5. Hunter
5
HUNTER
Then
I don’t know anything about Rae Prince.
I’ve never seen her in person. Before I called Will’s phone, I didn’t even know she existed. Still, the moment I walk into the Waffle House right off of the highway, I know exactly who she is. Maybe it’s because she’s the only person looking like she’s about to meet up with a perfect stranger who, in their very first conversation, disclosed his intention to take his own life. It’s the wrinkles between her brows that give her away. The lip pulled between her teeth. The fingers tapping on the linoleum table top. The general air of uncertainty and regret lingering around the booth near the back of the restaurant she chose to sit in. She’s facing the door, watching the entrance, so she sees me at the same time I see her.
We both pause and share a look that’s meant to confirm what we already know. That I’m me, and she’s her. That we’re two strangers meeting under the strangest of circumstances. She lifts her hand and waves, the beginnings of a smile playing on her lips before she strangles them into submission, forcing them to be something else, something more somber and fitting for the occasion.
My last supper.
How she convinced me to come here and share a meal with her, I’ll never know. One moment I was on the roof of the building Legacy told me she intended to buy just a week ago, ready to put an end to it all, and the next I was agreeing to greasy hash browns and limp waffles all so Will’s sister could feel good about letting me go off and die.
Because I still want to die…maybe.
Well, it’s not so much of a want as it is a need. I need to go, to leave this world before I can hurt anyone else, before I can fail anyone else like I failed Legacy.
“You need a seat, sweetheart?” A waitress calls from behind the counter. She’s got red, curly hair and frown lines in her ruddy skin as deep as the creases in her uniform.
“Nah.” I tilt my chin in Rae’s direction. “I’m meeting someone.”
Speaking the words out loud is enough to get my feet moving, and in seconds, I’m casting a large shadow over Rae’s table. She gazes up at me with almond-shaped eyes the color of roasted hazelnuts, and where I expect to find even a sliver of fear or intimidation because of my size and stature, I see nothing but interest and concern.
“Do you mind if I sit down?” I ask, giving her an out because God knows if I was in her situation, I’d want one.
“Unless you’re going to eat standing up, I think you probably should take a seat, yeah.”
The sass lacing her response surprises me so much it causes the muscles in my face to shift. It’s not a smile. I haven’t smiled since the day Legacy died. She’s actually the last person I shared a smile with. We were laughing about some dumb joke Russ, the head of the detail, made, and that’s when it happened. The ringing of a spent round, the melting smile that slipped off of her face as the life faded from her eyes. The wet squelching and hot splash of brain matter and shattered bone exploding onto me and the wall I was standing in front of.
When I decided to use tonight, that was the image in my mind. Dissolved smiles and interrupted joy. I’ve seen death come for someone before. Soldiers in the unit I abandoned when I was dishonorably discharged from the military for not being a functioning addict like my commanding officer. My father, when he gripped his chest and collapsed, his eyes wide with anger and confusion at being betrayed by a heart his doctors had warned him for years would fail. My mother, whose body yielded to cancer so quickly, her life felt like sand slipping through my fingers. Like my parents, death had come quickly for Legacy, too, but the difference is she hadn’t known to expect it.
Not right then, at least.
“Hunter?” Rae says my name like she’s uncertain of whether she has the right to call me by it. Her brows fold in on themselves, thick, full, and perfectly shaped lines that ask me to sit because my continued standing is making her uncomfortable.
Finally, I drop down into the seat across from her, angling my legs to the side to ensure I don’t accidentally bump her. The sigh she lets out is audible, and she keeps her eyes on me as I grab a menu and pretend to look over it.
“Are you actually looking at the menu or just avoiding making conversation with me?”
I cock a brow, lifting my gaze to meet hers. She’s so confusing. One minute she’s all steel and fire, and the next, she’s soft and unsure, which makes her look as young as I think she is.
“You gonna judge all the choices I make today?”
“Only the bad ones.”
“I guess it’s a good thing I make a lot of those then.”
“So how does this work?” she asks, reaching over to pluck the sticky menu from my hand. I watch her tuck it back into its designated spot between the ketchup, mustard, and hot sauce bottles. With nothing else to do with my hands, I clasp them together and try not to picture them covered in blood.
“How does what work?”
She gestures between the two of us with long, elegant fingers. “I don’t know. This?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never done this before.”
I blink slowly, glancing around for our server because I need water. I’d forgotten how dry my mouth gets after using.
“Sure you have. If you’re one of Will’s sponsees, you go to meetings all the time.”
“This isn’t a meeting. You’re not my sponsor.”
Her jaw clenches, forming a surprisingly hard line for such a delicate curve, as she leans back against the booth and crosses her arms. “Your sponsor isn’t available, so I’m all you’ve got. What would Will say to you right now?”
“He’d ask me what the fuck I’m doing here with his little sister.” Self-consciousness ripples across her features, and she raises her chin, clearly annoyed with me for not taking her question seriously. I push out a long breath. “I don’t know what he’d say to me right now, okay?”
