Page 84 of The Spider Queen
There, on the walls of the living room of the apartment I shared with Anita, were depictions of the dream I’d had about the wasps and the spiders.
“You weren’t answering your phone,” he mumbled. “So Anita and Jonah came back from Connecticut early. They found you on the couch, singing in your sleep. They couldn’t wake you up. And then they saw your paintings.”
“How do you—” I held up the phone, “—have these?”
His jaw clenched as his eyes remained on the road. “Jonah sent them to me. It’s what brought me back from North Carolina.”
I took a moment to study his face. “I don’t believe you.”
“Poppy—”
“Don’t. No more secrets. Not between us. What aren’t you telling me, Hunter?”
Chapter 31
He was silent for so long I thought he’d forgotten the question. “Tell me about Thane,” he said after a few miles of quiet.
I felt light-headed. “Thane?”
“Who is he, Poppy? You are the one that doesn’t want secrets between us. So tell me. Who is he?”
“Why do you know that name?”
He sighed again. “Because you called me Thane the night I carried you out of the bar.”
“Why do you have a spare cell phone in your glove compartment? Are you—are you a drug dealer?” I shot back.
A bark of laughter filled the air. “No. God, no. That would be such an easier explanation.” He switched lanes. “Are you hungry again?”
“I could eat,” I admitted. I still needed a shower and a toothbrush. Guess those things were going to have to wait.
While he exited the highway, I checked out my appearance in the visor mirror. It wasn’t a pretty sight. My tangled hair was oily and in need of a thorough wash but I had no hair tie to throw it back. With the chocolate shake stain on the front of my shirt, I looked like a teenage runaway. There wasn’t anything I could do about it at the moment, so I quit worrying.
Fifteen tense minutes later, we were at a Waffle House. It was fairly quiet; those at the counter appeared to be truckers in need of a quick bite to fuel them up so they could get back on the road. They were in rougher shape than we were, and so no one paid any attention to my appearance. We were nothing out of the ordinary there.
We slid into a free booth in the back corner. The waitress, who seemed like she’d been working for the last sixteen hours, was on us before I could even open a menu. She took our drink orders and then left. I grabbed a menu, flipped it open, and quickly decided what I wanted to eat. The exhausted woman came back, dropped our drinks, and demanded our food orders.
I fiddled with the straw in my Coke and waited for Hunter to talk. He looked nervous as he raked a hand through his messy, blond hair. There were so many questions between us that had gone unanswered. I’d stored them up, waiting for a moment to unleash them. Not that I expected truth—maybe levels of truth but not all of it. Lately, the people in my life chose what to share with me, and I didn’t think Hunter was any different.
Unable to stand the silence any longer, I asked, “If you saw the paintings on the wall and heard I’d been singing in some weird nonsense language, totally out of it, why did you spring me from the hospital? Why didn’t you leave me there?”
“Because you would’ve died there.”
I blinked rapidly.
Out of all the answers I could’ve expected, that hadn’t been one of them. “What do you mean by that?”
He sighed and then looked to the ceiling. After a moment, he dragged his eyes back to mine. “There are things we haven’t yet told each other, Poppy.”
“Yeah,” I said slowly. “That’s true. I guess we haven’t been completely honest with each other, have we?”
“Who is Thane?” he asked again.
If I told him…what was the worst he could think? He’d already seen the drawings I’d done in my sleep and busted me out of a psych ward. Something was going on that was much bigger than I could put together, so I went for it.
“Thane is a spider,” I whispered. “The spider in the glass cube I found the night you took me to—”
“You named the spider?”
