Through the Flames (The Big Boys of BRU #3)

1. Hunter

One

Hunter

Dust motes floated in the slanting afternoon light, the smell of cardboard and packing tape lingering. Boxes were stacked neatly in the hallway, outside Colt’s room.

Well, what used to be his room, I guess.

I usually got along with silence, but today it reminded me too much of a different house where silence only reigned after the screams stopped.

The silence loomed heavily, suffocating me and reminding me that Colt would soon be gone. My chest felt tighter than usual, uncomfortably so.

I wouldn’t call it grief or sadness, but I knew once he left, I’d be stuck alone with my own messed-up head. His room was empty, although I avoided looking at it.

Colt was my constant, my anchor. He was the buffer between me and the rest of the world. Now he was packing boxes, leaving me to carry the silence on my own.

The bitter truth was I had no one to blame but myself.

I’ve never really imagined my life without Colt in it. Even though it was completely unrealistic, I always had this foolish hope of continuing to play for the same team. Of getting drafted together.

The chances of that happening had been astronomically slim to begin with, but it was me who’d sealed that particular fate. Unlike Colt, I hadn’t declared for this year’s draft.

Everyone at Blue Ridge University was shocked when I passed. Twenty-one, at the peak of my game, and I chose to wait another year. No one understood why, not even Colt.

And I didn’t try to make anyone understand, either.

They thought I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had.

Because if I told them the truth — that I stayed for a girl who could touch me without setting me on fire — I’d end up straight on some fucking watch list. Or locked up.

Oh, yeah, I’m not declaring for the draft and postponing the thing I’ve worked for all my life because there’s this girl, and she can touch me. So obviously, I can’t let her out of my sight for more than five fucking minutes.

She’d brushed against me one time, so small, so accidental, and yet it had mended something inside me I didn’t know was capable of being put back together, ever.

After years of feeling nothing but revulsion and nausea when others touched me, she broke the cycle.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it; it was a maddening yet beautiful echo in my mind.

Her touch unleashed emotions I didn’t know I was capable of feeling: a warmth that wasn’t cold, a desire that didn’t scare me, and an inexplicable pull.

Ella Kincaid’s fate had been sealed the day she met me.

The logical part of my brain made me go back after that first time to test the theory. I was determined to make sure it hadn’t just been a one-off.

From that point on, each touch was a test, and I mentally charted every reaction.

The brief, stolen brushes of her hands against mine told me the same thing: this wasn’t a fluke. I was unraveling, alive in a way I hadn’t been in years .

I’d spent months cataloging her routines, memorizing her schedule, and replaying every interaction.

My life, my plans and my blueprints all orbited around her presence, because that one accidental touch had shown me what it meant to be human again.

What it meant to want .

For someone like me — someone accustomed to controlling everything and who had spent half their life avoiding physical contact — it was terrifying.

Now whenever I saw her, her smiles and carefree laughter brought back memories of that spark, of the heat crawling up my skin and the lightning splitting through me.

I couldn’t escape it. I didn’t want to escape it.

Colt’s bulky figure lumbered up the stairs, each step a deep, thundering thud. He came to a stop next to me, and I could feel his gaze boring into me.

When I didn’t react or move out of his way, he went around me with a deep sigh.

Shouldering a box, he turned toward the stairs again.

“You gonna talk to anyone now that I’m gone?” he asked with his back turned to me.

“I’ll talk to you.”

“Yeah, but I won’t be down the hall anymore. Your little robot heart’s gonna glitch,” Colt teased.

“I’ll reboot,” I muttered, without looking up.

He started for the stairs again. “Sometimes I wish other people knew how funny you actually are.”

“Nah. Combined with my natural charm and sparkling personality, that would just be overkill. Gotta leave some for the rest of them,” I deadpanned.

Colt snorted, stomping down the stairs to load the box into his truck.

Since I wasn’t a total dick — at least not with people I actually cared about — I grabbed a box myself and followed him.

The blinding sunlight was accompanied by what felt like a wall of hot, humid air that hit me as soon as I set foot outside. Colt was standing in the bed of his truck, organizing the boxes.

“Here.” I set mine down on the open tailgate.

“Thanks, man. Slide it over here, would ya?”

The cardboard hit his foot as I gave it a little too much juice, and he peered down at the label on the box.

I’d just turned back around to escape the heat when he called out.

“Hey, hold on.”

Coming to a stop, I twisted his way again. “What?”

Colt was holding a small object in his hands. “Think fast.”

He launched it my way, and my hands shot up on pure instinct, closing around the object. It kind of felt like rubber. When I cast a look down, my chest tightened.

It was the mini football that we’d had since second grade and always fought over. We spent endless hours tossing it around and squabbling over who would get to take it home.

