Huntsman by Cambria Hebert
16
Virginia
Tears slipped across my forearms,saturating the colorful quilt spread across my bed. I lay facedown, my hair creating a barrier between my sadness and the rest of the world, further hiding me as if I weren’t already nearly invisible.
I couldn’t regret the things I’d said because they were things I truly felt. But I did not want to fight with my brother.
And so I cried. Cried for the carefree teenagers we used to be. Cried for my parents who tragically died too young. For Neo who carried around suffocating guilt that trapped him nearly as bad as my paralyzed lower half did me.
Seven years had passed, but in many ways, we still lived on the day a freak car accident altered everything forever. I couldn’t blame Neo solely for where we were today. It wasn’t fair to feel that he locked me up in here like a villain.
My older brother sacrificed so much for me. Giving up dreams of college, travel, and a life well spent all for petty theft, living in the Grimms, and using every dime he had to make sure I had the best care he could give.
I might not have a state-of-the-art wheelchair or reside in some fancy facility with the best equipment, but what I did have was wonderful and more than some people could wish for.
I’d probably sounded ungrateful to him. Selfish. As if I weren’t thankful for all the doctors and research, for the hope that he’d sometimes shouldered on his own that I would walk again.
That doesn’t mean letting go of your own wants so he can have his.
My thoughts were an endless tug-of-war drenched in tears that wouldn’t stop.
Probably why I didn’t notice the extra weight suddenly on my bed. It wasn’t until the strands of hair clinging to my tears blew back with a very loud snort that I did.
Jolting up onto my forearm, I blinked wide, damp-lashed eyes at the intruder. “Snort!”
The English bulldog wiggled his entire body upon hearing his name, a few more loud snuffs and snorts breaking past his exaggerated underbite and smooshed nose.
A fat, wet tongue slurped up my cheek, and I giggled. The dog’s hair was super short but silky soft, and his head was wide as it pushed against my palm while I scratched him.
“I haven’t seen you in so long,” I told him, rubbing his ear. He licked me again, and I squealed.
“Give me a name,” a gruff, dark voice demanded.
Oh, that was right. Snort couldn’t have come on his own.
“Earth,” I announced as if we all didn’t know the dark-headed, glowering man standing there at the side of the mattress.
Impatient, he crossed his arms over his chest, expression growing even more threatening. “Give me the name.”
“The name?” I asked, swiping some of the hair away from my face. My back was getting a cramp from being twisted around in this position.
“Who made you cry?”
Oh. I guess he’d noticed. “No one.”
“Was someone here?” he demanded. “What kind of security does this place have? If you won’t tell me, I’ll go find the head of staff—”
He started away, and I struggled to sit up and rotate my lower body. “Wait!” I yelled, dropping back onto my side. Snort pawed at me as if he was trying to help.
I grunted in irritation, pushing up to try again. Suddenly, my whole body flipped, and I hit my back with a rush of air bursting from my lungs.
A stare ripe with intensity loomed down, my body bracketed by leather-covered arms, caged in by a power that left me breathless but the opposite of trapped. “W-what are you doing?”
“Helping you sit up.”
“I can’t sit up with you… hovering.”
“Who was here?”
“What makes you think someone was here?”
His tongue seemed very pink against the white lines of his teeth as it dragged across. “Maybe it was the fact that the sound of your sobs was torturing my eardrums when I walked in.”
I felt my face flush, heat rushing to my cheeks. “Well, no one invited you!” I snapped. How embarrassing.
“Fine.” He started to draw away, and just the withdrawal of his overwhelming intensity left me feeling panicked.
“It was Neo!” I rushed to say, reaching out to grasp his forearm.
He paused, eyes narrowing on my face.
“Neo was here,” I admitted in a much softer tone. I felt my lower lip quiver, emotion coming over me once again. “We got into a fight.”
Releasing his arm, I pushed up onto my elbows, preparing to push myself up the rest of the way. I didn’t have to, though, because his arm slid around, warm palm splaying across my back to lift.
I wouldn’t say I was touch-deprived, but somehow, that single touch made me feel I was. A thousand little tingles raced along my body, drawing out sensations I didn’t know. Part of me always worried that since part of my body couldn’t feel, I’d somehow be… muted. As if the ability to be affected by simple touch would somehow become void.
But in this moment, I was not muted. I was alive and on fire, burning from the inside out with tingles that echoed throughout me, creating wants and needs I worried I might never know.
Oh, but to know them. To discover that part of me was indeed working felt like a wish I’d unknowingly made in my heart had suddenly come true.
His tug was a little more zealous than it needed to be, and with me sitting there all stirred up with unexpected feelings, I had no guard to catch myself. So I fell into him, my upper body colliding with his, my forehead bumping along his collarbone.
He stiffened, clearly overshooting his intent, and began to shift back. I threw my arms up, wrapping them around his neck and sliding my face to press into the side of his neck. Earth froze, clearly caught off guard by the sudden hug I’d claimed.
His arms fell to his sides, hands resting on the mattress as he supported both his weight and mine. I sniffled just slightly against him, overcome by more emotion, sensitivity vibrating my nerves. Even in the midst of my sudden awakening, I felt comforted and somehow protected. The raw hurt of my fight with Neo ebbed a little, muffled by this man who smelled of bread and cigarettes.
The skin on his neck was smooth. It felt warm against the tip of my nose. His stillness only amplified everything I felt being this close to him. This touch was far different than that of my brother, doctors, and friends.
The tears on my face dried themselves against the warm cocoon of his body, and my heart beat steady with a relaxing rhythm. I knew I should pull away. I worried that he was completely offended I would dare latch on like this even as he didn’t hug me back.
I pulled back ever so slightly, my nose nudging against the underside of his jaw. “Earth?” I whispered, feeling exposed. “Do you want me to let go now?”
He was quiet for a few minutes. The entire time he thought, I kept myself tucked in. I worried perhaps he did want me there but didn’t know how to say it.
His voice stopped me. Gruff and low like sandpaper going against the grain. “You’re fine, sprite. Just take what you need.”
Those words almost ripped a squeal out of me as millions of big-winged butterflies took flight in my belly. But I held the sound in, instead tightening my arms around his neck to press my face in anew.
He still didn’t hug me back. In fact, his body stayed rigid almost as though this kind of touch were just as new to him as it was to me.
But it didn’t matter because he gave everything without having to move.