Page 17 of Hunter or Hunted

Those butterflies danced around a warm fireplace now. One that I yearned to bundle beside and melt into. “I don’t want to lose you either.”

His breath of relief muffled the speaker. “Would it be okay if we made a plan then? Like, set a time and place to talk over everything?”

I lifted my feet onto the bed and slid them beneath the blankets. “Rhiannon’s hosting a vigil for Delilah tomorrow. I don’t know what time it’s going to go on ‘til, so I’m not sure that’d be the best time. But you and Lizzie were planning on coming to the ranch for Christmas dinner, right? Maybe we could meet here beforehand? Talk before we eat?”

“Sure, that sounds good,” he said. “I heard about the vigil. Lizzie wants to go. She and Delilah were friends. She asked me to come too. I have to pick her up anyway. But I can show up at the tail end if that’d make you more comfortable?”

I wouldn’t tell him not to come. Last night, he was who I would’ve wanted beside me. “No, that’s okay. Come. Lizzie will need you. I just don’t think tomorrow’s a good time for us to talk about everything. Tension’ll still be high.”

“Right. Sure,” he agreed. “I do want to be there for Lizzie. But I’d like to be there for you too, Gwen.”

Pinching my eyes shut, I searched for the words. My instinct was a smartass rebuttal, because he’d had that opportunity and practically spit in my face, but that wouldn’t benefit either of us. He’d already said he was sorry. I didn’t need to kick him again.

I settled for, “I’ll see you there.”

“See you then,” he said. “I love you.”

Throat tight, I said, “I love you too,” and clicked the red button.

Then fell into an instant sleep.

I stood in my kitchen.

Another version of me sat on my couch. So did Delilah.

I couldn’t make out what we were saying. Just the dull hum of words, muffled by the simmering cocoa on the stove. Delilah kept wiping her cheeks. I kept frowning between words.

But I remembered this day.

Delilah hadn’t been here long. I told her if she followed the trail from the apartments through the woods, it would come out at my cabin. She showed with an inch of snow on her puffer coat. A black ring still encased her eye.

She apologized for showing without calling first, and I told her not to worry about it. I invited her in and offered her some cocoa. While I mixed it on the stove, she told me she was pregnant, and she was going to lose the baby.

We talked about the pain of that loss. The pain Evan put her through. As well as her rage.

How badly she wanted to tell him what she was going through, just because she wanted him to hurt as badly as she did. Everything else he had done to her wouldn’t matter, but that did. Losing his child would matter to him. Knowing her body had rejected his offspring would hurt him.

Chest so tight I could hardly pull in a breath, I tried to remember everything we’d said in that conversation. It had lasted so long, I only remembered the gist.

Until the muffle cleared, and I heard myself say, “Women fit into boxes. Victim or villain. Dainty flower or violent storm. You don’t want to be a little flower, Delilah. All it takes is one harsh storm to break the flower’s neck. You had to be the storm, because you wouldn’t have survived if you stayed the dainty little flower.”

Bile burned up my esophagus. My head pounded, casting a shadow over my line of sight. It strobed around the edges. The image before me throbbed in and out.

“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” I whispered. “I told you to be the storm. I’m the reason you went back. You wanted revenge, you wanted him to hurt, and you went back because I gave you the confidence to.”

Delilah turned to face me.

Her milky skin took on a ghastly shade of blue. A red circle formed in the center of her forehead. Blood trickled past her eyebrow, all the way down her cheek. A frown tugged at the corners of her mouth.

“I should’ve just moved on. I should’ve picked up the pieces, put myself back together, and forgotten any of it ever happened.”

Lips quivering, trying with all my might not to stare at the bullet hole in her forehead, a lump solidified in the back of my throat. “That’s just it. How are we supposed to pick up the pieces when we’re still bleeding?”

“At least the pain’s stopped now. I don’t think the rest matters anymore.” She wiped at the blood, smearing it across her cheek. “It’s not your fault, Gwen.”

Eyes burning, chest aching, I shook my head. “Why didn’t you tell me? If you were going to meet with him, you should’ve told me. I would’ve come. I wouldn’t have let him hurt you.”

“Because I wanted to handle it.” Across from Delilah on the sofa, that other version of myself vanished, like a hologram whose projector light had gone out.