Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 151097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 755(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 504(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 151097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 755(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 504(@300wpm)
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” I let my hands rest on her voluptuous hips and kissed the corner of her pretty mouth. “Make me proud, Vengeance.”
I stepped back.
Her fifth attempt to zero the rifle was successful. Hunter practiced for two more hours, switching to kneeling and then lying down with Abel’s instruction before we were satisfied she’d gotten the hang of it.
Abel and I exchanged a look, and at his reluctant nod, I smiled victoriously and led Hunter back toward the building. She was too excited about her day of shooting and learning a new weapon to notice that we were walking hand in hand. She even let me help her into the back of the Denali, but we didn’t speak the entire drive.
We were back at the cabin when she stopped before the door and turned to face me. “Thank you for today,” she said sweetly. “I needed that. And I had fun.”
“So did I.”
It felt like the end of a first date—when the guy was standing on the girl’s front porch, hoping she’d invite him in. I knew Hunter wouldn’t, just like Hunter knew she wouldn’t stop me if I asked.
“Did you know I’d enjoy it because you had me followed?”
“Yes,” I confessed. It fired something inside me when Hunter didn’t look away. There was nothing honorable about my obsession, but Coby and Hunter didn’t run away from it. Instead, they embraced it on their own terms and brought me to heel with their own desires. “But I don’t know what made you want to learn in the first place.”
“You don’t?” she asked me skeptically.
I swallowed, knowing the possible reason was an ugly one. “I have an idea.”
Her father.
She learned how to shoot to protect herself from men like her fucking father. The one man Hunter should have been able to trust unconditionally.
“I’m sure you know I went to juvie, but you don’t know the real reason why. No one does. Everyone thinks they know, and the ones who doubted didn’t care enough to ask the hard questions.” Hunter shifted uncomfortably, but she still didn’t look away, letting me see her ugly parts, too. “Not one person stood up for me. Not even my court-appointed lawyer. My father’s side of the story had more holes than Swiss cheese, but it made better headlines. Troubled Teen Stabs Father to Avoid Chores.” She scoffed, and I felt her disgust because it mirrored my own. “Who cares that the truth rarely fits in one sentence? Lock her away.”
“You pled guilty.”
Hunter nodded, but her gaze was fixed on her hands as if she could see her father’s blood staining them. “I did.”
“Why?”
She squeezed her eyes closed and inhaled deeply. “Because I didn’t look at those bars as keeping me in. To me, they were keeping my father out. When I was released, my forgiving father was there, waiting for his delinquent daughter with open arms.” Hunter laughed, but it was a bitter sound. “So I ran. With the news cameras watching and anyone who bothered to remember my name, I ran from that monster, and I thought that was the end of it, but it wasn’t. I thought I could move on, but I couldn’t. Not while he was alive.”
“That’s when you burned his house down.” She nodded. “But he got out, and you were caught.”
“A month before I got out of juvie for stabbing him, my mother died. The same one who abandoned me when I was just a baby. Luck must have finally been on my side because I somehow got the only attorney in the world who could convince a jury that I actually mourned that bitch. I was sentenced to grief counseling and community service. That’s when I met Coby.”
“What did your father do to you, Hunter?”
“Nothing.” She shrugged. “Not really. It’s what he tried to make me do.”
I inched closer but stopped just short of touching her. “What did he want you to do?”
“We were on the verge of losing the house because of my father’s gambling habit. He was about to lose his job, so my father promised his boss something besides a good work ethic.”
“What did he—” The answer hit me like a train before I could finish asking the question.
Hunter sighed, looking truly dejected. “I was supposed to fuck my father’s boss, two of his best employees, and three golfing buddies so that my father could keep his minimum-wage job and his spot at his favorite poker table. Those were the chores the headlines unwittingly wrote about. I came home from school, and there they were—drinking my father’s beer and waiting for his fourteen-year-old daughter to come home from school. I begged my dad not to give me to them, but he wouldn’t listen. He said I would be fucking soon enough anyway, so he might as well get his fair share.”