Page 96 of Passion and Payback

KAI

With a grunt, I pushed open the door to Hunter’s apartment with my shoulder and stepped inside, arms full of bags. It was easier said than done, considering the moment I stepped through the door, I found myself swarmed by evil creatures made of fur and mischief. It required me to keep the bags firmly in my grasp while trying to ensure I didn’t tread on any of them. They might be several times smaller than me but possessed the attitudes of something much larger.

“Oh, for the love of…fuck!” I growled, shooing them away with my foot without accidentally kicking them. That only served to scare off half the furry cloud surrounding my ankles but at least provided me room to get my boots off so I could move down the hallway.

My grumbling stopped when I realized I could hear music from the kitchen. There hadn’t been music in the apartment for almost a week. Ever since we’d managed to slip out of Mitchell’s failed party, the apartment had been quiet. Hunter without music was a Hunter who was either deeply upset about something or too stuck in his thoughts to enjoy it. I thought it was a little of both.

I couldn’t help but smile as I recognized the music, Kesha of all things. I had never seen the appeal, finding it more noise than music, but it had become a sign that Hunter was in a fantastic mood, slowly transforming the noise into a sign that my best friend was happy. I’m sure there was some psychology behind it, but I didn’t care. That god-awful noise meant I had come home to my best friend again.

Come home.

The thought made me smile as I entered the kitchen, only for the smile to freeze in surprise.

“And where the hell did you put your clothes?” I asked with a laugh at the man standing with his back to me on the far side of the room, chopping away merrily.

Until said man clad in his underwear let out a bark of surprise and flung an entire cast iron pan in my direction. Taken off guard or not, my instinct had me dodge the deadly object as it hit the wall with a heavy thunk before dropping to the ground with a clatter.

Hunter’s eyes were wide with surprise and annoyance. “Jesus Christ, Kai!”

That was a prime example of how I didn’t know how I felt about the changes I had seen come over him. It wasn’tjustthe reaction of a man who’d been scarred and traumatized, but someone who had tasted blood and found it not unpalatable. It wasn’t because he’d thrown the pan at me, which anyone who’d grown up where we had and gone through what we had would do, but that went double for someone attacked as he had been.

No, it was his reaction after that. Holding the knife he’d been chopping veggies with at the ready and positioning himself quickly by the island so he could duck behind it if necessary. It was in the way his reaction hadn’t been so much fearful as purposeful in its surprise. He might have been taken off guard, but the moment he thought there was a threat, he’d beenprepared to do as much damage as possible in the smallest amount of time to keep himself safe.

It was...bittersweet. The sweet man who wouldn’t think of hurting anyone was gone, replaced by someone...else. The sweetness and kindness were still there. That was a part of Hunter that was damn near impossible to shake off. But parts of him had been removed and replaced or shifted by what he’d gone through, what he had done. I was in love with a man who was still kind but with an edge that could cut through anything. He was a living sculpture made of tempered glass and steel, beautiful and gentle in its way but capable of making you bleed if you weren’t careful.

Yeah, it made me sad, but also made me love him more. Human minds are strange.

“If you’re going to be that jumpy,” I said in wry amusement as I set the bags on the island as casually as if he hadn’t just tried to give me a concussion and stab me, “you should probably set up an alarm system to let you know when someone’s coming through the door. Or at least remember that you sent me on an errand, so you expect me.”

The anger in his face flickered for a moment, then died like a flame snuffed out as he let out a heavy sigh. “Sorry. You’re right. I’m just...jumpy after our little visit from the boys in blue.”

The last was said with enough sarcasm to fill the entire building, though I couldn’t blame him. We’d had the expected and unexpected visit from the cops a couple of days after Mitchell’s death. What had struck me wasn’t necessarily their visit or even how they had ‘subtly’ alluded to what had happened to Hunter and Lucas in the past. That was amusing in an ugly way because they’d fought so hard in the past to pretend nothing had happened. Now, all of a sudden, they were interested in that event, if only because Hunter’s accusations had given them fuel.

It was how they connected something from two years ago that had been dismissed and were now willing to follow through on it. If I were to guess, I would say they were guided by an outside figure, someone who had not only connected the dots but also had the power to push the police to Hunter’s doorstep. Of course, as far as I could tell, they had nothing to work on, save our rather bland and uninteresting accounts.

Our faces had not been seen clearly by outside security cameras, but there was a connection to the victims, right?

Didn’t Hunter once try to pursue charges against them that had gone nowhere because of a ‘lack’ of evidence?

Did we know anything about a weapon thatmighthave been used in all the crimes?

Questions and questions. And yet, with an ease that should have been surprising but wasn’t, Hunter played the part perfectly. Horrified at the idea of the violence behind the murders, as a knife was exceptionally personal, and yet disdainful at the idea of their deaths, perfectly fitting someone who had accused them of the horrible crimes they had committed against him.

Not for the first time, I was in awe of how he handled people so expertly. Once, he had been able to take one situation and make it another, a way of taking anger and aggression and turning it into a joke fest, for example, yet this was...something else. He had managed to twist the investigators and find those sympathetic to his cause to work for him and those likely to dismiss him as nothing. He knew how to game the system, and the skills that made him kind and gentle were the same ones that let him get away with murder.

Which was so much scarier than my or even his ability to kill someone.

“You’re more worried about them than I am,” I said with a snort, pulling things out of the bags so he could put them away.

“I haven’t had to deal with cops since I was sixteen,” he muttered as he looked over everything with an appraising eye. I did my best not to take offense at how meticulous he was. After all, he had always done the shopping, so it made sense to poke through what I’d bought despite giving me a detailed list. It was just...Hunter. The same Hunter who’d been born from having his control ripped away so violently.

Still slightly irritating since I didn’t get where I was by being sloppy.

“You dealt with those cops better than anyone,” I told him in a low voice, pushing the heirloom tomatoes toward him as he squinted in disappointment at the regular ones. “I bought both because sometimes I want to have slices of tomato without feeling I robbed some desperate vegan of their meal.”

He laughed at that. “Regular tomatoes are just fine.”

“Uh-huh.”

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