Page 16 of Hunter or Hunted

His smile in that picture always made my heart flutter. Through his beard, his lips stretched across his cheeks and scrunched up the corners of his eyes. I could hardly make out their color. Smiles that big out of him were rare. I was lucky to have caught it on camera. He said he hated that picture, but it was my favorite.

We’d hiked through the snow with Honey, then got dinner, and it was so simple, so perfect, and I remembered thinking, I could do this every day for the rest of my life.

How could we go back to the way things had been after the last twenty-four hours?

I didn’t know. But I wanted to.

I swiped the green bar. “Hey.”

“Hey.” It came out slow, almost like a sigh. As though he had been holding his breath, anticipating my voicemail. “I’m sorry. I know you said you didn’t want to talk to me, and I don’t blame you, but you ran out so quick, and you didn’t tell me what was going on with Simone, so I was just worried something happened, or⁠—”

“It’s okay. Everything with Simone, I mean.” Clearing my throat, I flicked out the light above the kitchen sink. Joint perched between my lips, I unzipped my jacket and headed for the hanger by the door. “Angela showed, but just to mess with her head. Rhiannon isn’t concerned about it, so I’m trying not to be.”

“Oh.” That should’ve softened his voice, but it still sounded distant. Strained. “Good. Not good that she’s taunting Simone, but good that Rhiannon’s not concerned.”

“Yeah, I knew what you meant.” Phone sandwiched between my ear and shoulder, I shook off my hoodie and hung it on the hook. Hand finally free, I held the joint between my pointer and middle finger. “Doesn’t sound like you got much sleep though.”

“I had a patient call me right after you left. It was—” He paused. “It doesn’t matter. I just, I, um… Have you gotten any sleep yet?”

“I’m gonna try to lay down here in a minute.” I clicked on the speaker and took the few steps from the living room into my bedroom. Laying the phone on the dresser and the barely burning joint in the glass candy dish beside it, I said, “Struggling to keep my eyes open at this point.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

Silence set in. He didn’t give me much to respond to. I didn’t have much to say. But I didn’t want to hang up yet. We’d already left each other on not-great terms. A quick phone call wasn’t going to fix that. Maybe it would help me fall asleep though.

So I sat in silence with him as I rummaged through my drawers for a clean pajama set.

“Lizzie begged me to let her stay at Aubrey’s tonight,” he finally said. “I was staying up so that I could go grab her, but now I don’t have to, so I laid down, and everything just started playing on a loop in my head, and… I just, I know you’re mad. And I get it. I would be too. But Lizzie’s still out, and I can’t sleep, and I was just really hoping we could talk.”

I wasn’t mad. Not at him. Not really.

At least, not for the reasons he thought.

His points about Evan were valid. Before I killed a man, I needed to be certain of what he’d done. That he deserved it. And if Sebastian didn’t want to get involved in another murder, how could I hold that against him?

What he said about Delilah though, his implication that our friendship didn’t matter, that I didn’t have the right to feel the way that I did, didn’t boil my blood. It ached deep in the center of my chest.

Saying we hadn’t known one another for very long was an indisputable fact. But Delilah hadn’t lived for very long. I wasn’t only mourning the time that we had together, but the time that we wouldn’t.

“I’m exhausted, Sebastian.” Holding the dresser for stability, I tugged off my sweats and stepped into the fleece pajamas. “You are too. I don’t think we should get into this right now.”

Another long stretch of silence. I was already sitting on the edge of my bed, buttoning my top, by the time he continued.

“That’s probably the responsible choice, yeah,” he muttered. “I just… Rhiannon says it’s okay to go to bed angry. Something about how it gives you more time to process everything. But I-I try, and I just can’t. I can’t fall asleep knowing I hurt you. And I—There’s a lot more that I need to say. A lot more that I should’ve listened to instead of said. I messed up today, Gwen, and I’m sorry. And you don’t have to say it’s okay, because it’s not okay. I should’ve thought before I spoke. I could say it was because I hadn’t slept, or because I was overwhelmed, and that would be true. But it doesn’t erase how it made you feel, and—I’m rambling. I’m sorry. I just…”

Heart fluttering, those butterflies danced around my tummy again.

Before, when I was with my ex-husband, that spiel would’ve resolved everything. I would’ve told him it was okay. He would’ve come over. Lying in bed together, he would’ve wrapped his arms around me, and we would’ve shut our eyes.

With that all off his chest, he would’ve fallen right to sleep.

I would’ve stared at the wall with tears in my eyes, and the resentment would fester. A week later, or a month later, when he said something completely unrelated that pissed me off, I would conjure up the ache I had in my chest now, snap at him, and everything would spiral.

I didn’t want to get to that point with Sebastian. I wanted to move past this, but I wanted him to understand it all first. And I was too tired to say it how I needed to.

“I don’t like going to bed angry either,” I said, almost a whisper. “I just think that we should have this conversation when we’ve had a full night’s sleep.”

“Yeah. We should,” he muttered. “I, um, I guess I’m just kind of catastrophizing? Rationally, I completely agree with you, but I guess I’m just—” He choked on whatever was going to come out next. Composure regained, voice still soft, he said, “I don’t want to lose you, Gwen.”