consequences of what I did.

What
we
did—I didn’t do it alone.

I’m not saying I wasn’t guilty, but why did Hunter get a pass? Sammy was Hunter’s best friend. Sammy looked up to Hunter, worshipped the ground Hunter walked on. Still, Hunter stepped off that plane with a grin on his face. I guess spending a year in a P.O.W. camp gives you a pass on sleeping with your best friend’s girlfriend—

As soon as I got home, I splashed some water on my face. I wasn’t mad at
him
. If I’d been mad at him, I wouldn’t have gone down to that airstrip in the first place. I was mad at
them
. I was mad at the town. They didn’t know me. They didn’t know Hunter. And they sure didn’t know Sammy. No one knew Sammy—no one but Hunter and me. I splashed some more water on my face. Apparently, putting on a military uniform is all it takes to become an American War Hero.

I was startled by a knock on the bathroom door. “Kyla?” Liam called out. Liam was supposed to be at work for another three hours.

“Liam?”

“Where were you?” He opened the door and let himself in.

My heart was still pounding from the scare. “Why are you home?” I asked.

“I got off early. What were you doing out?” His eyebrows were raised as if he was accusing me of something.

“I went down to the airstrip.”

He slumped his shoulders down, but his reaction wasn’t convincing. He already knew the answer to his question before he asked it. “C’mon, Kyla. Why would you do that? You know that was a bad idea. We talked about this.”

“I wanted to see them for myself.” The night before, when they made the announcement that Hunter and Greg were found alive, Liam suggested I not go see them land. He thought that seeing Hunter would “bring back too many damaging memories.” I told him I needed to go for my own peace of mind, so it was surprising to see his frustrated reaction.

“Kyla…”

“I just wanted to see. I was there and back in ten minutes. What’s the big deal?” I smiled but his concerned expression stayed the same.

“You don’t need him back in your life. He’s poisonous.”

I didn’t need to ask to know that he was referring to Hunter. “He’s not back in my life, Liam. I just wanted peace of mind.”

“Peace of mind? What does that mean, peace of mind? You knew that Sammy wasn’t with them. What difference does seeing it for yourself make?” I couldn’t tell if he was angry or genuinely curious. Either way, I didn’t feel the need to explain myself.

“I’ve known Hunter and Greg my whole life.”

“And how was Greg?” he asked. Again, it sounded more like an accusation.

“I didn’t see him—”

“—Of course you didn’t.” He shook his head.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

In three years, Liam had never accused me of anything more serious than washing his favourite jeans in the wrong laundry cycle. That’s what made Liam different. He wasn’t like the rest of Nintipi. He never jumped to wild conclusions, he never made mean accusations. He understood what it was like, living with a mistake. He was in the sniper with the Marines for three years, stationed in Afghanistan, but he never finished his tour.

He was stationed on a hill, a mile from the town where his squad was on ground patrol. His Captain was on the hill with him, scanning for threats with a pair of binoculars. There was a little kid running towards his squad. His Captain suspected the kid was wearing a suicide vest, and ordered Liam to shoot. Liam had the kid in his sights, but he couldn’t do it. He thought the kid was harmless. Turned out, he was wrong. The kid blew up, along with five of his close friends. The Captain blamed Liam, and so did the rest of America. He was discharged on the grounds of “cowardice.”

Now, he was accusing me of having a thing for Hunter.

His expression dropped and his lips parted. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, suddenly using a calmer tone of voice.

“Then what did you mean?”

“Kyla…”

“Tell me what you meant.”

He stepped up to me and wrapped his arms around my body. “I’m sorry. Forget I said anything. I had a tough day at work.”

“Is everything alright?” I asked. His body felt tense, but it wasn’t the first time. All week, even before they said Hunter was alive, he’d been getting tenser.

“Yeah. Just stressed out. I don’t think I slept at all last night.”

“Why not?”

“I dunno. I guess there’s just a lot on my mind. Work’s piling up faster than I can keep up with it. Not to mention all the work that needs done around the house. I still haven’t had a minute to fix that damn washer.” It was true. Our house was practically falling apart.

Our washing machine had been broken for four months, two of the burners on the stove had stopped working, there were burnt out lights in every room, and a dozen small cracks in the siding, letting cold air in and hot air out. The problem wasn’t the lack of time as much as it was the lack of money.

