Page 9
8
HUNTER
I sit behind Noah, watching him do magic on the screen. I watch the once green lines turn black and then blue. He has so many different softwares that he uses all the time. For me it seems like magic, but for him they're surveillance feeds, layers of digital intrusion — all humming quietly while I pretend I give a shit. I don’t. I’m only here because it keeps my hands busy. Because if I don’t keep them busy, I’ll end up doing something stupid. Like knocking on her door. Pressing my palm against her throat just to feel her pulse race beneath it. Anything to be near Penelope.
My butterfly.
Earlier, I worked out until my arms burned, trying to sweat her out of my system. Afterward, I contemplated calling Jamie, apologizing for the fallout and using his badge all those years ago. We haven’t spoken since that night. We’re brothers. Twins. After all the shit we’ve been through we should be close, but we’re far from close. We fill in the gaps of what the other must know while we take over each other’s lives—never explaining why we did it, just patching the spaces so neither of us is lost or caught off guard.
Anyone looking on the outside would deem it as sad, we’re twins and should be close. We should finish each other's sentences and shit. But we’ve never really been two people, always one for most of our lives.
Which is why I never apologized. It just seems pointless. The words he last said to me, still echo in my mind, “I never want to fucking see you again.”
I laughed when he said it, because it felt like a joke. He sees me every time he looks in the fucking mirror. But the lines on his face, the way his lips pressed together told me he wasn’t joking. He was deadly serious.
I drink one too many protein shakes, check on the underground like I always do, as if keeping tabs on chaos is enough. It doesn’t work. It never does.
The more I try to distract myself, the more I want her. The sound she makes when she stretches. The curve of her neck when she tilts her head while reading those stupid love stories she keeps beside her bed. I tell myself I just want to protect her — but it’s a lie.
When the landlord wanted to install new smoke detectors, I made sure I dropped a flyer with my phone number with cheap rates. He just happened to see it and gave me an opportunity to do what I’ve been craving since she first moved in her apartment. I watch her, but not only from her window. I installed cameras in the open living space and the bedroom too. I watch her now like a priest watches his last sin: obsessed and unforgiven.
Noah added a tracker to her phone, a pin in her purse, when he went to the cafe one time and distracted her as she was leaving. He slipped it in and Penelope was none the wiser. I lied to myself by pretending that it was all for her safety. Another lie. It's not about keeping her away from harm, because at the end of the day, I rescued her from her aunt and the predators who wanted to kill her.
The truth is, I’m the danger.
She doesn’t know what it’s like to bleed, but I know better. I’ve seen the scars she doesn’t talk about. I’ve heard the silence she keeps between words, and somehow, she’s... light. Forgiveness, in a form I can’t touch.
I am the storm. The wreckage.
And she?
She’s the beautiful. Untouchable.
And me?
I’m just the ruin which doesn’t deserve spring.
“I’m going out!” I blurt out to Noah.
“To keep an eye on her?” I clear my throat ignoring his question. I head upstairs to get my skull mask, and baseball hat too.
It’s that time of year. The time when everyone is wearing this kinda shit. I won’t stand out like a sore fucking thumb. If anything I’ll fit right in. The streets are packed with people dressed as devils and monsters pretending it’s all just a game. Fake blood. Plastic axes. Fangs from the dollar store. No one flinches at violence tonight — not when it’s wrapped in glitter and makeup.
I walk among them, mask pulled low, baseball cap angled forward. No one looks twice. But I’m not here for tricks or candy.
I’m here for her.
My walk leads me to the diner where she works, it's packed tonight. Of course it is — it’s Halloween, and this town will take any excuse to dress up like monsters and pretend they’re not already wearing masks the other 364 days of the year.
Music hums through the glass like a heartbeat. Laughter spills into the air like smoke, thick and artificial. Everyone’s in costume — plastic fangs, glittering horns, face paint already melting under heat lamps and cheap alcohol. Even her boss, Tracey, is dressed for the occasion. She’s wearing a tight black catsuit which looks as if it’s suffocating her spirit as much as her thighs.
Tracey’s miserable, not because she isn’t smiling — she is, in a way that people do when they’ve forgotten how to mean it. She wears her smile like a mask for Halloween. But her eyes? Hollow. I have the same type of hollowness. I live with it. The difference is, I don’t pretend I’m anything else, but darkness.
Tracey was raised in this diner. Her mother used to own it — then she handed it to Tracey. Meanwhile her mother packed up and ran off to Mexico with some ex-gigolo named Dave. She didn’t even send her daughter a postcard. One living parent and not a phone call to her name, it says everything.
People like Tracey rot from the inside. The world didn’t break her. She curdled. And when Penelope started working here, I saw the way Tracey looked at her, as if Penelope was something she wanted to snap in half just to hear it break.
Penelope is young. Beautiful in a way which draws men without trying. And Tracey? She and her sidekick, Jessica dress like they’re still twenty-three and down tequila shots as if they’re on spring break, but the years are clinging to their skin like truths they won’t admit.
