Page 3 of Hunter or Hunted

“Why is it crazy when I want to do it, but it’s rational and heroic when you do it?” I asked.

“When did I claim to be a hero?”

“Maybe you didn’t use that word, but you were describing one earlier,” I said. “You definitely acted like it was a rational decision. Like there was right, and there was wrong, and you did what was right to correct a wrong.”

“I did it to protect Lizzie.”

“And I’m doing it to protect the next Delilah,” I said. “Because there will be another. Some young girl is going to fall for his sweet talking, and she’s going to wind up in the same situation, and she might not have Rhiannon’s Ranch to fall back on. She might not have somewhere to run.”

The frown at the edges of his lips fell farther. His eyes were big in the middle, brows creased in the center. Like he was the big, smart man who had figured it all out, and I was the silly, unstable little girl.

My boiling blood had every inch of my skin red hot.

“Sarah was my sister, Gwen. Lizzie is my niece.”

“Delilah was my friend, Sebastian.”

“You guys only knew each other a few months.”

The moment those words left his lips, my eyes stung. A hollow heat burned in the center of my chest, brighter and more volatile than the flush that’d overtaken my entire body. Like a black hole opened behind my rib cage, slowly collapsing the rest of my burning body into its empty abyss.

Realizing he had just kicked his foot straight into his mouth, he shook his head. “I know you loved her, and I understand how badly this hurts⁠—”

“No, you really don’t.” I stood. “You don’t understand any of this.”

“I do understand⁠—”

“No. You don’t.”

He couldn’t. Not really.

He’d warned me about that pedestal, and here I was again. Propping him up on it.

He could talk about how bad his father had been. He’d say that he, too, had lived through the terror of a man’s violence.

But he’d outgrown it.

One day, he’d stood before his father, and they were the same size. One day, his father had realized he wouldn’t win if he raised a fist.

No, he wouldn’t be like his father, or David, or Troy, but the fury inside me now was something he hadn’t felt in decades. As he aged, he assimilated into the power structure that had once made his life a living hell. He had felt this fury, but when it stopped directly impacting him, he’d accepted it. There were bad men out there, and that sucked, but he didn’t have to face it directly anymore. So it was what it was.

Sebastian never sent his location to his best friend before a date, just in case. He never walked through a parking lot with his keys between his fingers. He never did a once-over of himself in the mirror and decided to change his shirt, not because it wasn’t flattering, but because it was too flattering. Because if he wore it in public, and someone hurt him, people would say he was asking for it.

No one ever taught him to scratch as hard as he could, as fast as he could, to get his attacker’s DNA under his fingernails so that the police could find whoever did it when they autopsied his body.

I would never invalidate the abuse he’d endured throughout his childhood. His father had been a piece of shit, and if he were still alive, he would be on my list.

But that was just it.

Sebastian had killed Jason to avenge his sister. He’d said last night that it was because the world was a better place without Jason in it, but only because his world was better without Jason in it.

His sister mattered. His niece mattered. But not someone else’s sister, or niece, or mother.

He didn’t understand the collective rage and heartache of sisterhood, because the boogeyman only stared at him in the mirror now. None of this would ever affect him again.

“You know what?” I took a step toward the door. “It’s fine. Forget I asked.”

He stood too. “I didn’t mean it like that, alright? Can we just sit and talk about that? Can we talk about⁠—”