Page 9 of Hunted Mate (Stalked Mates #1)

He gets me into the front seat of a vehicle.

A van, I think? Weird. I expected him to be a sedan man.

Anyway. I’m in a van now, and I’m drunk.

And he’s putting the seatbelt on me, which I can do for myself, or at least I used to be able to do that.

My fingers feel like they’re someone else’s fingers.

Oh, wait. They are. They’re his. That explains a lot, actually.

“You’re a cute drunk,” he says.

“You’re a fucking asshole, but I can’t remember why,” I reply.

He’s a bad man. He did a bad thing. But there was another man, and he did another bad thing, and there’s not really any way to find good men.

So I wonder if everybody just has bad men, but they either don’t know it, or they do. My dad was a good man, but he died.

“Keep your head up,” he says, reaching over, two fingers under my chin, and tipping my head back against the headrest. I didn’t even realize my head was dropping forward. I thought my lap was just really cool.

The world is going around and around, and suddenly I’m home. Not sure how that happened.

Gray helps me into my house. He fishes my keys out of my purse and he unlocks the door and he pours me indoors. My hands and knees find the floor with unerring accuracy.

“Hey, come here,” he says, urging me up. “I’m going to make some coffee. You need to sober up a little before I leave you alone. I’m not sure you’re safe.”

“ I’m not sure you’re safe,” I echo in response.

He seats me on a couch and goes to the kitchen to start making my beverage. I don’t need coffee. I need answers. I reach for my laptop, half open on the table in front of me. I pick it up, but it stays on the table. I pick it up. Wait. What am I doing?

I put it down on the floor.

Gray comes back. Does he want to talk to me about possibly upping the marketing budget? My brain keeps switching between thinking I am at work and knowing that I am at home.

“Drink this,” he says, putting a cup of dense black liquid in front of me. It looks and smells like the void.

“Why are you here?”

“Well, I like to keep an eye on you,” he says. “I can’t for much longer. You’re going to have to stop drinking. You need a clear head. And a new thing to do.”

I reach for the beverage. But it’s hot. Too hot.

“Drink some.”

“I need milk.”

“You don’t have any.”

“But I need it.”

“I added some water.”

“Oh, well, that’s okay. Is it mashed potato?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just add water?”

This is good banter. I am a funny and witty person. I know this because I am making myself giggle. He’s not getting the joke, but that’s because he’s not as funny as I am.

“I’m going to get you to bed,” he says. “You’re exhausted.”

“I’m not tired,” I say as my eyes roll back in my head.

“You’re dangerously exhausted, and drunk.”

“I’m getting more sober by the moment.”

“I know that, but I’m putting you to bed regardless. Come on.”

He helps me up from the couch, sniffs, and shakes his head.

“You’re dirty as hell,” he says. “You need to have a shower.”

“Don’t want a shower.”

“I’m not putting you into bed like this. You’re dirty, baby.”

He takes me to the bedroom and starts undressing me. It’s not like when the other man was pawing at me, it doesn’t feel greedy and cruel and nasty. It feels like being made vulnerable. He can’t see me. I won’t let him.

I wriggle out of his grasp and find the floor again. It’s cooler here. Nicer. Very stable and solid.

“You are such a little brat,” he growls, coming after me.

You can’t hide on the floor. Floor is for everybody. Everybody can see and touch floor. If you want to hide, you need wall.

He starts taking the shirt off me. And I remember. The thing. He can’t see the thing.

“No!”

He pulls my shirt off my shoulders, thinking I am just being annoying, and suddenly it is all too late.

He stops.

And stares.

I know what he is looking at. A big, ugly scar that runs over my left shoulder, down my back and a little way down my front. It took over a hundred stitches to put me back together at the time, and it was not a neat wound. It was ragged flesh, torn up.

“Who did this to you?”

I’m suddenly very sober. I feel as clear as I have ever been. Still can’t exactly remember what the fuck I am mad about with him, but right now I know what he did isn’t okay. He’s seen my ugliness. He’s seen the thing that’s wrong with me. He feels like he knows me now. He doesn’t.

“Give me my fucking shirt back.”

He releases his grip on it, and I pull it back on over my shoulders.

“Calista. What happened?”

