Hunter: MC Romance (Hell Reapers MC Book 1) (25 page)

Releasing a deep hum for half a second to myself, I looked one last time to Jessica’s bathroom and then turned the cover of the book open. It quickly became apparent to me that this was a work book for her, and not a diary – was it the ash of disappointment that I tasted? There was a twinge of guilt that ran through me.

Still, I persisted in casually sifting through her book – flipping a page at a time. Most of it was full of notes that she had left herself, complaining about how her co-workers couldn’t spell for shit or that the Joe Everyman of the world was being an asshole towards her when she was out and about researching. Little pricks of happiness assailed me at reading her cute little notes peppered around about investigating a real-estate scandal in Dunmorrow.

Beating feet and researching. Journalist, copy-editor, works at a newspaper. The thoughts somehow dark skittered along the edge of my mind.

My eyes scanned another page, and this strange feeling of lead running through my veins consumed me. I heard Jessica call my name, but I barely registered the sound – hardly noticed my reply to her too.

I turned the page.

Everything tightened. Something struck my gut and it felt like I needed to suck in some air, but my lungs were full and I’d forgotten how. Electric rage danced through me, and the ends of my fingers burned with this pure, and primal anger. Eyes crawling over a list of familiar names and descriptions, my eyebrows knitted tightly together and I felt like I was going to be sick.

There were theories; accurate if not missing some details on a few things, descriptions of peoples roles in the club and club dealings. Tommy, Reyes, Jameson, Brad, Holly, Lex, they were all here – and they were all
made
.

Stepping backwards, the world around me felt lighter. I fell back against the bed and landed clumsily on my ass, just processing what I’d seen.

Reyes and Holly had warned me about her. Hell, I knew that she had more about her than she was letting on – how could she do this? She even told me what she did for a living, and I was what, too stupid? Too—fuck.

Fuck. That was when it all came rushing out, the anger bonding itself hot to my bones. I felt the wrath of god kissing on the back of my neck, my hairs stiffly bristling – every neuron was firing and leaving me on edge. The pain of what she’d done to me, to us, to my club. It stabbed at my heart. She’d lacerated me without speaking a word, cut down every good feeling that I was delusional enough to trust in.

I grabbed my pants and hastily dressed myself, stomping back over to that horrible item and snatching it from the desk. There was a seduction in the air, to rip the book into a thousand pieces and proceed to break every-fucking-thing I could get my hands on. The bones of my body ached with a need to destroy.

And I hated every inch of me for that.

I stormed my way over to that traitorous bitch’s bathroom door like Lucifer freed from his infernal cage. The door made an all-too-satisfying crack as my boot crashed against it.

Jessica loudly yelped and the dark blue of her shower curtains jumped. “Hunter?! What the fuck?”

The dog bolted out from the bed and into the living room, no doubt frightened. “Get. OUT,” I boomed and threw the curtain aside.

She was backed up in the corner of the shower and horrified, her eyes finding the notebook in my hand. “Wai—“

I lurched forward, stepping into the stream of water and grabbed her tight by the wrist. She yelled out as I forcefully pulled on her soaked body, removing her from the shower. She stumbled and nearly fell to the floor as I practically dragged her through the doorway. Fire pricked at my veins and I exhaled a hard breath.

“Hunter, hunter,” she pleaded, her voice thick with fear and laced with desperation. Or was it cowardice? I was too angry to mull on it. “Please,” she said, “please I can explai—“

She crashed hard against the bed, her wild hair splaying.

I clenched the book so tight in my hands that my knuckles turned ghost white, “There’s
nothing
to
explain,” the venom dripped and my eyes locked on her as she tried to physically compose herself. In that terrible moment, that hateful, hurting and black hour – nothing made sense. I was operating purely on instinct.

Tonight there was no me. Only the animal I’d always known since I was a boy. Angry. Violent. Broken.

