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My breathing is stuttering and I’m shaking like a leaf.
“Cat.” Hunter’s harsh voice snaps my gaze back to his.
“S-someone’s out there.” I dart my eyes to the window. “I saw a sh-shadow.”
His jaw hardens and his eyes become alert as he stares out the window. In the next moment, Hunter ushers me to a door in the kitchen and he practically drags me down the stairs to the basement. I feel numb, like I’m not really in my body, as I’m shuffled to a steel door. After keying in a number on the keypad, Hunter drags me inside and straight to a chair in a corner.
He squats in front of me. “Stay in here,” he orders. Pointing to one of the computer monitors set on a big desk across the room, he continues. “Don’t open the door unless you see me on the screen.” He shakes me gently when I don’t respond. “Cat,” he barks my name. “Baby, are you listening?”
“Y-yes,” I croak.
“Only my face, okay? I’m going to go check things out.”
When he stands, I scramble to my feet and clutch his arm. “No!” I shriek, wincing at the desperate sound. “Don’t leave me. You can’t go out there. What if they hurt you? Stay here with me. Please, Hunter. We’ll call the cops.”
His face twists painfully, but he gently pushes me back into the chair.
“Nothing will happen to me, Cat.” He holds up the gun. “I have protection.”
Hunter is very much capable of protecting himself. Not only is he proficient at using a gun, he works out daily and has a black belt in two different martial arts. Knowing this, it still doesn’t alleviate my fear of him getting hurt. There’s always the possibility that someone will have more skills than him.
I squeeze my eyes shut, blocking out the image of Hunter lying in the grass, blood soaking the dirt beneath him, and his eyes staring sightlessly at the star-filled sky.
“Baby, look at me.” I open my eyes and get snared in Hunter’s. “I’ll be okay as long as I know you’re safe in this room. If I feel like I’m in danger, I’ll come back to the house and come straight to you.”
It’s the best concession I’m going to get. No matter how much I plead with Hunter, I know he won’t listen. He has this unreserved need to protect me at all costs. While I love that about him, it also scares me because I’m absolutely certain he’d put his own life on the line to protect me. The thing is though, I would do the same for him. We’d both fall apart if something happened to the other.
“Good girl,” he says when I nod, then presses a hard kiss against my lips. “Only my face, okay?”
With a knot the size of a bowling ball stuck in my throat, I nod again. “Please be careful.”
“You know I will.”
Standing, he walks to the steel door. It bangs loudly when he slams it shut behind him. As soon as the lock automatically engages, I rush over to the bank of computers and sit in one of the chairs. Looking from screen to screen, I don’t relax until I spot Hunter in the kitchen. He’s holding his gun up with one hand and rests the butt of it in his other.
I keep my eyes glued to the screen as he slowly walks across the room. I’m forced to switch to another monitor when he enters the dining room where the back door is. Although the video has audio, not a sound comes through the speaker as he opens the door and steps outside.
On another screen, Hunter slowly descends the steps of the back porch. The porch light is still off, but the cameras are equipped with night vision.
When Hunter suddenly takes off running, I tense in my chair and all the air in my lungs whooshes out. One minute I see him on the edge of the camera and the next, he’s gone. I look at each screen we have outside, but no matter how much I wish it, he doesn’t reappear. My airway becomes blocked and tingles form on my scalp. I clutch the edge of the desk and lean over it to look closer at the screens, as if I can mentally command him to appear.
Dark memories try to worm their way past the formidable walls I’ve built in my head. Memories I’ve buried so deep, they’d burn if they saw the light of day.
I strengthen those walls, adding steel barriers in front of them and pouring concrete in the small cracks trying to form. I can’t let those memories out. If I do, I know deep down, my mind will fracture, and I’m afraid there will be no piecing it back together.
Tears pool in my eyes and leak down my cheeks the longer I look at the screens and don’t see Hunter. It feels like my soul is oozing from my pores as I’m forced to wait. I keep conjuring up horrific scenarios of what could be happening to him, and it’s driving me insane.
I should never have let him go out there. I should have made him stay in the safe room with me. In here, nothing can get to us. In here, we’re completely safe.
What feels like hours later, but could only be minutes, Hunter finally reappears on the camera centered on the back porch. He looks whole and unharmed as he walks up the steps, the gun resting at his side, and goes to the back door. I sag in my chair, covering my face with my hands as deep sobs wrack my body. Nausea rolls in my stomach, and I’m forced to swallow back the bile.
“Cat,” Hunter’s voice calls through the speaker. “Open the door.”
I scramble up from the chair and smash the required numbers on the panel beside it. It takes me three times to get it right because my hands are shaking so badly.
Once the door is wide enough for me to squeeze through, I throw myself into Hunter’s arms. He catches me, and it’s only once I feel him holding me that I truly believe he’s safe.
“Shh, baby, I’ve got you,” he croons in my ear. “Everything’s okay.”