Its worn, rubbery surface was testament to how many hours we’d spent entertaining ourselves with it.

Eventually, our hands got big enough for an actual football, replacing this one. I hadn’t seen it in years, and I sure as hell didn’t expect Colt to have held on to it.

My eyes snapped up to meet his as I slowly turned the ball in my hands.

The corner of his mouth twitched. “Figured you should have this. You were always more attached to it anyway.”

I snorted. We both knew I wasn’t attached to anything these days, really. But somehow, my throat still felt tight. Too tight, in fact, to force any words out.

With a nod, I turned around, heading back toward the house.

I didn’t say thank you. I didn’t need to. We both knew what it meant, what we meant to each other. Colt would always be my brother.

That night, hours after Colt and all his belongings had left, I stepped into his empty room.

The air was cold and stagnant, and it felt strange to be in there without him. We’d bought this place together.

Well, technically his parents and my trust fund did, but same difference.

Didn’t change the fact that, although it held fond memories for me, I’d never keep it based solely on whose money had funded it. Money I didn’t want.

Every dollar felt like a shadow of everything I’d fought to overcome. I wanted to earn this life, I wanted it to be mine, to be real. Everything else was just tainted.

Now this room would have a different purpose. As I strode through the length of it, I pulled out my phone, compiling a list of things I needed to buy.

She had derailed my blueprinted future and rewritten my plans without even fucking knowing the impact she had.

I’d been watching her for months and was involved in every part of her life — a fact of which she was blissfully unaware.

With the cloned device, her world was wide open. Every ding, every DM, every pathetic little heart emoji — all of it went straight into my fucking bloodstream.

Setting it up when she left her phone at a party had been fucking child’s play.

A quick window of opportunity was all I’d needed.

Although three years of a cybersecurity degree at brU looked good on paper, my real education started long before that.

The kind of jobs you would never list on a résumé. The kind that taught me how easy it was to make someone disappear online. Compared to that, sliding into Ella’s phone was hardly considered practice.

I knew who she was messaging and what she was saying. I knew that she’d been searching for a roommate, and I’ve been removing her options, one by one .

Deleting messages from interested girls and flagging her ads until she thought Craigslist itself hated her.

Every. Single. Time.

I was patient. Controlled. The only emotion I allowed myself to feel was anticipation — pure, throbbing anticipation.

Soon, my Blaze would be desperate. That was when I’d make my move, when I’d offer her Colt’s room.

***

The house was quiet, almost disturbingly so, after living with Colt and Hailey for months.

I was still adjusting to being alone, with only the quiet hum of my devices providing background noise.

The three monitors in front of me were the only source of light in my dim room.

One monitor was pulled up to Ella’s social feed. One displayed an anonymized housing board. And the third featured open chat logs from her cloned device.

My eyes flitted from screen to screen, watching, cross-referencing, and checking IP activity. I’ve been keeping tabs on her for so long, this sequence has become my standard protocol.

A tagged photo popped up on her social feed, and I greedily clicked it, my gaze scanning every detail.

Her dark red hair, contrasting sharply with her tanned skin, was pulled into its usual high ponytail. Her smile was breathtaking, radiating joy even through a screen, and I felt that now familiar tightness in my chest.

Only when I’d finished my perusal did I pay attention to the person next to her. At this point, I knew everyone who she came in contact with.

Including the blonde girl smiling next to her. Not nearly as pretty.

The only reason I was sparing her a glance at all was to get a grasp of the situation. Both girls were beaming in a faintly familiar living room.

Which didn’t add up. Searching the screen, the caption caught my attention.

“Moved in and already loving it ??”

My stomach dropped, and I gave a slow blink.

The room in the background had an air of familiarity to it because I recognized it from a Zillow listing.

Fuck . I blew out a breath, spearing my fingers into my hair. So much for my carefully curated plans.

My girl just went and dropped a fucking hand grenade on them without even realizing what she’d done.

Leaning back in my chair, I stared blankly at the picture. I squeezed my eyes shut before slowly opening them again, in utter disbelief.

Then I sat up straight and began deleting the housing threads I’d been sabotaging. Well, there was no fucking point anymore.

She just went from wide open to locked down. And not by me. Yet . Fucking torture.

I’d been so goddamn close.

I’d made space for her in my world, both physically and mentally.

Colt was gone — though admittedly that was only circumstantial — I’d furnished her room and stocked the house with her essentials.

I’d been ready.

And now Sierra was standing between us, an annoying, and even worse, unbribable obstacle.

Inconvenient, but manageable. This just meant I had to adapt.

Mulling it over, playing through different scenarios in my head as I spun the mini football in my hands, I decided on my new objective. Get Ella into my house , even if it was only temporarily.

Let her see what it felt like while appeasing the obsession deeply rooted inside of me. Let her want to stay .