Jessica bundled herself up in her blankets and backed as far away from me as the bed and the wall would permit her. “Please, Hunter,” she said, “I need you to just calm down.” I could see the glint of tears staining her eyes, the burden of misery on the lines of her face.

“I need to calm down? Jessica, what the
fuck
,” I exploded, striking the wooden post of her bed with her journal. “You’ve been writing everything down in this book?” I could see that she wanted to speak, but I wasn’t ready to listen. “This why you were at the club?” I raised the book into the air, “hm? To get to me? I trusted you.”

She brought her hand up to cover her trembling lip, and when she spoke, the whip was in her voice, “Stop
yelling
at me,” she demanded. How dare she. “Yes,” anger and pain dripped from her tone, “I was writing about you, about you and the Hell Reapers.” Anger colored her face.

The muscles in my jaw jumped, “You even realize what that would do?” I snarled, “you want to put my family away for good? You disgust me, Jessica. You fucking lied about everything.”

“I had to! I dropped it, okay? I told my boss I couldn’t do it and it fucked me,” she’s lying and you know it. Jessica wound back her arm and shot a pillow at me. As it flew over to me, I swatted it with the back of my hand. “You asshole,” she yanked at the blankets on the bed and repositioned herself, her nose flaring. “The money for doing it would have been for
her
. This is
exactly
why I didn’t want to tell you. I, I didn’t even fucking know
how
.”

And then I said something that I knew I would regret. One of those dark, invasive thoughts that takes hold of you and when you think them, worse so, when they part your lips, you feel like they’re coming from someone else entirely. “If you really loved me, you would have told me,” I was clenching my teeth so hard, balling my fist so tightly that my hand trembled. I flung the journal at the wall, a sense of twisted satisfaction crashing over me: “I hope you never get to say goodbye to her.”

Jessica went dead on the inside, and screamed at me to get out. I could feel the hurt in her as she wailed, as she called me every name that she could imagine in those terrible moments that didn’t seem real.

None of this was real. Never was.

I threw my weight against the door, swinging it from its partially opened state, and stormed off into the black.

Chapter 25

Jessica

It’d been weeks since that terrible night, and I’d tried to bury myself in the horribly menial work that my boss would give me. He was less than pleased with my refusal to write the article on the Hell Reapers; I’d tried suggesting, at the time, that I could put a positive light on their club, that they were more than just the thugs he saw them as.

Sabrina could be heard talking to the guy at the front door, with Barristan not far behind her. We were at her place, but outside of work, I didn’t feel comfortable without taking my dog with me. The pressure of it all was starting to get me, and I knew that I could at least always confide and count on my little guy.

Mr. Gates just wouldn’t have what I was trying to sell, no matter how I tried to make him see it. And I wouldn’t budge on the issue. He said that he couldn’t understand where I was coming from, why I would turn down the money and the prestige of having my name on something real, something that would inflame the public. He hated me for spinning smoke and taking what checks I could get, and promised me that if it wasn’t for what was going on with my mother, he’d have fired me on the spot.

But I didn’t cry then. No. I saved that for when Hunter so coldly lashed out at me, when he filled my head and my heart with utter fear at his reign of terror. I’d
never
seen him like that before, and it scared me. I cried until I fell asleep that night. The only thing getting me through all of this was Barristan and the understanding of Sabrina.

I should have told him when I had the chance. Should have listened to what Holly had said. Knew that I was playing with fire, but the fear was in me. The fear of losing something so fleeting and beautiful, something that I didn’t even feel like I was worthy of anymore. I wanted to tell him, I know I did…now all that remained was the bitterness, and the hurt.

Sabrina sashayed back with the Chinese food in hand, Barristan walking by her side. She set it down on the coffee table and found her seat back on the couch. “Try and eat some real food,” she encouraged, squeezing my arm, “or well, as real as food as takeout can be I guess.”

