The Hunter's Angel

Stitches

"I'm totally gonna fail." 

I sighed under my breath at the tenth time Kat had uttered those words since we started studying. 

We had a huge statistics exam tomorrow, the last one before our final, and Kat and I had spent far too many hours studying at my place. We had made good progress, but the new material was brutal, and it was enough to drive Kat crazy with worry. 

I probably should have been worried myself, given how hard the material was, but my mind had been rather preoccupied as of late. 

It had been a little over a week since that mind-spinning night that Hunter had shown up. While I had definitely had ample time to process what had happened, I still wasn't able to erase the sting that remained from feeling like I had been broken all over again. 

Nor could I escape the discomfort inside of me that flared whenever I remembered the pain in Hunter's voice before he left, the words he had spoken that had me questioning everything I was feeling. 

All of it left my head a mess, leaving little room for things I should have been focused on, like this damn statistics exam. 

Dropping my pencil from my aching hand, I grasped Kat's hand before she could do any more damage to her cuticles. The poor girl had been picking at them relentlessly. 

"Babe, you're gonna do just fine," I insisted. "We've been studying for hours, and you've answered almost every practice question correctly. If you fail, I sure as hell am gonna fail too." 

Kat looked at me for a moment and then sighed, squeezing my hand back. "If you say so."

I quirked a brow. "Does that mean you'll stop stressing yourself out and get some damn sleep?" 

"I guess," Kat grumbled with an eye roll, though I could tell she was a little more relaxed as she sent me a crooked grin before slamming her textbook shut. 

She packed up her things before standing up from the floor where we had been studying, and I followed suit, brushing off my jeans as I rose. 

We could have worked at the kitchen island, but in times of desperation, the floor was always the answer. Something about laying on the ground while having an internal panic attack just felt...right.

"You could spend the night if you want," I offered, not wanting her to be out on the road so late. 

Kat's lips settled into a delicate smile. "Thanks, babe, but I really should head back to my place. I need to do some major skincare therapy to decompress." 

I chuckled lightly, pulling her in for a hug. "Just promise you won't touch that textbook for the rest of the night. You need a break." 

"I promise," she groused, squeezing me tight before drawing back. 

After walking her down to her car and promising I'd show up early to class tomorrow for some last-minute cramming, I hopped in the shower for some skin-scalding therapy of my own. 

Turning the heat up all the way, I tried to drown out all of the suffocating thoughts in my mind. Far too many of which consisted of Hunter. 

I had just finished pulling on some pajamas - my favorite oversized shirt and some drawstring shorts - when a clanging noise sounded from outside my apartment, startling me. 

Scrambling over to my door, my jaw nearly fell to the floor as I peered into the peephole. 

"Un-fucking-believable," I muttered under my breath, swinging the door open to see the devil himself standing right outside.