Page 54 of Hunter or Hunted

“Hm,” he murmured, trailing behind me as we climbed the wooden steps. “Yeah, I guess that was the mindset of that generation.”

Relief loosened my shoulders. He could’ve kept pushing, like Rhiannon would have, and I appreciated that he didn’t.

With caution, hoping Beth wouldn’t hear us coming in, I spun the knob. The front door opened to a hallway. A sign on a door to my left said Kitchen Personnel Only. On my right, a wooden staircase—narrower than the front set—tucked against the wall. I started up them.

“About Charlotte though,” Sebastian said, voice barely louder than our tiptoed footsteps, “it’s easier to have a ‘both sides’ take. Especially after you hear guys like him tell the story. They’re manipulators. One conversation with Evan, and I get why anyone would defend him. He knows what he’s doing.”

Almost at the top of the stairs now, I looked beyond the mahogany banister. Half a dozen doors stared back. The one with a gold plate reading 14 stared back at me. Our room.

Relieved we hadn’t faced Beth on our way up here, any stiffness gathering at the back of my neck released. “How’d that go anyway? Did you get anything from him?”

“Depends on what you mean by that.” Sebastian fumbled in his pocket for the room key. Once he found it, he spun it in the knob and held it open for me. “I didn’t learn anything we didn’t already know.”

Brushing past him, I shook off my jacket and laid it on the antique wooden dresser just past the entry. “As in, he confessed?”

“To killing her?” He huffed, clicking the door shut behind him. “No. To being the type of misogynistic piece of shit Delilah made him out to be? Yeah.”

“Ugh.” I sat on the edge of the bed, covered in a classic floral patterned comforter. “What’d he say?”

“You know. The usual.” Unclipping the buttons of his long-sleeve dress shirt, he leaned against the dresser. He lowered his pitch to a mock gravelly man voice. “‘You know women these days. All this woke, I don’t need a man bullshit. A guy makes one mistake and his life’s ruined. Blah, blah, blah.’”

I rolled my eyes and bent down to unclip my heels. “Literally just met you and he’s already spewing the red pill shit.”

“I’m actually surprised he didn’t use a buzzword like that. He blamed the internet for her leaving him, said something about the ‘Me Too’ shit. He was testing the waters.”

Finished unbuttoning the sleeves, he moved onto the ones descending his torso. Now I had to agree with his earlier statement—the chest hair wouldn’t have been appropriate for the funeral, because my eyes lingered on it far longer than they should have given the topic of conversation.

“That’s what people like him do,” he continued. “They take something with a little bit of merit, like the excessiveness of online cancel culture, and they see how far they can stretch it. Just how far they can push before you get uncomfortable. When you do, they back down. But I kept playing the part. I was hoping he’d give up more.”

“He didn’t give you anything more valuable than that?”

Shrugging off the button-up, he headed for his open suitcase by the window. “Not really, no. But he did ask me to meet up with him for a drink before the funeral tomorrow.”

I straightened, confusion pinching my face. “Wait, really?”

“Yeah, why?” Apparently catching my tone, he glanced at me over his shoulder.

“That doesn’t strike you as odd?” I asked. “Like he knows we’re here because we suspect something, and he wants to keep his eyes on us?”

Sebastian shook his head and went back to his suitcase. “Nah. He thinks we’re buddies.”

“He just met you.” I pressed my hands into the bed behind me to stretch out my upper back. The flight had only lasted a couple hours, but my neck had started aching before we landed. “Why would he think he could trust you?”

“I wouldn’t say trust. I just don’t think he has anyone else.”

“Delilah’s whole family was throwing his ass a pity party.”

“Right, but that’s just it.” Sebastian tossed a plain white T over his head. Facing me again, he adjusted it around his hips. “Who was he hanging out with the whole viewing? A teenage girl. At Sarah’s funeral, Jason hung out with my parents and his. All Sarah’s friends? They were with me. My friends? Same thing. No one wanted to hang out with him, because even if they weren’t sure he’d killed her, he’d made her life hell. They hated the bastard. Did you notice the group of girls who were hugging Ava? They looked a little older—they were probably Delilah’s old friends. None of them consoled him though.”

As the dots connected, my mouth fell open. “Because he doesn’t have any friends, and Delilah’s friends know what we do.”

“My best guess.” Sebastian propped his shoulder against the window frame, crossing his arms. “He probably exiled her from her friends, so they hate him. He was probably worried his friends would wanna sleep with Delilah, so he sabotaged those friendships too. If he ever had any, at least. People like him can’t hold meaningful, long-term relationships with anyone.”

Fair point. Troy had been the same way. He had a handful of online gaming friends he spoke to on a regular basis, but by the time I’d left him, he’d already lost all his in-person friends. I didn’t have any left either, because, as Sebastian pointed out, they all hated my husband.

Evan found some kinship with Sebastian. Which worked in my favor at the moment.

“Makes sense,” I said, kicking my shoes the rest of the way off. “What’d you tell him?”