Hunter couldn’t sleep alone for a month. So, I slept with him. Sometimes we kissed. Sometimes we did a little more. Every time, he pulled back.
He threw himself even harder into hockey. All the Storm brothers did. And they started doing everything together. They were always tight, but now they were inseparable. And after a month of sharing the same bed, one night Hunter texted me that he was okay to sleep alone.
You sure?I texted back.
I’ve got my brothers here. That should be enough.
Okay. It was the right thing to do. I knew it was. I was preparing for my future, too. I had Broadway in my sights, and getting attached to sharing a bed with Hunter wasn’t a smart idea.
Long pause before—
Thanks, Princess. I’ll never forget what you did for me.
The text I sent back to him was one word that I hoped conveyed everything he meant to me.
Anytime.
* * *
Hunter
Liam goesinto the room first, followed by Jared, then Max, and then me.
The detective shuts the door and turns toward us before flicking the button to reveal the suspects.
“You men ready?”
The last time we did this, it was a different detective. He asked us the same thing with one distinction: “You boys ready?”
Because we were kids then. Innocent kids who didn’t know what the fuck we were going to do without parents.
But this time, we’re grown-ups. We’ve got houses and money and jobs. All those life things that terrified us so much ten years ago are no longer concerns. And yet, as I stand in the same room I stood in with my three brothers all those years ago, the same emotions flood me.
Rage.
Fear.
Grief.
Just proving that all the money and success and notoriety in the world can’t give us back our father.
But possibly, the man who did take him from us is behind that window. And, maybe this time, we’ll have the chance to get justice and to close the book once and for all on what happened.
The detective raises the partition so that we can see in but the men in the line-up can’t see out.
They stare right at us, though, and it gives me the creeps.
“They can’t see us,” Liam says quietly to the three of us.
“I know,” we all say in the same quick way we answered him last time we were all here.
I scan the line-up. I’d know the killer in my sleep. And yet, despite looking for him relentlessly, I never saw him. And the cops never found him. It was like he disappeared into the woods after shooting Dad and was never seen again.
Until—
“That’s him.” I point at the fourth guy from the left. “Right fucking there.”
Liam’s next to me. His arm’s touching mine, and I feel him flinch. “Fuck, you’re right. That’s definitely him.”