Men come in with girlfriends on their arms and they can’t stop looking at Penelope. I don’t blame them. She’s magnetic — the kind of pretty which hurts your chest if you look too long.
I've heard Tracey fat-shame Penelope more than once, whenever I’ve come in and tried to be part of the background like tonight. Lately, Penelope’s lost some weight, toned up. Not that she needed to — but I can see it eats at Tracey. Not just the body. The youth. The resilience. The way Penelope still dares to smile.
Penelope moves behind the till one minute, then glides across the floor the next, serving plates, her apron smudged with syrup and coffee. The place is too loud, too chaotic, and far from my scene — but tonight, I don’t give a damn. I just want to be near her.
There’s something about the way she moves — all confidence and grace on the outside, when I know damn well she’s holding herself together with duct tape and deep breaths. I see it in the way her fingers fidget when she thinks no one’s looking. I hear it in the pause she takes before answering someone with a smile.
I try to keep my distance whenever I come to the diner, by pretending I’m not fighting the urge to wrap myself around her like armor. It’s like she’s a fucking magnet and I’m made of iron — brittle, rusted, and pulled in without choice.
And then a guy with a mask on of Jason, from Friday the 13th grabs her.
Some dickhead half-drunk and reeking of sweat and bad decisions. He latches onto her arm like he owns her.
“Hey,” he slurs, grinning beneath the mask. “It’s Halloween. You can be my Harley Quinn.”
I see her try to pull away. She gives him a polite laugh, the one women use when they're trying not to get hurt. Her voice is calm, but her shoulders are tense. She's saying no, and he's pretending not to hear it.
My hand clenches around the knife in my pocket. It’s instinct, not threat — yet.
Then I hear it.
“Hazel! Stop flirting with the customers!” Tracey’s voice cuts across the diner like a whip.
My jaw tightens.
Is she fucking kidding me?
Penelope’s being harassed, and Tracey is blaming her. Because that’s what people like Tracey do — they protect the wrong men and punish the wrong women. She doesn't see Penelope as someone worth defending. She sees her as a threat. A mirror she can’t look into without cracking.
Penelope’s smile doesn’t even flicker. She just gently pries her arm free, murmurs something I can’t hear, and turns away like it’s nothing.
But it is something.
Because I see her. Every second of her pain. Every breath she swallows just to keep going. And the man in the mask?
He’s about to learn what real monsters look like.
“I told you that I will be at your table in a minute…”
“I want you on the table darling,” Jason says.
It’s enough for me to stop in and show him how he should be treating my lady, which isn’t by using his grubby fingers on her.
Something inside me cracks.
I can’t hear what he’s saying over the pulse of the music and crowd noise, but it doesn’t matter. I already know his type. I’ve killed his type before.
No warning.
No fucking second chances as my fist connects with the side of his face. Not his real face, but the mask he’s wearing and he feels the punch as he stumbles back and away from Penelope.
Everyone backs away to give me space, because they don’t want to interfere with someone like me. They can tell, I’m not the type of man to be messed with, and they’re right.
He opens his mouth to protest — I don’t give him the chance.
Another hit. This time, his mask is no longer on his face, as I see his lip spilt.
He shoves at my chest, trying to find balance, trying to push back like it’s even an option. I grab him by the shirt and drive my knee into his gut. Once. Twice. He folds with a wet gasp.
“Still want her on your table?” I growl, my voice low, hot with restraint.
He wheezes, trying to suck air, doubling over.
All eyes are on me as the guy screams for mercy. I want to rip him apart, tear him limb from limb, paint the pavement with what’s left of him. He’s curled on the ground like trash trying to beg its way out of the fire. And then—
She walks up to me.
“Please,” she says. Not just with her voice, but with her eyes — wide, afraid, pleading like she’s asking the devil for a miracle.
No one’s calling the cops. Not in this fucked-up world. They’re doing what this rotting generation always does — filming it. Documenting trauma for views. Catching my rage in high-def like they’re watching a movie.
I feel like Hades, standing in the flames of my own wrath, ready to take her hand and drag her into my underworld. But she doesn’t belong there — not yet. The way she’s looking at me? She doesn’t understand violence, not the kind which lives in me. She’s only known as a survivor. And my world... my world would ruin her. Break her in ways no one can fix.
And still, something deep, animal, wrong in me whispers she was never meant for the light. If she was, her aunt wouldn’t have fed her to wolves in human skin. So why is she begging me not to end this man? Why isn’t she screaming for blood?
He could be one of them — one of the ones who touched her.
I shut my eyes and breathe her in, steadying the violence inside me.
I want to claim her. Drag her down with me. Make her mine in a place where nothing good survives. But instead, I walk away. I don’t threaten the prick on the floor. I don’t promise him the slow death he deserves.
She’s watching me.
She thinks we’re strangers.
She doesn’t know I’m the one who shot her aunt.
She doesn’t know I’m the one who set her free.
I walk out, unhurried. Controlled.
Because I’ll have her in time.
But tonight?
Tonight, I’ve got another predator to destroy.
And I’m going to enjoy every fucking second of it.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9 (Reading here)
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44