Page 14 of Bleed the Shadows
I’d been relieved when they passed. The silence of the tunnel was starting to feel like an old friend instead of an enemy, and I tried not to think about the obvious metaphor for the Butchers, who’d seemed terrifying during the first Hunt but who’d come to seem like the best of all options if I had to be caught.
I’d stayed behind the crates for a while, using the hiding place to doze for a couple of hours, during which one of the brunettes from the holding room ran past. I silently wished her well but didn’t reveal my hiding spot.
I was here for June. Everyone else was on their own.
I didn’t ask you to do this,June had said then.
You didn’t have to. That’s the point.
She’d gone quiet after that, and I tried to ignore the feeling that her silence was judgement. That even June — wherever she was — thought I was crazy for participating in the Hunt a second time.
When my legs had started cramping from the close quarters behind the crates, I’d emerged from my hiding place. I’d taken a few minutes to stretch the kinks out of my body and have some more water and my second granola bar. Then I’d squatted to pee near the wall.
It was gross, but this time I’d been prepared for the reality of it. It wasn’t like I had a choice.
The nap had left me alert but also restless: all dressed up and nowhere to go.
Best-case scenario, I had sixteen-ish more hours in the tunnels. Staying in one place for too long felt risky, but walking meant the possibility of running into one of the marauding teams of masked men.
Maybe even the Butchers.
I forced myself to ignore the way my heart lifted at the thought of seeing them again.
Or seeing Poe and Remy anyway. Bram could fuck off forever.
You lie, Maeve. You lie to yourself, the worst lie of all.
I ignored June too, turning my thoughts instead to Poe and Remy, a real testament to how fucked-up I was: my feelings for them held a danger all their own.
I’d felt bad leaving without saying goodbye to Poe and Remy. They’d been good to me while I’d lived at the loft, and while I didn’t dare call our fucking anything but that, they’d started to feel almost like friends.
And the fucking had been pretty mind-blowing too.
But after the incident with Bram in the kitchen, I just couldn’t face them. Worse, I didn’t trust myself to face them. Didn’t trust myself to leave.
Then I’d be just like June.
Not that my situation with the Butchers was the same as June’s situation with Chris. Chris had abused June. He’d dominated her, controlled her, made her feel small.
The Butchers had made me feel capable. Seen.
They hadn’t made me feel crazy for participating in the Hunt, for wanting Ethan Todd dead. That part was probably because they were more unhinged than I was, but after a year and a half of plotting vengeance for June, I wasn’t going to analyze it too hard.
And anyway, the common denominator between my situationship with the Butchers and June’s relationship with Chris lay in the fact that the Butchers were no better for me than Chris had been for June.
Near the end, we’d tried to tell June that Chris had changed, had tried to get her away from him. But she hadn’t listened. She’d been convinced that if she just stayed long enough, they could get back to the way things had been when they’d first started dating.
Fast forward to me living with the Butchers, getting sucked into their lives,likingthem, and having Bram prove over and over again that I meant nothing to him. I’d become like June: trying to please Bram to get him to be nice to me, hoping he’d eat mycupcakesfor god’s sake.
Wasn’t staying a form of self-abuse? What was that saying, the definition of madness is doing the same thing and expecting different results?
No, I’d been right to leave. June had a million opportunities to leave. She’d ignored them all and ended up dead, buried on the mountain until the police finally found her body.
That hadn’t been a risk with the Butchers. I knew now they would never have hurt me. Not physically. But the longer I stayed the more damage they would have done to my heart.
Especially Bram.
I was so lost in thought that it took me a second to realize there were voices coming from up ahead.
