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His subconscious was screaming at him. DUDE. You are an IDIOT.
She was probably laughing about him with this other guy.
The room was so silent that Hunter was sure Nick had fallen back to sleep. Tension still had him by the throat, but he started to doze himself.
Nick’s voice caught him. “Hey.” His voice was rough with almost sleep. “I didn’t mean to see the text about what happened with your grandfather. You didn’t say that earlier.”
Now Hunter was fully awake again. “It’s fine.”
“I won’t tell—”
“I said it’s fine,” he snapped. This whole situation was just one big reminder of all his failures. Besides, Hunter didn’t want to think about his home stuff, not now, in the dark, lying on the floor of someone else’s room.
Then he realized that he probably shouldn’t be a total shit in someone else’s room, either.
“Sorry,” he said. “Long day. I really . . . I just don’t want to talk about it.”
“I get it.” Another pause. “Gabriel can come on like a freight train, but he doesn’t hate you.”
Hunter wasn’t too sure about that.
“Chris, either.”
“Really? So Chris turning the water ice cold while I was in the shower was friendly?”
“Gabriel paid him twenty bucks to do that.”
Hunter smiled.
Nick added, “And then he felt like a moron when I told him he could have just turned off the hot water in the basement . . .”
Hunter laughed softly.
And all of a sudden it nailed home how lonely he’d been. The Merricks had each other. He had no one.
He lost the smile. The air in the room suddenly felt heavy. Hunter looked back at the ceiling.
Nick sighed, then rolled up on one arm. “Do you want some space? I can go crash with Gabriel.”
Hunter had no idea what the right answer to that was.
“Seriously, man,” said Nick. “I can feel your tension in the air.”
That made Hunter look over. “Really?”
“It woke me up.”
Hunter looked back at the ceiling. “Sorry.” He paused. “My dad always used to say that Air Elementals were the ones you really had to watch out for.”
Nothing but silence for a moment. Then, “I think it’s a breathing thing. People breathe differently when they’re stressed.” Another pause. “It’s new. I’ve only recently been able to sense emotion that way.”
Hunter remembered a day when Nick had gotten into a fight with Gabriel and made him stop breathing, and Hunter thought maybe his father had been right. “My dad told me about this one guy who always knew if someone was lying, using that same thing, I think. He said he was the strongest Air Elemental he’d ever seen. The guy could jump across buildings, like in Spider-Man, you know?”
“Now that would be useful.” Nick sounded intrigued, but then he hesitated. “What happened to him?”
His father had never said specifically—but if he had known the guy, he hadn’t known him long. Hunter looked away. “I don’t know.”
“Yeah, you do.”