“And you didn’t want to find out. That’s why you were planning to?—”
Our server appearing out of thin air cuts her sentence short, and we pause our awkward conversation to order food I probably won’t eat because the waves of nausea have started rolling, and they won’t stop unless I use again. I’d planned to be gone before the effects of short-term withdrawal started, but now I’m here with Rae.
Alive and ashamed.
When the server leaves, Rae resumes tapping her fingers on the table, and I’m left with no choice but to put us both out of our misery.
“Will would remind me that recovery isn’t linear,” I offer. “And then he’d encourage me to talk about what led me to relapse because he knows there’s always something that triggers the urge to use again after going through the hell of getting clean.”
The way she smiles reveals everything I’d ever want to know about the way she feels about her big brother. Will is a hard ass who has never known a stranger in his life, but he’s also an addict, which means Rae’s love for him has probably been tried more than once. That she can project such positive feelings related to him even when he’s not around says a lot about the work he must have done to repair what his addiction broke.
Like our own resident Houdini, the server comes back, setting plates and glasses down on the table before disappearing once more. I’m certain we won’t see her again tonight. Picking up my glass, I take a slow sip of water, hoping it’ll help with the dryness. It doesn’t. Rae picks up her fork and starts to eat, taking an enthusiastic bite of her hash browns while maintaining eye contact with me.
“Would you tell him?”
My stomach twists. Will is the one person in the world I make a habit of being a hundred percent honest. He never required it of me, but it’s just something I’ve given him because it’s always what he gives everyone else. And there’s something so wrong about lying to a guy who always tells the truth, no matter how ugly it is.
“Yeah, I would.”
Rae plucks up two sugar packets from one of the canisters to her right and places them on the table next to the cup of coffee she ordered. I watch as she opens them one by one and dumps them into the stark, black liquid, wondering what she thinks about the likelihood of there being such a thing as an honest addict.
“Will you tell me?”
Despite the inflection at the end of the sentence and the quirked brow she pairs it with, it doesn’t feel like a question. Her eyes make sure of it. They’re hard and challenging, laughing at me for even considering denying her access to a story she’s now a part of. The Hunter Drake saga. A tale of misfortune and woe that would already be over if it weren’t for her.
“How old are you?”
She stirs the negligible amount of sugar into her coffee and then takes a long sip, closing her eyes to savor the flavor of burnt grounds that have probably been run through the machine more than once tonight. And it’s that act that makes me realize why the question—which had been in my head since I first laid eyes on her—has finally made its way out of my mouth.
Rae is a conundrum.
Her face—all flawless, smooth brown skin with not a wrinkle or blemish in sight—expound her youth, but her mannerisms—the set of her shoulders, the steel of her gaze, the decision to drink hot, black coffee instead of those frilly iced drinks Legacy and all of her friends preferred—are that of someone much older than she must be.
“Nineteen.” I choke on the water I’ve just welcomed into my mouth and it trickles back into the glass while Rae rolls her eyes. “Don’t do that,” she says. “If I’m old enough to watch my mom die, I’m old enough to hear about whatever made you use again.”
“I watched my friend die.”
The annoyance that had just made itself at home in her eyes fades away as her gaze softens with sympathy. “I’m sorry, Hunter.”
Even though it is a big deal, I shrug like it’s not. “I’m sorry about your mom.”
Will had shared the news of her death in a meeting the day it happened. Confessing the burning desire to use again, to numb the pain of losing his mother before he got the chance to make up for all the fucked up shit he did before he was able to get clean. He never mentioned Rae directly, but he did allude to having other reasons to stay clean, other people depending on him to remain the version of himself they’d come to trust and rely on. Not knowing much about him besides his devotion to recovery, I’d thought he was talking about his sponsees, but now I know he was talking about Rae.
She takes another sip of coffee, this time to hide the quiver in her bottom lip inspired by my offered condolences. “Thanks.”
We sit in a moment of silence before Rae speaks again.
“Breast cancer.” I meet her eyes, imploring her to elaborate with a lift of my brows. “That’s how my mom— our mom” —she corrects herself, leaving me to wonder how often she refers to their mother as just hers. There has to be at least a decade between her and Will, so it makes sense that she would think of their shared guardian that way. As someone belonging solely to her because she was raised alone for the most part—“she had breast cancer, and they caught it too late.”
It’s funny how unique, how utterly singular, an experience can feel until you come face to face with someone who has gone through the exact same thing. My mother’s diagnosis came too late as well. Too late to save her. Too late to give me time to prepare to say goodbye. Too late to do anything but watch her die when all I wanted was her to live.
Using had made me numb for a moment, not long enough to make the years of sobriety I washed down the drain worth it, but for a while. That moment has passed now, though, the rush of euphoria is gone, and I’m open again. A sieve that won’t stop catching pain even though all it can do is pass it on to something else and hope that it can hold it. Rae’s pain passes through mine, collapsing into the endless gulf of heartache underneath me. There’s barely enough room for it, but still, I take it because it’s the least I can do.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, more sincere this time. “My mom had breast cancer, too. By the time I convinced her to go to the doctor, it was already in her bones.”
