gold rush [the wilds, toni shalifoe]

chapter 10

Day Nine

"Why did you do it?" Hunter asked Hudson as they sat in his car, his knuckles bruised and bloodied. The dried tracks of tears were present on both of the twins faces, their voices both hoarse from all of the yelling and shouting they had done.

Hudson shrugged, taking a sip of his strawberry milkshake as Hunter cradled her own in her hands. It was something they always did the morning after a game day: get strawberry milkshakes from the local diner that their cousin had once worked at. It was one of the only places in the entire town that didn't seem to have either some connection to the church that Shelby Goodkind's dad ran, or any connection to Riley's family who seemingly had some insight in most things.

"I guess I just wanted him to feel how he made you feel," Hudson admitted after a moment. Hunter nodded, not knowing what to say to that. She couldn't get mad at Hudson for it; she knew he had done what he had done out of love.

Hunter turned her head away from the window as they watched some of the other football players from their school walk by, sending the twins dirty looks as the news had just broke: Riley Black was out for the entire season and the chances of a championship had just drastically decreased because Hunter had broken his heart and Hudson had broken his body.

They were the villains in everyone's story but their own, knowing that while the truth would set them free it would also change their lives in a  way that the twins weren't sure they wanted. Hudson wanted nothing more than anything to scream out the truth from the mountaintops, and Hunter wanted nothing more than to pretend the past few months of her life had never happened.

It turned out they were the villains in one more story too: the eyes of their parents. The truth didn't help the twins to be redeemed in their eyes, but rather added to the list of things that Hunter and Hudson would never be able to get right for their parents.

"Tell them Hunter," Hudson's voice rose slightly as he watched their parents berate her for having such a public and messy breakup, their voices repeating the same things over and over again about how the twins were always trying to ruin their families reputation. "Or I will. I'm sorry, but I will. Riley was abusing her!"

She wanted to, but the words didn't form. So Hudson did it. He told their parents everything just like she had done to him a week before after her breakup with Riley. How he had pushed her once, to how he had put out three cigarettes in one night on her side claiming it was just a "joke". How he had trapped her ankle in a door and caused it to sprain, how he had literally abused her for months and everyone at school had turned a blind eye. It had been obvious that Hunter wasn't that accident prone all of a sudden, but everyone had been so willing to believe the lies that it was all just a coincidence that they didn't stop to consider otherwise.

And their parents didn't care.

"We're sending you away," her mother had told her, three days later as she entered the kitchen that Hudson and Hunter shared. "No negotiations."

Hudson had put up the fight for her that she couldn't do herself. He had yelled, he had argued and he had even begged. It fell on deaf ears, ears that didn't care about separating the twins as they dropped bombshell after bombshell.

"We think it's for the best that both of you leave this town for a while," her father replied, no emotion to his tone. He had always had a softer spot for the twins but it wasn't hard to be softer than their mother considering she often told them that they were the only mistake she'd ever made in her life.

The only thing Hunter knew was promising about this was that they at least were getting sent to the same boarding school - even if it did mean moving to California. She'd always wanted a bit of a beach tan, but certainly not like this. What Hunter didn't know was that after she had stormed out of the house when hearing she was being sent to some "Dawn of Eve" retreat, that her parents had told Hudson he was attending a similar retreat for boys titled "Twilight of Adam".