Page 1 of Through the Flames
One
Hunter
Dust motes floated in the slanting afternoon light, the smell of cardboard and packing tape lingering. Boxes were stacked neatly in the hallway, outside Colt’s room.
Well, what used to be his room, I guess.
I usually got along with silence, but today it reminded me too much of a different house where silence only reigned after the screams stopped.
The silence loomed heavily, suffocating me and reminding me that Colt would soon be gone. My chest felt tighter than usual, uncomfortably so.
I wouldn’t call it grief or sadness, but I knew once he left, I’d be stuck alone with my own messed-up head. His room was empty, although I avoided looking at it.
Colt was my constant, my anchor. He was the buffer between me and the rest of the world. Now he was packing boxes, leaving me to carry the silence on my own.
The bitter truth was I had no one to blame but myself.
I’ve never really imagined my life without Colt in it. Even though it was completely unrealistic, I always had this foolish hope of continuing to play for the same team. Of getting drafted together.
The chances of that happening had been astronomically slim to begin with, but it was me who’d sealed that particular fate. Unlike Colt, I hadn’t declared for this year’s draft.
Everyone at Blue Ridge University was shocked when I passed. Twenty-one, at the peak of my game, and I chose to wait another year. No one understood why, not even Colt.
And I didn’t try to make anyone understand, either.
They thought I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had.
Because if I told them the truth — that I stayed for a girl who could touch me without setting me on fire — I’d end up straight on some fucking watch list. Or locked up.
Oh, yeah, I’m not declaring for the draft and postponing the thing I’ve worked for all my life because there’s this girl, and she can touch me. So obviously, I can’t let her out of my sight for more than five fucking minutes.
She’d brushed against me one time, so small, so accidental, and yet it had mended something inside me I didn’t know was capable of being put back together, ever.
After years of feeling nothing but revulsion and nausea when others touched me, she broke the cycle.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it; it was a maddening yet beautiful echo in my mind.
Her touch unleashed emotions I didn’t know I was capable of feeling: a warmth that wasn’t cold, a desire that didn’t scare me, and an inexplicable pull.
Ella Kincaid’s fate had been sealed the day she met me.
The logical part of my brain made me go back after that first time to test the theory. I was determined to make sure it hadn’t just been a one-off.
From that point on, each touch was a test, and I mentally charted every reaction.
The brief, stolen brushes of her hands against mine told me the same thing: this wasn’t a fluke. I was unraveling, alive in a way I hadn’t been inyears.
I’d spent months cataloging her routines, memorizing her schedule, and replaying every interaction.
My life, my plans and my blueprints all orbited around her presence, because that one accidental touch had shown me what it meant to be human again.
What it meant towant.
For someone like me — someone accustomed to controlling everything and who had spent half their life avoiding physical contact — it was terrifying.
Now whenever I saw her, her smiles and carefree laughter brought back memories of that spark, of the heat crawling up my skin and the lightning splitting through me.
I couldn’t escape it. I didn’twantto escape it.
