by Chloe Walsh
"Maybe that's a good thing," I offered gently. "Maybe it's better if you don’t?"
"Maybe," she replied quietly. She was quiet then for the longest moment, seemingly lost in her thoughts, before she finally whispered, "Hope I have something I need to show you." As silent as a ghost, Teagan stood up, tightened her white bathrobe around her waist, and walked over to the vanity unit surrounding a pair of chrome sinks. I watched as she reached into a drawer and retrieved a long rectangular stick before returning. She thrust the stick in my hands and sat back down, never saying a word.
Confusion filled me until I looked down and realized what I was looking at. "Oh my god!" Two pink lines formed the positive result of the pregnancy test I was holding. "Congratulations!"
"Yeah." Teagan smiled, but I could see the anxiety circling her eyes. "There's a dozen more in that drawer. Same result."
"How long have you known?" I asked, still staring down at the test in my hand.
"I was late," she whispered, "so I took a test a couple of days ago." She ran a hand through her hair and exhaled a shaky breath. "And every day since. All positive."
"What does Noah think?"
"I haven't told him yet."
"Why not?"
"Because he was busy with his fight and I didn’t want to distract him," she choked out. "But mostly because if I lose this one, I don’t think I can handle seeing that look on his face again. I don’t think I can watch that disappointed look twice in one lifetime, Hope."
"That is not going to happen again," I vowed passionately.
"Won't it?" Teagan shot back, voice void of all emotion. "Then why am I bleeding?"
Oh god.
No. No. No. No.
"Much?" I squeezed out.
"A little," she choked out. "But enough to make me believe it's gone."
"Okay, Teagan, we have to tell Noah." Scrambling to my feet with the test still firmly clutched in one hand, I hurried to the bathroom door.
"I can't go back out there," she blurted out. "I don’t want the rest of them to know."
"Okay," I coaxed. "That's fine. I'll get Noah for you."
"I'm scared, Hope," she called out. "I'm just…I can't go through…that again."
"You won't."
"Do you promise?" she asked, and she looked so young and vulnerable in that moment that my heart cracked clean open. She wasn’t a murderer. Not to me. She was just Teagan.
"Yeah, Teegs, I promise," I replied, making a promise to my friend something I wasn’t entirely sure I could keep.
When I slipped out of the bathroom, I bumped into an exhausted looking Max in the hallway.
"Oh, Max, thank god. I need to talk to you about –" I began to say, but he quickly silenced me with a weary shake of his head.
"Please don’t say another word, Hope. I don’t think I can handle another crisis tonight."
"But –"
"I mean it," Max interrupted, all but biting my head off. "There's a kitchen downstairs with two very capable men inside it – one of which is mobile. Go and hound them with your troubles. I've seen and done things tonight that question everything I believe in, not to mention jeopardizing my medical license. So please, if you don’t mind, and for the sake of what's left of my sanity, I've had quite enough for one night." Max sighed heavily once more before wishing me farewell and disappearing down the staircase.
Well, he was as sociable as always…
Rushing down the staircase, I barreled through the foyer and into the kitchen. Noah and Hunter were both standing at the kitchen island.
"It needs to be now," Noah was saying as he leaned against the counter, shirtless and all bandaged up. "Tonight." Still clad in a pair of blood stained jeans, Noah held a tumbler of amber liquid in his hand as he spoke in a low voice, "Can't leave it up to G and his pricks to clean this up." He tipped the glass to his lips and tossed the whiskey down the back of his throat. "Not when she's involved. Don’t have beef with the man, but I'm sure as fuck not putting her future in his hands." Slamming the glass back down on the counter, Noah let out a hiss before saying, "This can't fall back on her, man. I need a guaran-damn-tee she's in the clear."
"I'll handle it," Hunter, who was zipping up his black jacket, announced before pulling a black beanie cap over his head. "Stay here and take care of your woman. I've got this."