“We’ll figure it out,” I said.

“When?”

“I don’t know, babe. But we have each other, right? Isn’t that what you always say?” I leaned into him and planted a soft kiss on his lips. Wrapping my arms around him, I could still feel the rigid tension in his body.

“Yeah.” He said it in a deflated tone, as if he wasn’t so sure.

“Just relax.” I tried squeezing harder, but he remained rigid.

“Believe me when I say I want to. If I knew how, I would,” he said in that same deflated tone of voice. I smiled.

I knew what to do.

I sunk down to my knees, running my fingers down his sides.

“What are you doing?” he asked, as if he didn’t know. He wasn’t very good at playing dumb.

I pulled down his zipper, slipped my fingers through his fly, and wrapped them around his flaccid member. I started by massaging with a gentle grip. It didn’t take long before he was hard enough that I could transition into a stroking motion. A few long strokes, and he was rock-hard in my hand.

But his cock wasn’t the only part of him that was as stiff as a stone. His whole body was tense. Usually by this point, his shoulders would’ve relaxed and his fingers would be nestled in my hair. Instead, he stood straight like a plank of wood.

He hadn’t been this tense since we first started dating—when he just came back from Afghanistan. Weeks would go by where we couldn’t have sex at all. We would try, but his mind would drift back to the battlefield, to god-knows what kind of violence he saw over in the Middle East. It took him years to get past it. From time to time, I would see that look in his eyes—that look he used to get when his mind went back to his days with the Marine Corps.

I used to ask him if he was okay when I’d see that far away look. But I stopped asking. I’d learned that the trick was to distract him from it, not to get it out of him.

So I kept stroking.

And slowly, he started to melt. His shoulders sunk down and he let out a long exhale. His member twitched as I ran the tip of my finger up to the tip of his cock.

“Maybe this isn’t the best time, babe. I’ve got a lot of work I need to catch up on.”

He caught me off guard. I couldn’t remember the last time he turned me down. Had he ever turned me down? Even when his mind would drift back to Afghanistan, he wouldn’t decline sex.

“I won’t keep you long,” I said, tightening my grip.

“I know, babe, but—” Before he could finish his sentence, I had my lips around his cock. He went silent, probably wondering why he ever considered turning down sex. I was wondering the same thing, but I was happier ignoring it, hoping it really was just a bad day. Finally, his fingers slipped around my head, nestling into my hair. He pulled me in towards his pelvis, sinking his hard dick into my mouth, pressing his tip against the back of my throat.

Mission accomplished. He was distracted—for now, anyway.

His grip released from my head, giving me a moment to pull back for a breath of air. It was a short moment, only long enough for him to drop his pants down to his ankles, letting his hard cock spring free.

I couldn’t count the number of times I’d seen Liam naked in our three year relationship. But in all of those times, I was always caught off-guard by his scars. All across his abdomen, his chest, and his legs were the remnants of deep gashes—gashes he earned in the Middle East. He never told me how he got them, and I knew better than to ask. When we met, the scars were still new, still stitched up. I thought they would go away, but three years later, they still looked just as fresh and clear as ever before.

He pulled me back in to his pelvis, forcing his cock back into my mouth. After a few seconds, his grip painfully tightened. I tried to pull back to let him know, but he held my head in place.

My heart fluttered. Something was wrong. His little outburst, his initial reluctance to have sex, and his sudden aggression—this wasn’t the Liam I knew.

I gagged. Neck locked in place, I looked up. Through a blur of tears, I could see his red face. He kept his eyes closed and his jaw clenched tight. I had to squeeze his thigh to get him to release me. He did, but before I could speak, I needed to catch my breath.

“What?” he said. His tone was deep, aggressive, unfamiliar.

“Let’s go to the bedroom,” I said between breaths.

“No. Here.” His short words were blunt, relentless.

Our bathroom was not the ideal room for sex. It was small, cramped, there was nothing to hold onto. The shower-rod was flimsy, and the sink couldn’t support much more than the weight of our toothbrushes and a bar of soap. A year before, our landlord said he would fix the place, but that never happened. “Where in here?” I asked.

“Right here. Suck me off.”

Before I could respond, he pulled me back in, guiding his long, slick cock into my throat once again. What’d gotten into him? Whatever it was, if that was what he wanted, that was what I would give him.