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“Shut up, Tyler.” Michael hated this. He hated that he couldn’t turn off his thoughts and obligations and let someone else take the reins for a while.
Hell, fate had already dealt him those cards by taking his brothers away, by offering him a chance to live free of obligation, and he could barely consider it.
Tyler picked up a carton of rice and dumped half onto his plate. “Where are you going to go?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You want my opinion?”
“No.”
Tyler shoveled a bunch of cashew chicken on top of the rice. “You’re getting it anyway. If you want to run, run. But remember that text message from the woods, about who’s the hunter and who’s the prey?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t think you’re cut out to be the latter.”
Was that a compliment? Michael wasn’t sure how to respond.
Tyler kept talking. “I’ve never seen you run from anything. Even when I hated you, I knew you wouldn’t back down.”
“Are you an idiot? We ran from the guy in the woods until Jack stopped us.”
“Yeah, and as soon as you thought Hannah was in danger, you ran back in.”
Michael didn’t have anything to say to that.
“What really happened in the woods?” said Tyler. “Give me details, because you weren’t this keyed up before.”
“I told you.” Michael set his jaw. “The Guide pulled a gun and the fire marshal shot him.”
“Then why were you covered in blood?”
Hunter’s fork went still against the plate. He was watching this conversation like a tennis match.
“It’s not important,” Michael said.
“Fuck that. It is important. What happened?”
Michael didn’t say anything.
o;Well, yes, but.. ” Hannah stopped. Her mother did encourage that, all the time. Hannah had never realized it had anything to do with her choice of occupation. She’d always thought it had more to do with being a working mother while trying to go to school.
“When you enrolled in fire school,” her father continued, “she wanted to forbid it.”
Hannah set her jaw. “She couldn’t have stopped me.”
Her father smiled—the first real smile she’d seen from him in forever. “That’s what I told her.”
Hannah jammed her hands in her pockets. “Don’t try to turn this around, like you’ve been the perfect parent all along, and this has all been some misunderstanding.”
He lost the smile. “That’s not what I’m doing.”
“You expect me to believe that you gave up a job you loved because you didn’t want Mom popping a few Xanax?”
“No, Hannah.” His voice went low and dark. “I chose to be a fire marshal because I didn’t want your mother to leave.”
If her car hadn’t been right there, holding her in place, Hannah might have fallen back a step. She studied his face, looking for any clue that he was exaggerating.