"I can't put this on you, Lucky –" Noah began to say, but I chose this moment to burst in, not caring that I was interrupting what I knew had to be a serious conversation.
"You need to go talk to Teagan," I announced. Both men swung around to face me, but I kept my focus on Noah. "Seriously," I added, pointing with my thumb to the kitchen door behind me. "Like, right now."
Noah took one look at my face before darting out of the room, calling out, "Thorn! You okay, baby?" moving faster than any man with his injuries should have been able to.
When Noah had disappeared from the room in search of his wife, Hunter turned his attention to me. "Hope," he acknowledged with a small smile before grabbing a set of car keys off the counter and slipping past me. "I'll be seeing you."
"Where are you going?" I demanded as I chased after him.
"I've got some business to attend to," he replied as he yanked open the front door and stepped outside into the night.
I knew exactly what business Hunter was talking about and it wasn’t the 9-5 type. I wasn’t a stupid woman. I knew that in order to survive an eleven-year prison sentence, a man would have to get his hands bloody. He was barely more than a child when he was locked away all those years ago – a crime of passion, they called it. Romanticizing the fact that he had taken the life of his lover's killer. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together and come up with the very real fact that Hunter Casarazzi left that prison with more blood on his hands than when he walked in there at eighteen. It should have made me want to run. And it did. Problem was, I wanted to run to him, not away from him. "Wait!" I called out, following him out into the darkness. "You're not seriously going on your own?"
Turning back to face me, Hunter tilted his head to one side and looked at me peculiarly. "Are you… gasp! Worried about me?" Grinning, he added, "There's no need, sweetheart. I've been cleaning up his shit for years now. It's part of my job description."
"But you can't," I reaffirmed, ignoring his bullshit sarcasm. "I'm serious. I won't let you."
"You won't let me," he mused, chewing the thought around all while trying to keep a straight face. "What are you proposing?"
He was going back to the Ring of Fire.
To face god knows what.
And he was going alone.
For some strange reason this horrified me.
I was going to regret this until my dying day. I knew I was. But still, I said, "I come with you."
"You're already in too deep, HC," Hunter replied as he unlocked Noah's black Lexus and swung open the driver's side door. His tone was serious, his eyes full of warning, as he said, "Turn back now, sweetheart."
Of course Hunter was right. A million-freaking percent right. I was in too deep and needed to turn back.
But what had happened tonight to my best friend in the world had changed something inside of me.
What had happened to my uncle had changed me.
I was done being a spectator on the sidelines, watching helplessly as the people I loved most in the world were tortured and crucified. I was done with doing nothing!
Something inside of the darkest part of my mind had switched on, and I was beginning to realize that, like my father and uncle, I was willing to stoop to any level to protect the ones I loved.
"You're right," I agreed, feet still moving towards the car he had just climbed into – towards the darkness I knew there was no escape from. Stopping outside the passenger door, I pulled the door open and said, "But I'm still coming with you."
Chapter Six
HOPE
I set fire to a car tonight.
Not just any car.
Noah's Lex
us.
I also aided and abetted a convicted felon by driving his truck to the scene of a murder crime, and then for good measure, I waited for him in said truck while he met with some very unscrupulous looking men and dealt with the horrifically unappealing task of making half a dozen or so dead bodies disappear.
In a sick and twisted way, tonight's events were like a life lesson in science 101. I had learned more about the human anatomy tonight than I had in four years of high school biology. I had also learned a great deal about chemistry and the unusual methods and concoctions of acid and other substances required in order to make a human body disappear.
I could still smell the salt and smoke and acid. I could still taste the stench of death and deception. It was scorched inside of me, and I had a feeling that if I looked in the mirror tonight, I wouldn’t recognize the woman staring back at me.
I spent eight years on the outskirts of this world, watching the drama unfold. This underworld, the one Noah and Teagan had unwittingly exposed me to, was something I now craved.
"Tired?" Hunter asked when we were parked outside the house several hours later. He killed the engine and exhaled a heavy sigh before turning to look at me.
