Hunt Me Down {boyxboy} ✓

Chapter 38

A/N: People have complained lately that they don’t get notified about new updates so I’ll be tagging a few of you who read and comment in the first comment of this chapter. I probably wouldn’t know that you read if you only vote, sorry!

Good idea or bad? Should I do it again?

 

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Nathaniel’s POV

As I walked into our house, I was still shaking my head at the reaction I had towards Hunter’s parting words.

I might just let you?

What was wrong with me?

Something must’ve been wrong; I would never give such a retort, not even in my own head.

“Nathaniel, is that you, sweetie?”

Mom’s voice came from the living room. It almost sounded sincerely speculative; almost. She had obviously decided to pretend she’d never been spying on us through the kitchen window and I silently agreed to play along; it would be easier that way than to confront her.

“Yes, mom, it’s me,” I replied, taking off my jacket and hanging it above the shopping bags.

“Would you come here for a moment?”

I was already walking her way when she asked that; I knew that she would.

She sat on the couch, legs crossed, and with an opened magazine in one of her hands. If I didn’t know her better, I’d think that she’d spent at least the last ten minutes reading it and only stopped when she heard me come in.

“Sit down, sweetie,” she patted the empty spot right beside her, but I sat down at the other end of the couch. “I heard a commotion outside. Was something going on at our neighbors?” She slid my way barely allowing any distance between us.

“There were two policemen at the Harris’s. They thought Hunter robbed a nearby store, but they were wrong,” I gave her the basics quickly, before she could interrupt. Her blue eyes rounded not from surprise, but from excitement. I’d only finished my second sentence and the questions rained down on me:

“Why did they think it was Hunter Harris? Did they have a witness? Do you think he has a record – oh, I wouldn’t be surprised; I think he has tattoos – so he must have one. Do you know if he does? When did it happen? And why did they decide that it wasn’t him? Or did they go away because of the lack of evidence; policemen can be so sloppy! Even from the window, I could see…”

She slapped her hands over her mouth, realizing she’d given herself away. My mother was fast to recover though; only a moment later, she leaned back in the couch, crossed her legs one over the other and opened the magazine.

“Well?” She asked after a minute or so of silence. “Aren’t you going to reply?”

“Erm… I don’t know why they thought it could be Hunter; maybe they had a witness,” I began, attempting to remember everything she’d asked, but ‘forgetting’ to reply to the part about his record. Mom loved a good turning a new page story as long as the people involved lived far, far away from her and there was no chance of her ever meeting them. Besides, did Hunter really turn a new page or was he stuck at the end of the same one? “And they left because he has an alibi.”

“Really?” Her voice sounded calculatingly disinterested.

“Yes.” I was postponing the inevitable with that one-word reply. She would ask. There was no way she wouldn’t ask about Hunter’s alibi.