Saving Him • editing/rewriting

thirty four-look on up

"I look on up into the sky, and wonder why I put a filter between beauty and my eyes. I look on up into your eyes, it's time I put down my devices and I start to live my life."
~Relient K

Chapter Thrity Four

Hunter's POV

I knew it was coming. I was prepared to make up an excuse to not speak to everyone about my past, my reason for being here but I was caught off guard. Hearing Katie's story, of what she went through, all I wanted was to put my arms around her and hold her, to tell her that she was so strong. She did so well. All of us went through something of course but we had each other a long time before Katie joined our group. Tom and Lola knew each other since they were little and Lauren and I had been more or less friends since high school began. Katie had to deal with a majority of her problems all by herself.

She distracted me, she always did. Not in a bad way, in the kind of way that gets your mind off everything and focus all your attention on her. I had gotten too used to having Katie around to take my mind off the shit fest that was my mind. She impacted all of or lives but I think I was the one who she impacted most.

I want nothing more than to tell Katie everything. The things that I had bottled up for so many years. I wanted to tell Tom, Lauren, Lola. I trusted them more than I trusted anyone else in the world. But I was scared out of my mind that if I did, I would scare them off and I would be left alone. That would truly destroy me.

I guess it was pretty stupid of me to run out of the room like that, I should've just made up an excuse even if sounded fake. Now I shed a blindly bright spotlight on me and my 'mysterious' past. They would surely ask me about it.

I growled frustratedly as I slumped my body down onto the bench where Katie and I sat at her first therapy session. I came here sometimes to think. It helped me calm down just thinking of Katie's laughing face that day. And it would surely work today. As I rested my elbows on my knees, I buried my head in my hands and squeezed my eyes shut hoping to escape reality even just for a split second.

"Hunter." I snapped my head up at the sound of Katie's voice. She stood in front of me panting, trying to catch her breath.

"Katie." I said back, not surprised that she ran after me.

She walked towards me and took a seat next to me on the bench. There was a moment of silence as I stared at her, taking in every little detail of her face. I noticed a strand of hair had fallen from behind her ear and I reached out to gently tuck it back. That made her finally turn and look at me.

"Hunter, do you like me?" She asked.

I was taken aback. I was sure she was wanting to ask me a lot of questions but I didn't expect it to be that. I opened my mouth to answer her question but she spoke again.

"Because I like you, Hunter. A lot. So much that it consumes me. All I can think about is you, day in and day out. The first thing I think of in the morning is you and the last thing I think of before I fall asleep is you. Even in my dreams, you're there. It's stupid and naive for me to think that it's love when I'm only 18 but this feeling I have for you is sure as hell close to it." She said.
"And to see you hurting like this, to have all this bottled up pain inside of you that you're not letting out, not even to me, is killing me." Her voice broke at the end of the sentence and before I knew it, tears were falling down her face like raindrops.