Rae’s lips fold in on themselves, and her eyes turn glossy. Grief should be a private thing between strangers, but I can’t bring myself to look away as a fresh wave of it washes over her. I want to witness it. To see something close to the pain I’ve known and carried for so long reflected back at me in something other than a mirror. It’s a short-lived display, lasting only a few seconds before she reigns it back in and focuses on me more intently than before.
“You’re not eating.”
“I’m not hungry.”
And I’m not. My stomach is all knots and nausea, and if I put anything other than water on it, I’m not going to make it through this makeshift meeting that’s supposed to be saving my life.
“At least have some toast,” Rae says. “It’ll help with the nausea.” She tucks a curly strand of hair behind her ear. “That’s what my mom used to tell Will, anyway. I don’t know how much good it actually does.”
Not wanting to offend her or her mom, I pick up the slice of toasted white bread that came with my meal and take a bite, chewing slowly and praying it won’t make a second appearance once I’ve choked it down. It doesn’t make my stomach feel any better, but it does make Rae smile, so I guess it’s a win.
“Did your mom help out a lot with Will’s recovery?”
It feels like a violation of his privacy to ask this question, but I can’t help myself. For some reason, I want to know, not about what getting cleaned looked like for Will, but what it looked and felt like for Rae. For someone who loves him. For someone who is just as invested in his sobriety as he is. I don’t know what that’s like. I started using after my mom died, and my dad was too busy berating me for finding yet another way to disgrace the Drake name to offer a kind or reassuring word. And then there’s my older brother, Cal, who has hated me since birth because our dad left his mom for mine and would probably rejoice in the event of my death.
“Oh, no.” Rae shakes her head. “She never let him come around me when he was using because she wanted to protect me, but I remember how he would call her crying, begging to come home, saying he was getting clean. She would always answer, always tell him she loved him, always tell him to eat and stay hydrated when he was going through withdrawal.”
Not for the first time, I’m glad my mother wasn’t alive to see me descend into addiction. It would have broken her heart.
“That must have been hard on your mom.”
Rae nods. “She blamed herself for it even though he told her it wasn’t her fault.”
“Some people are just destined to carry the burden of responsibility, no matter how many times the people they love try to lift it.”
“Do you feel responsible for your friend’s death?”
I choke down another bite of toast before answering her. “Yes.”
“Why? You didn’t kill them.”
“Her,” I say, offering up the correct pronoun.
“Her,” Rae repeats. “You didn’t kill her.”
“No, but I was supposed to keep her safe, and I failed.” I shake my head, running a hand down my face, feeling the words, the anger, the shame all bubbling up in my throat. “And it would have been different if it was something unexpected or unpredictable like cancer or some shit, but it wasn’t. It was her dumb ass ex-boyfriend who was the whole reason she hired a security team in the first place.” Rae’s eyes go wide, and I know I should stop talking, but I can’t. “He said he was going to kill her. He promised. And Legacy, she did everything she was supposed to do. She filed the police reports. She got the restraining order. She moved and upped her security, and it still wasn’t enough.”
At the mention of Legacy’s name, a flicker of recognition passes over Rae’s face. I’m not surprised she knows who Legacy is. There isn’t a single person in New Haven who hasn’t heard her voice or seen her face on the six o’clock news. She is, or was, a local celebrity, loved by everyone except for the man who couldn’t get over the fact that she decided to leave him after he started hitting her. Who made the last year of her short time on this Earth a living hell by harassing and stalking her until she had no choice but to hire the team that brought me into her life.
We became fast friends. I made her laugh, and she made me feel like I could be something other than a fuck up. I promised to teach her how to fight because she was obsessed with my MMA background, and she asked me to start a women’s self-defense gym with her so we could teach women the things she didn’t know about protecting herself when it mattered most. I wanted to say yes immediately but stopped myself because I was hesitant about leaving the stability of the firm for the uncertainty of entrepreneurship. Now, I can’t help but wonder if things would have turned out differently if I’d said yes right then and there.
“But it was your best, right? You did everything you could for her?”
My eyes burn as tears gather in the corners. Ashamed, I turn to look out the window, watching the sky start to lighten. “I didn’t save her.”
“Maybe you were never meant to,” Rae says softly. “Maybe you two were meant to know each other, to love each other for a short while, to learn whatever lessons you could only learn together, and then say goodbye. Is it tragic that she had to die in such a gruesome manner? Yes, absolutely. But is it your fault that an evil, violent man made good on a promise no one but God would be able to stop him from keeping? No.”
Never in my life have I had someone attempt to absolve me of my guilt with such conviction. And maybe it shouldn’t mean anything coming from Rae, but it does. My limbs are still heavy, and my heart is, too, but I feel something sliding underneath the edges of the weight on my chest, lifting it up and offering me just a second of relief.
A second where, for the first time since I literally washed Legacy’s blood off of my hands, I can breathe.