Page 13 of Hunt Me (The Skulls #1)

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Fauna

‘I t hurts, doesn’t it,’ my voice fills with emotion as I speak, and I don’t take my attention from my bat.

The crack is getting bigger now.

‘What does?’ Ruaridh asks.

‘Realising that sometimes your plans, no matter how well thought out you think they are, can be destroyed by another person. Sometimes your life can be ruined by one wrong move or someone else’s well calculated one.’

My admission surprises him, I see it in how his eyes widen.

I’ve been studying his expressions, how his right dimple will show ever so slightly when he is amused with himself or how a line will appear between his eyebrows when he is concentrating, thinking of how best to act next.

The whiskey I sip no longer has much of a taste to it, which is probably a sign that I should have stopped drinking once the sensation changed, but I haven’t. I need this; I have needed it for a long time.

It wasn’t my most light-hearted statement of the night, the amount of whiskey I’ve consumed bringing on my darker thoughts, the ones I usually keep hidden.

I should stop, shut up and not let him know anything more but the pain in my chest, the thick feeling that has been lodged at the back of my throat for months, and the constant pressure behind my eyes has me so exhausted I don’t care anymore.

I don’t care if this ruthless monster hears about how fucked up I feel because what difference will it make.

I’m already on the brink of breaking.

Maybe me being here and choosing to stay with him is my subconscious’s secret wish for something to happen.

That inside I’m begging him to give me an out, to take me away from all the pain this world has shown me.

But no matter how much I could ever really want that, dream of it, I will never be able to let it happen.

I may put myself in dangerous situations but I can’t abandon the girls.

I can’t leave Isla to give birth on her own and I will certainly not be abandoning her in such a vulnerable time.

‘Aye,’ Ruaridh sighs, gulping whiskey himself.

His Scottish accent becoming thicker the drunker he gets.

‘The world’s a fucked up place, but that, what you just said, has always been the case.

The apocalypse, the virus didnae create that form of pain and disappointment.

It existed long before the world changed.

And we adapted and lived through it when it happened to us, just like we do now. ’

I watch him carefully through my hazy vision. The way he speaks with such certainty is gripping. He really believes what he is telling me. To keep going we need to keep adapting and pushing through.

‘I don’t know how much strength I have left to do that,’ I reluctantly admit, looking into the glass in my hand and watching the amber liquid swirling below inside its crystal container.

Ruaridh’s gaze is hard, I can feel it penetrating my skin. It feels almost as if he is trying to peel back each layer there is of me. It is as if he is trying to understand every thought I have and inspect any secret I keep. It is as if he wants to hold everything I keep near.

The pressure behind my eyes grows, and I look down to where my nails scrape against the patterned crystal. There is dirt underneath them, and some lines where the crinkles in my skin are cracked with dryness.

Tattooed hands pull the tumbler out of my grip, and the impurities of my own hands are covered by the perfect lines that adorn the Skull’s hands.

Intricate details of Ruaridh’s tattoos work together to create art that is so beautiful it’s hard to believe it must have been created during a time of such chaos.

He doesn’t look old enough for them to have been done before the outbreak, or if they were done, then I would seriously question how he’d managed to find someone so good that would tattoo a kid, not to mention where he found the money for such artwork.

I don’t ever remember such big tattoos being cheap.

Ruaridh’s hold is kind. ‘Why don’t you let someone else be the strength for a little while?’

‘You don’t understand,’ I croak. There is no one, the girls are closer to breaking than I am.

We have always been a strong group. We looked out for one another and made sure that we held each other up.

But the journey up here was painful before it even began.

‘The further we walked, the harder it got. Then it just … kept getting harder. We’d laugh so much and at anything really.

It has kept us going, we have kept us going but it’s different now. ’

And none of us know what to do.

‘How is it different now?’ Ruaridh asks as his thumb lazily strokes circles across my palm.

The feeling soothes me, and I feel my breathing begin to settle.

‘It’s been a hard winter. It felt lonelier this year for some reason. Do you ever feel like that? That so many people surround you, people that you love, but you’ve never felt so alone?’

Sneaking a peak, I see the admission on his face. He understands what I mean, he’s at least felt it at some point if not recently.

‘It’s a mind fuck.’

Ruaridh snorts in agreement.

‘Like one minute, you are literally all alone talking to yourself and everything, and then the next you are in a camp surrounded by people, so many people that make you want to be alone. Yeah, a lot of that was to do with the creeps in the camp, but …’

‘But?’ Ruaridh prompts.

‘Nothing, it doesn’t matter.’

‘You can tell me. I promise it’s safe with me.’

I’m not sure what it is but I want to tell him. Maybe it’s the knowledge that he is ruthless himself and that his words feel authentic because how can someone judge another person for something they have done themselves.

‘I love my group with all my heart, and I would never wish them away, but every now and then, on a particularly bad day, I’ll wonder if it all would be easier if I was on my own, not having the crushing pressure of making sure everyone is okay.

Worry so strong that I feel like there is always a boot on my neck cutting off my air, and one day that boot will stop me from getting to them, stop me from saving them and it's… it’s killing me.

’ I tap my chest, ‘it feels like I’m slowly dying. ’

Strong arms embrace me, cuddling me close to Ruaridh’s t-shirt clad chest and I ignore all other smells but the familiar woodsy scent I smelt earlier inside his mask. The one that reminds me so much of home.

A sob bubbles from inside of my chest, my cheeks wet with tears I did not know I was crying.

‘Shh, baby. It’s going to be okay, I promise.’ Ruaridh whispers into my ear, his breath warm against my cold tear-stained cheeks as he rocks my body back and forth.

Tired from today's events and my outburst of emotion, I give in to Ruaridh’s attempts to soothe me.

I allow myself just this once to relax into the rocking motion he creates between his body and mine.

I focus my entire attention on the patterns his finger draws across my shoulders, the feeling it leaves behind, and which areas I enjoy the most.

My tears eventually begin to dry up, and I allow my tired eyelids to close, exhaustion and alcohol pulling me into the darkness.

‘You can have my strength, Fauna. You can take it all, baby. I can hold us both up and any others you need me to. Just hold on enough to let me show you.’