He stayed quiet for a moment. Then he turned his head and lifted his gaze to my face again. “Fair enough.” He rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “My siblings and I… we didn’t exactly have the greatest childhood. I know that sounds like total bullshit because we’ve got all the money in the world, but it’s true what they say. You can rent happiness for a while if you have enough money, but you can’t buy it.”
“What happened?” I asked, eyes widening.
“I feel fucking dumb even saying it,” he said, hands clenching into fists at his side. “After what you told me about your father and that piece of shit who hurt you, it just seems… trivial.”
“Just because one person’s problem isn’t technically as bad as another person’s problem, it doesn’t mean they have no right to complain,” I replied. “Life isn’t a pissing contest to see who has it worst.”
His lips flattened. “Yeah, I guess so,” he muttered. “Anyway… it was our dad. I guess you could say he’s got anger issues.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“No. That’s the thing. That’s why it sounds so stupid,” he said. “He would just snap without warning sometimes. Throw things. Punch holes in the wall right next to us. Stuff like that.”
“That’s mental abuse,” I said. “He might not have physically hurt you, but he still terrorized you by acting like that. Especially if you were just little kids.”
He nodded. “It was like walking on eggshells all the time. I tried to hide Lindsay and Adam from it, so they wouldn’t have to see him going nuts like that, but it was almost impossible, because I could never tell when he was going to snap,” he said. “Sometimes a big thing would be fine with him. Like when Adam accidentally set the hedges on fire with some stupid fireworks. Dad just laughed at that, like it was nothing. But then at other times, something tiny would set him off. Like one of us having our elbows on the table during dinner. He’d suddenly start throwing plates and yelling as if we’d burned the whole fucking house down and killed his best friend.”
“That must’ve been terrible for you. All of you,” I said softly.
“It got better as we got older, because we knew he wouldn’t touch us, so he didn’t scare us as much anymore. But it affected the way we turned out, for sure. I turned into… me. You know what I’m like.” His mouth pinched at the corners for a second. “Adam sort of retreated into himself. He spent most of his time in his room reading, and he turned into a giant geek. And Lindsay… well, she went a bit wild.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Hunter said, lifting a palm. “She was sweet. Kind. Loving. But she had another side to her, and it got worse as she got older.”
“How so?”
“She rebelled a lot. Smoked. Drank. Started sleeping with guys when she was only fourteen. I know I sound like a hypocrite because I drink and fuck too, but she was my little sister, you know? I wanted to protect her from that sort of shit, because I know what guys can be like. I didn’t want anyone to hurt her.”
“I get it.”
“Anyway, when she turned sixteen, she got worse. She had an affair with a married man in his twenties. Then another one. Plus a bunch of other random guys. And all that time, she was dating one of my best friends. Kairo Belmont.”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah, I think I remember someone telling me about that. That she was with Kairo, I mean.”
Hunter swallowed audibly. “At first I thought the stuff about her cheating on him was just typical rumor mill bullshit,” he said. “Even though she was popular, she had lots of enemies, because people were jealous of her.”
“Understandable.”
“So anyway, we were having dinner together at home one night. Dad was out at some business event with Mom, and Adam was out too, with some friends. I figured I could take the chance to talk to Lindsay. Tell her what people were saying about her.”
My forehead wrinkled. “What happened?”
“She laughed at me. Told me to mind my own fucking business. I told her it was my business, because I wanted to keep her safe, and if people were going around spreading this sort of shit about her, someone might want to hurt her. Like the wife of one of the married guys, or something like that.” He stopped to clear his throat, but his voice came out husky anyway. “Anyway… she told me it was actually true. All the rumors. After that we got into a fight. A huge one.”
“Oh.”
“It lasted for ages. We yelled at each other. Insulted each other.” He let out a short sigh. “We didn’t actually mean any of the shit we said, but we were just so fucking mad. You know what I mean?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I do.”
“She ended up telling me she was sick of all the bullshit in Royal Falls, and she was going to leave. I said—” Hunter stopped abruptly. His jaw was trembling.
“What did you say?” I asked.
He looked away. “I grabbed my coat and told her I was going out. Then I said, ‘I hope you’re serious about leaving, and I hope you’re gone by the time I come home so I don’t have to deal with your shit anymore’. She said she would be gone by then. So then I said, ‘Good. I hope you never come back’.”
My limbs suddenly felt heavy. “Was that the same night—”