Page 57 of Hunting Gianna
“You’re really fucking weird, you know that?” she says.
“Yeah,” I answer, grinning. “But you love it.”
She sighs, shaking her head. “God help me, I do.”
The truth is, I have never once in my life believed I’d survive long enough to want anything. Even now, with the wild animal warmth of her curled up against me, the quiet tick of the clock and the aftershocks of violence still buzzing in my teeth, I can’t picture a tomorrow. Not in the way she means it.
The last half an hour she’s grilled me on my future goals, and all I could say with certainty is what she already knew. I wanted her.
She’s now half asleep on my chest, eyelids at half-mast, lips parted, breathing slow and deep. Her hand rests on my stomach, fingers twitching with the dream she’s about to drop into. I could let her sleep, but I don’t want her too.
I tip my glass, let the burn coat my throat, then say, “You ever hear the story about the kid who watched his father strangle his mother to death?”
She doesn’t move, but I feel her pulse speed up where her wrist lies across my belly.
“I’ll take that as a no,” I go on. “I was eight. My father was drunk. My mother tried to hide me, but it was already too late. He’d always been an asshole, but that night he was a fucking devil in a cheap suit.” I flex my fingers around the glass. “He killed her in front of me, slow and careful. She fought hard. You ever see someone try to survive something they know is inevitable?”
She shakes her head, just the tiniest bit, but I know she’s listening.
“I pissed myself,” I say. “I remember it clear as anything. The shame of it. The dark stain down my leg. My father didn’t even see me. When he was done, he wiped off his hands on her dress, went out and never came back. Not for a year anyway. I’d been shipped off to live with my aunt, but when he came back, they gave me back and I had to watch him drink himself half to death until finally he succeeded in dying. I was the only one left.”
Gianna’s hand goes rigid on my stomach. For a second, I think she’ll get up and leave. Instead, she moves closer, curling in like a question mark, face pressed to my chest.
“I grew up in state care after that. My aunt didn’t want me around. Too many mouths to feed, she said,” I continue, because now that I’ve started, I can’t stop. “Bounced from one shithole to another. Learned to take a punch and how to swing a meaner one back. Learned that love is just another word for who gets to hurt you the most.”
The room is so quiet I can hear the blood roaring in my own ears.
“I never thought about dreams,” I say, and my voice is so flat it doesn’t sound like me at all. “Never made sense to, when the next minute was always a question.”
Her breathing is shallow now, her hand curled into a fist against my side. I hate that she’s hurting, hate that I put it there, but I need her to know. I need her to see the bones under the skin, the dark under the paint.
“I wondered,” she whispers, her voice so soft it’s barely more than a ghost. “How you learned to hold on so tight.”
I stare at her, the crooked line of her nose, the bruised swell of her mouth, the blood caked under her nails. She looks like a fucking disaster, and I love her more than anything in the world.
“Because if I let go,” I tell her, “I’d disappear.”
She shakes her head, defiant even now. “You’d never disappear. You’re too much.”
I almost smile. “No such thing as too much.”
She sits up, the blanket pooling around her hips, and her eyes are wet. I hate that I made her cry. I reach for her face, thumb catching the tear as it slides down. Instead of wiping it away, I drag my tongue over it, tasting salt and skin and the sharp, bright edge of something new.
“Don’t cry for me,” I say, voice barely more than a rumble. “You taste delicious.”
She laughs, the sound broken but perfect. “You’re such an asshole,” she says, but her eyes never leave mine.
I lean in, forehead to hers, breathing her in. “Yeah,” I whisper. “But I’m your asshole.”
She wipes her nose on the back of her hand, then kisses me, the move awkward and messy and exactly right.
We sit there, holding each other, the silence thick but not uncomfortable. I run my hands down her back, slow and easy, mapping the ridges and valleys of every curve.
She’s still whimpering a little when I pull her into my lap, but it doesn’t make her soft. If anything, it sharpens the line of her jaw, makes the blue in her eyes starker, brighter. She blinks at me, confusion and awe warring with some new, bottomless hunger.
I watch her like a cat watches a half-crushed mouse. The urge to finish her off is matched only by the thrill of watching her realize how much she loves being with me.
“Do you understand what this is?” I ask her.
