Page 175 of Hurt

His hands were shaking, and he wasn’t looking at Kurt. “Normal? You think I’m normal?” He laughed, a dry husky rasp that sent chills down Kurt’s back. “This morning, I killed three men, and the whole time I thought about what I was going to make for dinner. I shopped for bell peppers with their blood under my fingernails.”

He lifted his face, and there was a feral glint in his eyes. An intensity that went so far beyond anything Kurt had ever seen before.

“Don’t ever mistake me for someone who is deserving, Kurt. I am not that guy.” His voice was strained from the effort of keeping it low and even. “You are the only thing I want, and I don’t give a damn whether I deserve you or not.”

Grant stepped over the shattered glass with his bare feet. He didn’t stumble or pause. His fiery gaze never left Kurt. It pinned him to the floor with something that should have scared him, but it didn’t.

Nothing Grant did truly scared him.

“I will wait as long as it takes, Wanyin. Things like sex are worldly and are nothing in comparison to the way I feel for you.”

Kurt looked down as the blood from Grant’s feet spread out across the floor. It coated the little glass shards and made them look like little Maraschino Cherries swirling around in a mason jar.

He didn’t reach out and touch him, but it felt like he was. The look in his eyes was enough to envelop Kurt. An angry sincerity radiating out of those hazel eyes that normally held such softness. It did all sorts of things to Kurt that he didn’t understand.

He didn’t understand any of it.

But he knew he liked it.

Grant drummed his fingers on the wheel and settled back into the seat. His car zipped along the mostly empty two-lane road heading north. The majority of the drive had been spent on the highway—the views were boring, and he found his mind drifting, eyelids getting heavier until he had to shake himself awake. But now they had exited, and the landscape was turning rural. Far from the acrid desert they were used to, the region was getting mountainous and wetter. The lake country.

A little oasis amongst the hot flatlands of the desert. Nestled in a natural depression in the earth, to get to it, you had to traverse through thick pine forests and hairpin switchbacks that put even the most competent driver on edge. Grant enjoyed the challenge, and he looked out over the forests with excitement. Not as green as it was during the summer, the vestiges of winter had sucked the color from the land. Still, it had a cold sort of severity that he liked.

Kurt was asleep in the passenger seat. Forehead resting on the window and arms crossed against the winter chill, he was tucked down into his jacket with just the upper part of his face peeking out. He fell asleep the moment the car hit the highway. Grant had been stealing glances at him as he snuffled and wriggled in the seat, trying to find the comfiest position.

The urge to take pictures of him was incredibly strong. He was beginning to understand why pet owners had hundreds of pictures of their sleeping pets.

Things between them had been strained since their fight in the kitchen. Kurt hadn’t said anything and had even tended to the cut on his foot, but there was a tension that had not been there before. Grant had made a mistake.

He had been completely helpless as he watched Kurt shut down. A look of terror had come over his face and then he stopped breathing. Shaking and shuddering, clasping at his throat to claw at things Grant couldn’t protect him from. To see that and be able to do nothing? It destroyed Grant. Just like every time he heard Kurt wake up from his nightmares—wretchedly sobbing with sweat soaking through the sheets. He clung to himself like his arms were the only thing that could hold him together.

Grant had to listen to that and do nothing. Approaching him would make it worse. His voice would cut through Kurt like a knife. Cutting him with his concern. It was agony. A physical pain in his chest that he couldn’t ease.

To see all that, to want nothing more than to give Kurt reprieve, just a little. Just for a moment. Then to hear him suggest Grant should find someone else? As if he could just throw him away like he was nothing.

Like he wasn’t the axis Grant revolved around.

It had awoken something ugly in Grant. Something he didn’t think existed. A beast that only broke free when it came to Kurt.

He regretted it, and this trip was his attempt to fix it.

Whether it would work or not was up for some debate. He had no idea how Kurt would react, but he had to try.

Cutting the wheel, he turned onto a small road. At one point, it was paved, but time had seen the dirt and weeds take it back. His sedan bumped over the holes, and Kurt finally woke up.

Emerging from his hoodie cocoon he blinked up blearily. The gray sky was pressing down on them and there was a chill in the car despite the heater. Sitting forward, he looked out the windshield.

“This is…” he breathed shakily.

“Yeah.”

Kurt didn’t say anything else. His lips were pressed together into a thin line.

Grant parked the car in the drive and cut the ignition. He watched Kurt out of his peripheral, unsure what to do. Finally, he dropped the keys in the cupholder and stepped out.

Tightening his jacket around him he looked up at the house.

The years had not been kind to it. Vacant for the last ten years, it had fallen into disrepair. Once a proud home, it was crumbling in places. The damp air off the lake had rotted the roof and the railing around the porch had fallen into the overgrown bushes. Someone had tried to board the windows up, but the boards had come loose and most of the windows were shattered. Big ugly jagged wounds in the face of the structure.