'Love' With You

7. HUNTER SMASH! [H]

C H A P T E R  S E V E N 

Hunter Kingsley

I was beyond enraged.

I could feel the blood pulsing harshly through my veins, my hands clenching and unclenching in a poor attempt to calm myself down. I just wanted to break shit, just to get it all out. Do something to get rid of the anger clawing away at my chest.

But I couldn’t.

Because everything Noah said was true.

I had become the world’s biggest douchebag, I had stopped caring and I had been pushing them all away. It just seemed like everything everybody did was wrong and was done just to antagonize and infuriate me. It was like there was something inside of me that just made me feel so angry all the time. No matter what I did, it never went away. Always sitting there, screwing around with my head, blurring that line between right and wrong. I could never make it leave, never seem to subdue it: it just made me hurt everybody I seemed to care about and I fucking hated it.

Yet all I could think about at this very second was the fact that all I really wanted to do was go back in there and pound the shit out of my best friend.

And out of everything: that hurt the fucking most.

There was something that made me feel better though. Something I recently found that made me forget about everything else and just let me be myself. The Hunter from before all the anger and resentment: the Hunter I craved to be again.

I shoved my hand into my pocket and pulled out my phone.

12.24 Usual place in 10?

A few seconds later and my phone beeped in reply.

12.24 Usual place in 10.

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

Sitting by the lake beside my house, I stared out into the woods residing on the opposite side of the lake.

I remembered being in those woods many summers ago. How the night seemed so dark and black but I never felt scared beside the warm crackle of the fire as I roasted marshmallows, sharing ghostly stories and hearty laughs with my family. The love and warmth of those years caused my heart to twist in my chest painfully. No matter how much I wished to be back in those times, I knew it was hopeless. We were too far down the path we chose to ever really be able to go back.

A rustle in the bushes brought me back to the bitter reality of the world I lived in now.

A couple of steps and the space to my left was filled with a person that helped me to forget every tangled thought that clogged up my entire being.

“Rough day?” Was the soft question that broke through the five minutes we sat in silence, content in each other’s company.

“Not as rough as yours apparently.”

“Meh,” A light brush against my arm from a careless shrug, “Nothing too horrifying.”

“Obviously the others didn’t think so, they called a bloody conference this morning as if we were discussing the war in Iraq. Things built up and I just flipped my shit. I punched him, Clare. I punched my best friend and I didn’t ev-” I stopped myself as my breaths came in short, staggering gasps, the shame of my actions catching up to me was almost too much to bear. My chest felt like it was going to cave in from an ominous weight pressing down on it like my ribs were nothing but glass: so easy to shatter and break.

“Since when did you start saying bloody?” A light giggle made me breathe a sigh of relief, I wasn’t ready to talk about what gory thoughts were running through my head just yet.