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They’d stopped again, and she was staring up at him. Her eyes were a little wide, her breathing a little quick. There was a slight flush of pink across her cheeks.
“Scared?” he said, amused.
“Yes,” she said. That flush deepened. “A little.”
“I’ve never caught a gun wandering the woods yet.”
She shoved him again. “Don’t tease.”
He started walking before he had to analyze all this touching too closely. “Sorry. I’ll be nice.”
She fell silent again, and he bit at the inside of his lip, sure this silence meant she was done with the conversation, that she was ready to find some other way to spend her afternoon.
“So,” she said quietly.
Yep. This would be it. Hunter didn’t even know how to prolong the interaction. He didn’t look at her. “So.”
“Your dad has a lot of weapons.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know about a lot . . .”
omeone was still back there. He could feel it. He’d been feeling it the entire walk home, but sometime during the last fifteen minutes, they’d drawn close.
They’d never be able to wait him out. He knew that from experience. He had patience in spades and could sit here all night, letting the air and the earth feed him information. His talents weren’t strong enough to demand answers from the elements—yet—so he had to wait, to pay attention to what they were willing to offer.
But if he missed dinner again, his dad would be pissed.
A branch snapped underfoot about twenty feet behind where he was hiding.
Hunter eased out a breath and waited. Another branch, a rustle of leaves.
It seemed like one person, which was surprising. None of them ever had the guts to face him alone—not anymore, anyway. Freshman year, sure, before he’d come home with one bruise too many and his father had taught him to put up a fight.
This year had started differently. Jeremy Rasmussen had been the first one to find out the hard way. On the second day of school, he’d walked into the boy’s bathroom and slammed Hunter face-first into the tile wall.
Hunter had slammed him face-first into a mirror.
Jeremy had earned a broken nose, stitches across one cheek, and a chipped tooth. Hunter had earned two days’ suspension and some greater regard from his classmates.
But they didn’t leave him alone, though they wouldn’t mess with him at school. No, now his walk home was a challenge. A gauntlet. They kept coming up with more creative ways to screw with him.
He kept coming up with more creative paths to travel.
Like this afternoon. He’d turned his walk from one mile to three, cutting through the dairy farm at the end of his road, easing between fence boards until he reached the acre of corn that led to the woods backing his parents’ property.
Just because he could fight didn’t mean he wanted to.
The crunching underbrush stopped, but Hunter couldn’t look without giving away his hiding place. He held his breath again, wondering what their weapon would be this time. Bricks? A two-by-four? Once they’d actually thrown cow manure at him. Idiots. Maybe one day they’d shock him with something effective.
He let a breath out, drew one in, and held it.
Another step, another snap of underbrush. A breeze kicked up and whistled through the leaves overhead, whispering across his cheeks. He focused, waiting for information about his pursuer, but the wind cared for nothing more than the sunlight and the trees. He touched his fingers to the ground, and the earth confirmed it was one person.
One person, drawing close.
Hunter braced himself. Time slowed down, an eternity passing before the next crunch of leaves.
His eyes registered movement beyond the edge of the trees, and then he was all motion. When he fought, his brain tracked the activity like stop-action photography. The toe of a boot, a denim-covered knee, a powder-blue shirt, a flash of brown hair. His arm, flying out to block any weapon. His leg, hooking an ankle to bring his attacker to the ground. A gasp and a shriek and an oof.
