The tension disappeared, but the smile still didn’t come. He ran his hand over his head, then fisted it there, muttering to himself. His hair was currently medium length, shaggy again after some unfathomable impulse had him shaving it down to nothing. He didn’t look any softer now that it was growing back, though. I liked that.
“What?” he said as I continued to stare at him.
One of the things that had drawn me to photography was that the people and events framed through my camera lens were determined by my interest and discretion alone. There was no discussion about composition, no compromise on subject matter. I’d worked alone, and still had an instinctive preference for that. It was one of the hardest things to overcome upon joining the troop.
But Felix’s earlier words about balance and need made me realize something I’d been trying to ignore. I didn’t work with a camera and film and developer anymore, but I still fixated on the subjects that either interested me or mattered most. So, as I continued to stare up into Hunter’s face, I was unsurprised by the way the rest of the warehouse, the sounds and smells and sights, slid out of focus, and he sharpened like wire.
“What?” he repeated when I only continued to stare.
“I want you to let me back in.” It wasn’t a question. Coy and guarded were for people like Suzanne and Cher. That wasn’t how Hunter or I operated. We took what we wanted. Again, I liked that.
But Hunter’s face slid into a marble smoothness. I sighed and put my hand on his arm. And though he didn’t respond, he didn’t pull away either.
“I remember what you said about making a decision and not looking back, and I know I screwed up. I’m sorry. Give me a chance.”
He opened his mouth, began to shake his head from side to side.
“Please,” I said softly, stopping him cold, but I didn’t see pleading as a weakness. On the contrary, desire was also a powerful strength. Couldn’t he see that? I wondered, eyes searching his face.
He looked away, saying nothing.
I sighed. “Hunter, I don’t know how to do this. I mean, I veered off the path to normal a long time ago, and never really quite found my way back. Everyone before Ben-”
“You don’t have to tell me this.”
The thought that he might not feel the same struck dread through me. The moment felt full and weighty, like this was my chance to step into a present so vital it could finally, once and for all, put all the tragedies in my past to bed. If I didn’t go on, and quick, I’d definitely turn and walk out of there. And if I did that, I knew I’d never be back.
But I needed space to tell this story. Hunter’s physicality wasn’t just distracting, it was overwhelming. I searched for a place to sit, settling on the chair that held his shirt. Careful not to wrinkle it, I leaned back and looked at my hands. “Before last year I saw dating as a personal challenge rather than a relationship between two equals. I selected men to test my strength and determination and self-reliance. Most men instinctively ran from that-I mean, who likes feeling like an emotional litmus test?-and I’d congratulate myself when they did. I told myself they were weak. Wrong for me. Unworthy.”
I ran my index finger around the tip of my opposing thumb, the printless pads rubbing against each other with an unnerving smoothness. I still hadn’t gotten entirely used to the feeling.
“Ben was different because of our shared past, and because we’d loved each other first.” We’d shared friendship, then love. There was no going back after that. Unfortunately, though we didn’t realize it at the time, there was also no going forward.
I sighed, letting Hunter see this memory playing out in me, letting him feel it if he must. It was truth, and he should know it all. “So that’s why it took me a while to realize I didn’t know the man he’d become. The boy I’d loved a decade earlier didn’t exist anymore. Nowhere but in my own mind, anyway.”
I wondered how many relationships were like that. One person hanging on to a memory of what once was, the dream more alive than the reality had ever been…more real than the actual relationship, now wilting, unseen, on the vine.
Always one to see clearly, Hunter remained silent. I looked up at the ceiling, then realized I was doing it only to avoid his gaze. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I took what I needed from you on a night I’d been left emotionally bankrupt-and that’s not an excuse, just a fact-but mostly that I left you in the morning. That I left you at all.”
I’d made a mistake and would take it back if I could, but that was something people said when they knew they could not. So I fell silent, watched him soak in the information, his brilliant mind whirring beneath the face I was starting to crave, the olive skin I longed to touch, the mouth that curved dangerously when considering some private, dangerous secret. I was addicted, I realized. One taste of this man and I’d become a junkie.
“I’m sorry too, Joanna,” he said, and this time he was the one who looked away. “But I can’t.”
An invisible foot planted itself into my chest. I was actually surprised the air didn’t whoosh from my chest. I shook my head. “But-”
Hunter held up a hand.
I thought about knocking that hand out of the air, controlled myself and only flinched instead. “You still want me. I can feel it. I can sense it like a second heartbeat.”
“Yes.” And, suddenly, it was there. The desire I’d been looking for bloomed so round and full I felt like I could take a bite from the air, come away with a mouthful of emotion that would warm my belly…and still be ravenous for more. I thought about kissing his eyelids until they softened, and took a step forward. I’d seen them that way before. That softness, ironically, accentuated his strength.
I bit my lip, narrowing my eyes at I watched him not watching me. “But there’s something else, isn’t there? Something you want more.”
He hesitated. “Yes.”
I flinched. “Someone?”
He sighed. “Joanna.”
I didn’t look away. “Does it have to do with that callboy identity?”
“I told you. I’m no longer doing that.”
I tilted my head, studying him. So had he found her, then? Because he’d been looking for a woman, I was sure of that much. And she’d been dark-haired and dark-eyed. She’d been someone he didn’t want anyone else to know about.
I should tell Warren.
But even as the thought visited, I showed it the door. I wouldn’t. Hunter had kept the secret of my daughter-a girl destined to follow me as the troop’s Archer; one Warren still didn’t know about-and I owed him for that.
“Hey, Jo!” The voice shot across the warehouse, startling us both. I turned to find Felix motioning me from the doorway of the panic room. He looked much better, a flush in his cheeks and a familiar spark in his eye. “She wants to see you.”
I nodded and he disappeared back inside. By the time I looked back, Hunter had turned away. I hesitated, then headed for Vanessa. I couldn’t help wondering what would have occurred between Hunter and me if I’d been raised in the sanctuary too, safe from desert predators, with a knowledge of what and who I was. Would we have had an easier time forging a relationship without old griefs standing between us? Maybe not, I thought, glancing over my shoulder. We seemed destined to butt heads-one of us high when the other was low; one positive while the other nursed bitterness like an addictive brew. If only I could turn my mind from him altogether, I thought, swallowing hard.
But addictions, I knew, didn’t work that way.
There were other places we could have taken Vanessa. Micah worked as a physician at one such hospital, where supernatural fallout wouldn’t attract the attention of the mortal population. That’s where they’d first taken me to alter my looks so I could live convincingly as my sister. Yet given the disappearance of our safe zones, we couldn’t be certain the Shadows hadn’t infiltrated the hospitals as well. Besides, precautions or not, if a person showed up with Vanessa’s kind of injuries, someone was going to notice.