“I fucking like it. I can’t explain it. I guess I’m just fucking bad. I’m a bad seed right down to my fucking core and I just landed in the right family to exploit that.”
She was crying, trying to pretend it all wasn’t true. I could tell she wanted to go back to ten minutes ago when we were lying on the car, covered in sweat, stuck in a post orgasmic daydream, but there was no going back. This was where we were, and where we always would be. She had known I was bad news. Now she understood just how bad.
Then she lifted her head and wiped her eyes, suddenly seeming more composed than she had been seconds ago.
“Okay. Fine. So, you’re the devil on earth. The only question I have is this. If you’re so bad, and if your family is so bad, then why are they trying to kill you? Could you have possibly done something good that upset them, Hunter?”
Smart fucking girl. You’re a real smart fucking girl, Kelly.
I sat there on the car and let her words sink in for a moment.
“Well? What did you do, Hunter? What did you do to make your father want to track you down and kill you?”
“I fucked him over. I fucked the prick over like he had been fucking me over since the day the bastard brought me home.”
Then I told her, not sparing any gory detail, about the night that had sent me on the road from Boston. The night that changed my life. The night that brought me to Stone Peak and had me spilling my guts to the most beautiful woman I had ever set eyes on in my whole goddamned life. The girl who was now as much a part of me as any low down, dirty fucking thing I had ever done.
Chapter 34
Kelly
AS HUNTER LAID OUT THE details of his life for me, I felt a sick feeling growing in my stomach. I had never thought such things, let alone heard someone talk about them in the first person. He spoke about them like they were just something that he did, like grocery shopping or going to work in the morning. He calmly talked about hurting people, torturing them, and murdering them, like they were the same as him changing the battery in my car. Something he could just choose to do for money. I felt dizzy. I didn’t want any of it to be true, but I knew it was. What made me really sick though, wasn’t just the fact that he did those things, but the fact that a part of me had always known this was the truth. From the moment he walked into the diner, I knew there was a dark power that he possessed deep inside. He had tried to cover it up, but somehow I saw it and, for whatever reason, that power had a hold on me. At the same time, even as he told me every disgusting detail about the night he killed someone and drove off with his father’s dirty money, I saw a layer to him that he couldn’t even see. He was a bad man who did unspeakable things, maybe even enjoyed them, but he wasn’t evil. He could pour whiskey on his soul all he wanted, but there was a part of him that cared, no matter how much he wanted to act like there wasn’t. He was violent, he was powerful, he had certain abilities, but underneath it all there was a good man. A man with integrity. And I just wished he could see that being one, didn’t mean the other did not exist.
“So there you have it, sweetheart. That’s who’s in your sleepy little town, and that’s the storm that is heading my way.”
He threw his cigarette to the ground and immediately brought another to his lips and lit it.
I looked at him. His arms bulged as he cradled the lighter to his face, stray hairs fell across his weathered, beautiful face. I didn’t care what he had done. I didn’t care what he would do. I just knew that I was meant to be by his side. And he knew it too.
“I don’t care,” I said bluntly.
He looked up and blew out a cloud of smoke.
“You don’t care about what, Kelly?”
“Any of it. I don’t care. I don’t care what you’ve done, who you’ve done it to, or who you’ve done it with. I don’t care about any of it. I only care about you, Hunter. I care about,” I paused for a second, not wanting to say out loud what I was about to admit to him. “I care about us. I said it because you made me, but it’s the truth. I’m yours. Remember? I know who you are. I always have. And I don’t care about any of it except you.”
Hunter leaned against the car and smoked his cigarette while he stared back at me, smiling his same sly smile.
“You know,” he started as he took a drag and then blew out the smoke, “it’s a damn good thing you’re such a pretty girl.”
He ditched the cigarette and walked toward me. I stood up and started to back away until I felt my legs hit the chair I had been sitting in.
“And why is that, Hunter?”
He stopped just in front of me and ran his hand along my jaw, tucking the hair that had fallen on my face behind my ear. He looked deeply into me with his piercing, blue eyes.
“Because you are incredibly fucking stupid.”