Chapter 10 Hunter
Hunter
There’s a reason why I don’t usually tell people about my personal shit, and it’s because I hate the feeling I’ve been flooded with today.
Like I have an emotional hangover.
Like I want to put my fist through a fucking wall, or sink my knife into something that bleeds.
I haven't been avoiding Rayne since I spilled my guts to him about Lune yesterday, but I sure as fuck don’t want to be around him today, either.
I’ve had enough pity stares in my life. I don’t need any more from him.
Dinner with Briar was a good distraction until I saw the Onyx boys rolling in and taking up a long table to themselves.
Rayne looked fucked up, but in a good way.
His hair was disheveled, and he was wearing a white T-shirt that only made his biceps look better.
But unless he’s naked, on his knees, and begging to suck my cock, there’s no chance in hell I should be looking at Rayne like that, anyway.
You confuse my cock, but you’re not getting anywhere close to me.
No one gets to do that.
I say goodbye to Briar soon after, because she’s got a date with some girl tonight and she’s all nervous and stressed about it. I head outside and look down at my phone to find a text that only takes this night from bad to worse.
Barrett Knox: Call me. I’m back from my client retreat in Belize.
Crickets chirp all across the quad as I read the text from my father, but I know I need to return his call.
The only person I like even less than Weston is our father.
But he also controls everything.
The company we stand to inherit, as well as our own purse strings, until we turn 25. Until then, I have to fake respect for him. Kiss ass. And bide my time until Weston and I either hit 25 or one of us inherits Dad’s company, and then I can burn every remaining bridge between me and my family.
I dial his number as I walk down a path, heading away from Colossus dining hall.
“Hunter,” he answers in his deep baritone.
“Dad.”
“How does it feel to finally be a Crimson?”
I can hear his smug smile and the I-told-you-so in his voice.
Dad always wanted me to attend Crimson College, just like he did. Only Weston followed in his footsteps, though. I went off to London, where I would still be, if I hadn’t fucked with a goddamn crime family and had to flee.
“Crimson College is entertaining.” Not what he wants to hear, but it’s sort of the truth.
I walk past a stone fountain, wishing the rush of water would drown out my father’s words a little better.
“I trust you’ll take your studies seriously now that you’re where you ought to be. Weston will keep you on track. He might finally have the edge on you. His grades improved last year.”
Always making it a competition between us.
Even still.
“My courses seem challenging.”
A group walks past me, and one student bumps into me with his backpack without even offering a sorry.
“Watch yourself,” I mutter softly.
He turns around and gives me the finger. “Walk faster next time.”
Fucking spoiled prick.
I’m spoiled too, but not like some of the people here.
I can feel my hand tense up around the phone.
I can see what it would look like if I slipped out a throwing knife and put it right into that guy’s back.
If someone did something like that in London, or back in high school, I’d push him right back and start a fight.
I want to do it now.
Shove that fucker up against a tree and take the apology from him, if he won’t give it.
Because tonight I’m like a row of dominoes about to topple, and one more little push will set me off.
But I don’t touch him.
My father rattles off some boring details about his recent business trip in the tropics.
I duck into one of the tall stone buildings on the quad.
The tall wooden door shuts gently behind me, and the crickets’ song suddenly falls away into silence.
This is an academic building, and it’s late enough now that no classes are being held.
The halls are empty.
I cradle the phone against my ear as my shoes click along the marble floor, and I push open the carved wooden door to one of the classrooms.
The chalkboard still has leftover notes scrawled all over it, and the air smells like old books and coffee. Some sort of literature class was held here earlier today.
The rows of wooden desks in the classroom look better without all the students in them.
I shut the classroom door behind me.
The room is dark.
I’m alone, and it feels incredible.
I put my phone audio on speaker, the sound of my dad’s latest lecture filling the room.
“If you apply yourself, Hunter, you’ll be well in line for a position at the Knox Corporation in two years,” he’s saying.
I reach in my backpack and take out my little set of throwing knives.
Three matte black blades that can fit in the palm of my hand.
I grip one firmly, aim it at the wooden wall in the back, and I throw.
It hits the wood with a little thwack.
It’ll leave a mark so thin that no one will ever notice it. The walls of this classroom are so old and covered in scrapes and scratches already, anyway.
“In fact, Hunter, for a while I thought that Weston would go further in the company than you, but now that you’re a Crimson…”
“Now I’ll be perfect for the job?” I ask.
And then I throw another knife into the wall, as hard as I fucking can.
“Perhaps,” my father says. “Ah. I’m getting a call from HQ. I’ll need to take this, Hunter—”
“Bye, Dad.”
I hang up the phone before he can finish his sentence.
And I throw the next knife even harder.
I stay in that empty, dark classroom for at least thirty more minutes. Throwing the knives, retrieving them, and throwing them again.
I put music on in my headphones, lost in my own world.
I want to shove the idea of my father out of my mind.
But the problem is, when I stop thinking about him, I think about someone else instead.
Rayne Colson.
Fucking Royal.
I toss a knife forward and it hits the edge of one of the others, clattering onto the ground.
I pull in a breath and go pick them back up again, putting them back into their case.
I’m not sure what’s more appealing. Hurting Rayne myself, or hurting the person who is trying to attack him.
Even if I track down the fool who has a problem with Onyx Society, I’m not going to get any closer to Rayne than I already have.
I’ve told him too much, and I’ve barely told him anything.
He’s starting to think he knows me, and I don’t like that, either.
I loop back around toward Colossus dining hall and look in through the tall windows. Out here, it’s dark, and I have a clear shot to the long wooden table where Rayne is sitting with the other Onyx guys.
I watch him eat a strawberry.
Always eating fucking strawberries, Colson.
Your lips always taste like them, too.
My brother puts his arm around Rayne, giving him a little side-hug, probably trying to cheer him up.
And I want to push my brother off of him like he’s touching something that’s my property.
Fuck.
No.
Rayne can never get close to me, because I’ll never let it happen.
But I’m craving him.
Physically.
I want his lips on me again. I want to feel what it’s like to slide my cock inside his tight ass instead of his mouth, and watch the look on his face as he takes it.
What has he fucking done to me?
Twisting my goddamn desires like I’m a puppet on his string?
Briar was telling me earlier tonight about her moths.
How they usually use the moonlight to signal which direction is upwards.
But when moths see another light source, it confuses them. They orient all wrong to the light. And they fly in wild spirals, getting closer and closer.
Moths get drawn toward the flame.
Even though they don’t want to.
Even though it leads to their inevitable demise.
Back when Rayne used to try to fight me in high school, he was like a moth to my flame.
But now it feels more like we’re both crashing inward.
Spiraling toward each other.
Whether we want to or not.
Rayne licks his finger after eating another syrupy strawberry, and I wish I was at that table to taste it on his tongue.
In my headphones, one of my favorite old songs comes on.
“Someone to Watch Over Me” by Ella Fitzgerald, sung so beautifully I swear I can feel it in my bones. I turn the volume up on my headphones as it plays.
“I hope that he turns out to be… someone who'll watch over me.”
It should be my arm around Rayne.
Let my brother watch me take what he thought was his.
I want to put my hand on Rayne’s neck and feel him exhale when he can’t help himself from craving my touch, too.
I pull in a long breath of air, and it smells like rain is going to come. I can feel my heart pounding in my chest.
Maybe I don’t care if we’re moths to a flame.
When I get obsessed with something, or someone…
I go after it, even if I know it might destroy me.