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

“I’ll do better,” I promised, huffing softly into Harry’s hair.

“Okay,” he said, wilting like he’d lost all his steam. He didn’t question our purchases, just simply clung close.

“Now let’s go get a phone.”

I almost hit Mutt with my car. It was an accident—and to be fair, it was dark as fuck out by the time I pulled onto the street to head home from Blair’s half-finished restaurant. I’d gone over to help them set up after my shift at the magic shop had ended, and I was still reeling from the conversation I’d overheard at the end of the night.

“Do you think it worked?” Blair had said, voice low. He and Richard had been in the back room unpacking some of the boxes that had arrived.

“I think so,” Richard replied, rustling around like he’d just cut through tape. “He seems happier.”

“My therapist says it might help, you know. To give him something to do.” Blair’s voice was quiet, muted, like all the life had been sucked out of it and replaced with anxiety. “I mean…this is weird for him.”

“It’s weird for everyone.”

“But him especially.” More rustling.

Weird was officially becoming my least favorite word.

I held my breath, holding incredibly still. It was a wonder Richard hadn’t said anything about me still being here. I’d always just assumed vampires could hear heartbeats like wolves could. But maybe their senses were more muted?

Still, I should go.

I knew I should go.

Because I had a feeling I knew who they were talking about—and that this conversation was not for me.

“You know…I walked in on him—uh.” Blair’s voice grew even quieter. Difficult to hear. It was a wonder I could eavesdrop at all. “I dunno. It was his first week in town? When he was still job hunting. And he didn’t see me—and he was just…he was just?—”

“What?”

“He was shaking, and curled up in this awful little ball and he looked like total dogshit. Like he was crying—” I could remember that day with sickening clarity. I’d just finished applying to Avery’s shop. It’d been the first night I felt like I was being watched, and the walls had closed in on me, Elmwood too small—too much—too familiar. I felt like a ghost here, surrounded by people who knew me but didn’t, by places that had been home once but weren’t.

It’d felt like I was dying. I couldn’t get a single breath in. Everything was too bright, too loud, too much. No tears had been shed but it felt like they needed to. Like even my eyes were broken, and my goddamn body was betraying me.

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t?—

I’d been tempted to call Blair for help, but…hadn’t known how.

Hadn’t known how to be this much of a mess when he was around.

Hadn’t wanted to show him my cracks.

Apparently he’d seen them anyway. Which was something I’d suspected, if his thinly veiled questions about therapy were anything to go by. I just…I guess it hadn’t occurred to me that he’d actually seen me mid-panic attack.

“I was just trying to check in on him, you know? And I should’ve gone in there…but I—” Blair’s voice was hollow. “I didn’t know what to do. Because I’d never seen him do that. And I got the feeling he wouldn’t want me there, not while he was hurting.”

He was right.

It was why I hadn’t ended up calling him.

I wouldn’t have wanted that.

And I hated that he knew that.

I hated that he knew me well enough that he understood as much as I loved him—and I did, more than anything—sometimes looking at him reminded me of the worst times of my life. He was a walking trigger, sending me spinning and quaking, like a colt on new, wobbly legs.

“He does better when he feels important, you know?” Blair’s voice was gruff.