Dawn was breaking, bringing with it a brand-new day, and even though I hadn’t slept a wink and should have been exhausted, I was thrumming with a weird, almost addictive buzzing energy.
"Oddly enough, I'm wide awake." I turned sideways in my seat and stared at him. He looked worn out. Deep shadows had settled under his eyes and he seemed to have aged in a matter of hours. Like a heavy weight had settled on top of his already laden down shoulders. "But you look shattered."
Hunter cast a glance at me and smiled before pulling a packet of cigarettes out of his jeans pocket and lighting up. "Never gets easier." He inhaled a deep drag and seemed to hold it in his lungs for an abnormally long amount of time before finally exhaling the cloud of smoke through his nose. The move should have disgusted me, but it evoked the opposite reaction from my body. My heart hammered against my ribcage as I drank in the sight of him. It didn’t make any sense – the way I felt when I was around him was the opposite of anything I had ever experienced.
The man sitting next to me had disgusting habits. He smoked excessively and drank without thought for his liver. He cussed like a sailor. He laughed at every inappropriate moment imaginably possible. He flirted with everything with a vagina and a pulse and he taunted the hell out of me. He was who he was and he made no apologies for it. The man was the polar opposite of everything I had ever known and I hated him for making me like that.
"What you did tonight?" Hunter turned to face me. "Helping me? That was survival." His blue eyes scorched me as he spoke. "You get that, right?"
I nodded slowly.
I did.
I got it.
I didn’t know what kind of a person that made me, but I didn’t feel any guilt for my actions. Like Hunter, I had made a decision to protect two of the most important people in my life, and I could never regret that. "Do you?"
Hunter's brow furrowed as he looked at me with a peculiar expression before taking another pull from his smoke. He never answered me though; he just continued to stare – right into my freaking soul.
"What?" I asked, blushing from the heat of his stare.
"Nothing," he replied in an oddly amused tone, "nothing at all," before adding, "I'm gonna need your clothes."
My eyes widened. "What– like, right now?" My hand automatically moved to the hem of my sweater as I looked around at our surroundings. "Here?"
He grinned and flicked his cigarette butt out his window. "I was going to suggest you go inside to change, but here sounds like more fun."
"Funny," I shot back with a glare, not liking the way my heart had suddenly began to race at the prospect of getting naked in a car with this man. After what I'd seen Hunter do tonight, the thought should have sickened me.
It didn’t.
He was staring at me in such an intimate way that in this moment, I felt completely naked and exposed to him. It was like he was staring into the darkest part of my soul, and liking what he saw. Hunter Casarazzi unnerved me and he knew it. Memories of him restocking my candy stash when we both lived at South Peak Road flooded my mind and I smiled fondly at the countless late-night chats we'd shared…
He didn’t believe in ghosts. I did. He watched crappy sitcoms with me, even though I knew he hated it. He once said there was something lonely about me. He had these ice blue eyes that, when you looked deeply enough, showed you a glimpse of his soul.
Memories of him kissing me bombarded me. My lips tingled from the raw memory of his mouth on mine, his hands on my body, evoking more sensations and feelings from me than I had ever felt before.
It was at that very moment my phone began to ring in my pocket, breaking the moment, and clearing my thoughts of all prior notions.
Reaching into my jacket pocket, I retrieved my cell and, seeing Jordan's name flashing on the screen, I pressed accept without hesitation.
"Jordan," I greeted, tone hushed, as I adjusted myself so that I was once again facing forward in my seat. "Are you okay?" I cast a sneaky glance in Hunter's direction, but he wasn’t looking at me anymore. His jaw was clenched, his attention focused straight ahead, as he sparked up another cigarette and took a drag.
"I wasn’t sure if you'd be up yet or not when I called." His warm voice filled my ears, a stark contrast to what I'd done tonight. Suddenly, I felt cold to the bone. "Did I wake you?"
