Hunt Me! I Crave the Chase (Spooky Boys #3)

Trees whirred by the windows, painting the horizon black as the wheels stuttered over murky, mushy fallen leaves. Above, dark gray storm clouds climbed across the sun, blocking it from view for a moment before splitting apart once again.

“Why exactly did you do that?” Blair called me out after a beat of silence. “I always thought you were like…I dunno–”

“What?”

“Perfect?” Blair shrugged a shoulder. “But if you were perfect, why secretly act like such a dick?”

“I…” I wasn’t even sure how to answer that. With Martha I’d been better. I’d cared about her. But not the way I was supposed to. We’d dated for a while, off and on, and it’d been great for appearances. Lydia had liked it, and it took the attention off of Blair and his gay-scapades. Which he’d thought Lydia didn’t know about but she usually did. “I guess I didn’t realize I was being a dick,” I admitted, cheeks hot. “Fuck.” My stomach churned.

“And now you do?”

Did I ever love Martha?

No.

The answer came quickly enough I immediately felt sick.

“Yeah.” I picked at my seatbelt, wondering how the hell this had gotten so turned around. “Mutt is…different. But I’m different now too.”

“No shit.”

“No, I mean…” Man. Just how many lies am I fucking keeping? “Before I dated mostly to keep Lydia off my back—and to keep her attention away from you.” Blair made a wheezy sound.

“What?” his voice was flat.

“Whenever I had a girlfriend she’d get so sucked up into schmoozing her family, she’d lay off you for a while, you know? And it just…felt easier. Made me what she wanted me to be. I was…desirable or whatever. When I had a lot of attention it meant she did too. She liked that.” God, this was harder than I thought. “Plus the girls didn’t mind. Most of them only dated me because they wanted to brag about fucking me.”

“That is so fucked up I don’t even know what to say,” Blair pulled over to the side of the road. The same way I’d pulled to the side for Collin when we’d had our little heart to heart. “Give me a second to think. Because what the fuck, Jeffrey.”

“Right.”

I stared at the clouds some more. Stared at the shadowy gaps between the trees and the mountains that flickered behind them, fog colored and smoky with the late autumn chill. The window was cold to the touch, and it soothed my feverish skin as I pressed against it, leaving a streak of clear glass within the condensation.

“Let’s start with the obvious. You…” Blair shook his head, staring resolutely forward as he formed the words rattling inside his head. “You didn’t like the attention?” When he twisted to look at me, his pale green eyes were wide and hurt. The but you said you did, was implied. He didn’t need to say it for me to know what he was thinking.

I wanted to lie.

I wanted to pretend like I hadn’t just blown the top off Pandora’s fucking box.

But…

Blair was strong enough for the truth now. Maybe he hadn’t been before, but he was a different person now, just like I was. Maybe eight-year-old Blair couldn’t have handled this. Or sixteen-year-old Blair. Or even twenty-year-old Blair. But the Blair in front of me wasn’t the same person he’d been back then—angry, bitter, always scared.

This Blair had decided to live. He’d taken his first steps on his own, and he’d found who he was—through trial and error—but still.

He was strong enough.

And maybe…just maybe, I was strong enough too.

If I didn’t end this torture who would? This was a prison of my own making. I was a guard as well as an inmate, and it was finally time I felt some peace.

So I tapped into my inner Mutt and told the truth. Bluntly. To the point.

“No.” My heart skittered. “I hated the fucking attention.”

“You hated the?—”

“All the eyes, and the–the fucking…false niceties. No one fucking liked me. They didn’t. How could they? I wasn’t even a person. Just a fucking puppet Lydia made. A card trick to impress her friends. Stupid and fragile, and fake.”