“None of your fucking business.”

But now I can’t stop thinking about it. Now my mind is back so many years I can barely keep count of them all. My alcohol-addled brain knows what happened, can’t hide it like it usually does. My defenses are down, and there’s a…

Ten years ago…

There’s a fire in the distance.

I avoid it out of instinct.

My parents are dead.

The fires of home are not for me. I’m thirteen years old, and the two people I love most in the world have evaporated into the sky.

There’s been a funeral, but it was for two empty boxes because nothing of them was ever found.

We buried wreckage. They think I don’t know because they didn’t sit me down, look me in the face, and tell me.

But I still have the ears of a child. The ones that everyone thinks don’t work, but that hear absolutely everything.

They’ve taken me on a camping trip to try to get my mind off the dying.

My extended family are at a house in the woods.

Aunts, uncles, cousins, all from my father’s side.

My mother didn’t have any siblings. My father had two brothers, both older than him.

They’ve got two sons each, also both older than me.

They want to ride trail bikes. They don’t care about the deaths, or the funeral, or me.

I’m the unnecessary appendage, the walking pay packet funding their vacation.

I’ve slipped away after dinner. Nobody will come looking for me. Nobody wants to interact with the sad little girl anyway. I’m depressing to them. My father’s brothers are doing their best to drink away his memory. One day, I’ll be able to try that sort of thing. For now, all I have is raw grief.

I walk into the woods, not really knowing where I am going, one foot after the other like any waif or stray in a fairytale.

There’s a reason children who are lost go to the wilds, I think.

I don’t know it, but I feel drawn to the trees and the dark and the prospect of being away from all the pain that the world has suddenly unloaded on me and left me to bear.

I drop my phone somewhere along the way. I do not need it anymore. I’m not going to be able to call home, or get a text from my mom reminding me that I need to be back for a dress fitting for the Ladies of Constitution gala. That’s the last message she sent me. The last message she’ll ever send me.

The moss and gentle lights of late season fireflies feel more like safety to me now.

I don’t want to go back home, to the big house that was full of them, and where I was a version of me I already know I will never be again.

Thirteen is a magical age, I’ve been told.

I’m not a little kid anymore, but I’ve not been inducted into adulthood either.

I understand bits and pieces, some things entirely, and other things not at all.

One of the things I know for certain is that the person I was died with my parents, and the person who I will be is going to come out of this forest.

I start to get tired, and hungry. I start to regret walking away from the fire lit by my uncle to try to cheer me and the rest of the family up.

Maybe they’re not as bad as I think. Maybe they think I just need some time away from structure and society.

They think I need to heal out here in the wilderness.

Really, they just don’t want more pictures taken of me looking sad, and those pictures being sold in magazines who are bought by adults who like to imagine how sad it must be to be me.

There’s something wrong with almost all adults, I think.

And now there’s something wrong with me.

In the dark of the forested night, I hear new sounds of civilization. I hear people talking, laughing, some of them are singing. I assume I’ve looped around back to the house somehow.

But I haven’t.

I don’t find a large, manicured lawn in the clearing. Instead, I find a rough opening and a circle of trees and a fire burning in the middle of a group of people.

I’ve found some other campers. I hope they’re nice. I’m starting to get very, very hungry. So I go toward the fire, but not all at once. First, I make out what’s going on over there. I know how it all works. You can’t just trust people. You have to be smart. You have to look before you leap.

I hang back in the bushes. The fire is blowing toward me, bringing smoke and embers and I suppose, their scent.

I can smell a certain amount of people smells.

Alcohol. People always smell like alcohol.

And then there’s other smells too. Like dogs, maybe.

I would like to pet a dog. I would like to talk to some people who aren’t my family, people who look at me with sad faces and tell me what a trooper I am.

I watch dark silhouettes of very tall people walking around the fire.

They’re much more active than most people are at things like these.

Usually adults sit down and talk about the game, or the lawn, or the merger.

I don’t think these people are into lawns or games or mergers. Their voices are rougher.

There’s a man standing between me and the fire. He’s tall, he looks strong, and he has long hair. He throws back his head and howls, making a sound like a wolf. The sound sends a feeling of something like horror through me because it’s not a sound that should come from a man.