"Um, no," I muttered, chewing on what was left of my nails. "You didn’t wake me." I cast another nervous glance to Hunter. This time he did look back at me. His blue eyes burned straight through me and the subtle shake of his head only reaffirmed what I had already known. I could never tell Jordan about what happened tonight. I could never tell a soul.
"So, is she okay?"
"Huh?"
"Teagan," Jordan affirmed. "Is she okay?"
"Oh yeah, she's fine!" I lied. "You were right. I was worrying about nothing."
Jordan was quiet for the longest time before saying, "You didn’t come back."
"That's because I've been writing," I heard myself say, never taking my eyes off Hunter, and the bare faced lie came out so naturally that it surprised the hell out of me. "Yeah, when I realized everything was okay, I just went up to my room and started on a new chapter in my latest WIP."
"You've been writing?" came his response, tone surprised, and if I was being honest, a little bit skeptical. "All night? Hope, it's like six-thirty in the morning."
I cringed in shame. "I, ah, must have lost track of time and wrote through the night." Hunter nodded in what seemed like approval before resuming his front window staring. "Did you want something?" I asked and immediately hated the way that had come out and sounded.
"I start a twelve-hour shift at eight," Jordan replied, tone puzzled. "Do you want me to come and pick you up first and grab some breakfast?"
"No!" I blurted out before quickly saving myself by saying, "I need to get this scene nailed down. It's really important to the story and if I stop now I'll lose my train of thought." I wasn’t sure what scared me more; the lies that were coming out of my mouth, or how easy it was for me. "I'll call you later… when I get this chapter nailed down, 'kay?"
He was silent for the longest time before saying, "Hope? If you're having second thoughts it's okay–"
"I'm not, I swear," I interrupted, desperate to end this phone call – and the lies. "I just really need to work. I'll call you later okay?"
"Yeah, okay," he replied, voice quiet. "I love you."
"I love you," I whispered, mentally flinching at how uncomfortable this entire situation was. "Bye," I added before hanging up and dropping my phone down on my jean clad lap.
"Husband cracking the whip already?" Hunter taunted, sporting that cocky smirk that I pretended I hated but secretly loved. "Gotta give it to the guy; he moves fast." His blue eyes landed on mine, making me feel a million
different unwelcome sensations. I shivered involuntarily under the heat of his stare. "What's he expecting? You at home waiting for him with his slippers and a hot meal?"
"Stop it," I snapped before blanching when I realized what he'd just said. I was pretty sure I'd said that exact same sarcastic thing to Jordan a long time ago. Weird. "I'm back with Jordan," I added, feeling the need to justify my actions but not knowing why. "We're giving it another shot."
"I gathered that," Hunter replied in an amused tone before swinging his truck door open and jumping out. "But here's a friendly forewarning," he added with a cocky smirk. "It won't last," he finished before closing the door and walking away.
"What– now just wait a damn minute!" Throwing my door open, I practically fell out of the truck and chased after him. "It will last!" I hissed, finally reaching him just as he turned his key in the front door. "It's for good this time."
"This time," Hunter snorted. "Whatever you say, sweetheart."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means that you are too much woman to ever be fully satisfied with a man like him." He turned his key in the door, unlocking it before pushing it open. "Oh, and don’t forget, I need your clothes before you run home to lover boy."
"A man like him?" I spat, feeling both wounded and defensive by his offhanded comment and even worse tone. "What the hell does that mean – hey, don't walk away from me," I hissed when he moved to walk away. Grabbing his arm, I yanked him backwards. "Finish what you started, Hunter."
"What do you want me to say, Hope?" Hunter chuckled, swinging around to face me with that cocky smirk still etched on his face.
"What did you mean by that 'too much woman' comment?" I demanded.
"I meant exactly what I said," Hunter shot back, eyes locked on mine, daring me to look away. "You might fool him, and everyone else in your life, with that 'I'm daddy's little perfect angel' bullshit façade you hide behind, but I see right through you, Hope Carter. I always have."
