Page 20 of Passion and Payback

He shot me a confused look, his lip curling. “Yeah, I do. I remember how much joy I felt…and then kind of like shit for that. Then I got over it. Then I didn’t. Back and forth. Why are you bringing them up?”

“After they died, did you magically stop hating them? Even when you stopped going back and forth about whether you should be happy they were dead?”

“I…no, I still…oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Right,” he said with a snort. “I see what you mean…a little.”

“For the record, you’re absolutely right to hate them still. And to have been happy that they died. Maybe I’m fucked in the head, but I don’t care if two terrible human beings died horribly. That’s less shit in the world if you ask me,” I said, wondering if he was thinking the same thing I was about the men who had attacked him and Lucas. Even without the details, I would love to have a few minutes alone with them to show them just what being tough meant right before I?—

“I know,” he interrupted before I could get too bloody in my thoughts. “All this has taught me that it’s perfectly alright to hate people for being awful. I still hate my parents. It doesn’t ruin my day, it doesn’t affect my life, the hate just sits there, in its own space, and I plan on leaving it there.”

“And…those guys?” I asked, unable to help myself.

Something hard and foreign to Hunter flit through his eyes before he shrugged. “I think it would be impossible not to hate them for the rest of my life. People love to say that hate is a poison you swallow by yourself, but I’d challenge them to see what I saw, to go through what I went through, and try to see how easily they can get rid of the hate.”

Hate was a tricky thing. Sometimes, it kept you warm when all the world around you was cold. But sometimes, it could freeze you to your core when the world was warm. The trick was trying to find the balance, either in ridding yourself of the hate or finding a place to put it in your heart so it didn’t destroy the rest of you. I was confident Hunter could find either path successfully, but whether he would was entirely different.

Hunter gave a soft laugh. “I’m sorry. You were right all along. I need not to let this whole thing get to me. I wasn’t ready for a sudden…attack like that, not from you, but from inside me. I freaked right the hell out. It hasn’t happened in quite a while.”

“You’ve had this happen before?”

“Not quite so violently, but I’ve had a freak-out. Thankfully, I was able to get back here before I made a spectacle of myself.”

I wanted to tell him that’s not something he should worry about, but I would have felt the same in his shoes. There was something deeply embarrassing about showing an extreme level of vulnerability in front of other people, let alone strangers. No one wanted to ‘make a spectacle’ of themselves from their worst nightmares and feelings being dragged to the surface. It would have felt hollow and cheap to try to dissuade him from that.

“Well, you did it here, so there’s no harm done,” I told him, leaning over to poke his takeout container. “I’ve seen far worse.”

“I don’t know whether to be horrified or comforted by that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Comforted because, hell, at least someone out there did worse than me. Or horrified because you’ve seen enough terrible things that this didn’t even cause you to bat an eye. Kind of a damned either way sort of thing.”

I shrugged. “It’s the life I chose. I knew what I was getting into.”

“Did you, though?” he asked, finally scooping up a spoonful of meat, sauce, and rice. “Do any of us actually know what we’re signing up for when we make any choice?”

“Probably not,” I said with a smirk. That he was starting to get existential was a good sign. It usually only happened after a few drinks, which was a sure sign he was feeling himself. Stone cold sober, it meant he was drifting from thoughts about life and settling onto the grand scheme of things where he was likely to be loftier.

His face broke into a grin, and he shook his head. “Sorry. I should probably wait until I’ve started drinking before I start wondering about life and fate and informed choices.”

“You can sit there and eat, and I’ll fetch the drinks,” I said, pushing up from the table. “You just have to tell me where.”

“Oh, in the cabinet. There’s a bunch of bottles, but it’s the only unopened one.”

I found the bottle he mentioned sitting off to the side. I didn’t recognize the brand, but the liquor was dark and the bottle looked fancy enough that he had probably spent good money on it.

“You know, until a couple of months ago, there wasn’t a day when I didn’t drink. You’ll want that with at least a little bit of ice.”

“What, couldn’t get those fancy things that cool a glass without diluting?”

“There’s some of those in there too. I just like an ice cube in mine. You call it diluting, I call it altering the flavor as I drink it.”

“Fair enough,” I said as I opened the freezer and found the ice cubes and the little metal balls he’d shown me a while ago. He might want the flavor changed over time, but I was perfectly content with it staying the same as it cooled. “How bad was it?”

“The drinking?”

---