I glanced her way as I brought the spoonful of cherry and nuts ice-cream to my lips, lazily feeding myself the cold deliciousness. The spoon clinked audibly against my teeth as my lips devoured it; I said nothing and rigidly repeated the action.

Rolling her eyes, Sabrina went for her container of food. She opened up the white, durable box and the aroma of orange chicken wafted through the apartment. She let out a happy sort of squeal and undid the wrapping to her plastic fork, impaling a gooey morsel that glinted beneath the lightning of the living room. Sabrina popped it in her mouth and chewed, her eyes closing and her body sinking a couple of inches further into the couch – delighted tones escaping her.

I continued to go ham on the pint of ice cream, promising myself that if I kept this up – I’d sit down and google a tutorial on how to make a knight’s armor out of the carton’s brethren. “Sorry,” I offered between bites, “I’ll eat it…eventually.” My hand went for the remote and I turned up the volume on Sabrina’s TV.

Barristan moved beneath my feet and sniffed along the floor, until he found himself the perfect spot beside my foot.

“It’s okay,” Sabrina replied, “I just want to make sure, you know, you actually have something in that tiny stomach of yours. Besides a bowling ball’s worth of frozen dairy product.”

The spoon clinked in my mouth again, “I need to get a second job,” I told her.

“That bad, huh?”

“Yeah, after bailing on that piece – there’s nothing left for me there. I’m being given hours, but there’s not a chance in hell I’ll move up the ladder.”

Sabrina crossed a long leg over the other, “I thought you still had shifts at White Castle.”

“Stopped doing those,” I sat what remained of the pint of ice cream down on the table, “no chance I’m going back, either. The manager wouldn’t stop harassing me. Every week I’m not building towards that sum, my mother’s chances of beating this shit are just going down and down.”

Sabrina brushed back her hair, “My offer still stands from before, you know.”

I gave her a weak smile, “Thank you, seriously. I just wish I was close enough to take you up on it.”

“Have you heard from him at all?” She asked with this odd hopefulness to her voice.

“No,” my tone was curt, but I felt these strings yank at my heart. Just the simple thought of him was enough to make me feel so much.

“I know he didn’t take it well,” Sabrina started and then turned to face me, criss-crossing her legs over one another with the container of chicken resting on her lap. “And I mean, I know
you
didn’t take it well either – but don’t you think you two should, you know, talk about it? You basically told Gattis—“

“Gates,” I corrected.

“Gates, sorry, to meet a few strangers in the alps,” I had genuinely no idea what she meant by that. “That counts for something. Yeah you should have told him, but I don’t blame you for not doing so. Life’s easy to judge, but living it’s something else.” She ate a few more pieces of her meal. “Now that I’m here and eating, and thinking about it. Are you still having that weird problem?”

“Gee let me spin the wheel of misfortune and try and figure out which one you’re talking about now.”

“Very funny,” Sabrina wrinkled her nose at me, stifling a laugh, “the milk going missing, was it?”

“It didn’t go missing,” I explained, “I must have just drank more than I remembered. And like, I don’t know if I’m losing my mind or what but I swear lately things just aren’t where I remember them. Small stuff. Like plates or my keys, mostly stuff in the kitchen.”

“Do you think someone’s getting into your house?”

“Nah, can’t be. They’d have been caught by now by the only boy I could ever trust.” I brought my legs up and plopped my feet down on the coffee table, trying to sink myself into the couch. I glued my eyes to the screen flashing images of
Cops
and wondered if I pushed hard enough, that maybe the furniture would swallow me whole and the world would just forget about me forever. “It’s not as simple as talking, you know. To Hunter,” I said it with this dead cadence, I felt like I was watching myself watching TV.

I hadn’t told Sabrina every detail of that night, and I definitely didn’t tell her what Hunter said about my mother.

Forgiving him for that…felt impossible. Hate me? Yeah, I could see that – I didn’t like it, but I could see it. But going beyond me and attacking the only family I had left?