Page 47 of Hunter or Hunted

The young girl smiled, staring into the casket. Her nostrils flared as she eased a deep breath through them. “Yeah, I always wanted to be as pretty as her.” She released Delilah’s hand, and her eyes found mine. “I’m sorry, I don’t know if we’ve met. How did you know Allie?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. Not until Sebastian gave my hand another one of those comforting squeezes. “I’m—I’m Zoey.” That was the fake name I had decided on this morning. “And Allie—we were working together. Up until this, anyway.”

Brows raising, her mouth fell further open. “Like, a couple of weeks ago? You know where she was. Where she’s been these past few months.”

Oh, shit.

She had no idea Delilah had been living in a domestic violence shelter.

A sob sounded near the doors we had come in from. So loud it made me jump. A deep, masculine noise. Somehow similar to the choir of obnoxious laughter from a group of frat boys and the grief-stricken sob of a mother who’d just learned of her child’s death.

My gaze followed the young girl’s in that direction. And the moment I laid eyes on him, I knew.

He was tall, taller than me, taller than Sebastian. At least 6′4″. Maybe taller. His shoulders took up half the doorway, like the quarterback on an NFL team. He had one of those trendy fades with blonde hair a few inches long, swaying to his ears, resting over the buzzed sides. A five o’clock shadow lined his strong, diamond-shaped jaw.

“Aw, I’ve gotta go talk to Evan,” the young girl said. “I’m Ava, by the way. But don’t go far, alright? I’d really love if you could tell me more about what the last couple months have been like for my sister.”

15

SEBASTIAN

As a child, I never gave much thought to people’s bodies. They were what they were. Then my balls dropped. Suddenly, I noticed all kinds of different things about bodies. Like boobs.

Until puberty, they were cushy things I laid my head on and thought nothing of when I hugged a woman. There was nothing sexual about a layer of fat wrapped around someone’s rib cage, until there was.

Regardless of how I feel about it, our society began sexualizing breasts a long time ago. Every person in America knows so. There is a socially acceptable way for a man to hug a woman.

The way Evan hugged Ava was not.

His hands curled around her waist, one trailing up and down her ribs. The other coasted over the back of her hip. Evan’s chest pressed so tightly against hers that they could hold a piece of paper in place between them. Towering over her, he rested his head on her crown, weeps shaking his entire body.

“If I died,” Gwen said, voice low, “do you think you’d hug my little sister like that?”

“I wouldn’t hug any teenage girl like that,” I said.

Gwen’s jaw tightened, but she said nothing.

Evan’s sobs quieted as he lifted his head. One hand went to Ava’s cheek. He tilted her chin up so their eyes met. His brows raised in the center, lips curving down at either end, but no liquid glimmered on his cheeks.

All that crying, and not a single tear.

She said something I couldn’t hear from the distance, then looked over her shoulder at us. His eyes followed. They met mine, and for a second, only a second, his mouth tightened and his forehead creased. Darkness enveloped his pale baby blues.

Then his brows raised again, and his lips fell in a frown, and the baby blues came back.

Ava turned back up to look at him. He said something, she said something, and her fingers closed around his wrist. They started our way.

“You know we’re about to be a spectacle,” I said. “Everyone’s gonna want to talk to the last person who saw Delilah alive.”

Gwen’s eyes went back into the casket. “Yeah.”

“You’re sure you’re ready for that?”

“Not really.” She still stared down at Delilah. “But I need to know if I really am the last person in this room to see Delilah alive.”

Of course she did. That’s why we were here.

“I’m so sorry, I know you told me your name,” Ava said, only a few strides away now. “I completely blanked.”