Page 98 of Reverie

Misha glares at me for a long moment before returning to his phone.

The ride is silent for more than half an hour. Once we hit the road that Misha’s compound claims, I decide to say something.

He opens his mouth, ready to needle me again when I cut him off.

“You think I’m some lazy asshole. You think I’m selfish and entitled.”

He raises his eyebrow, and I want to punch him again. But I promised Winter I wouldn’t get into any more fights with the Ukrainian.

“But I am a human. That was the thing that my father wanted to kill the most—my humanity.”

His face changes, and he looks somber.

“We’ll take them all down,” I say.

Leo shifts in the front seat, but I know he’s with me.

After entering Misha’s home, Jared and Misha go in one direction, and Leo heads off in the opposite.

“Where are you going?” I ask him. He doesn’t respond and I’m too tired to press more.

Left standing alone in the foyer, I head to the one place that’s turned into a sanctuary: the courtyard.

It’s quiet here now, and in any other case, it would seem peaceful. Not even the birds jump from tree to tree. Instead, the silence feels eerie and unsettling.

I sit on the short staircase of the gazebo and put my head into my hands. The familiar tug on my roots comforts me, but only for a moment.

I’ve decided, and that’s it. Part of my resistance to diving into this shit with Misha is that doing so requires me to face some fucked-up shit.

Misha says he wants information, a retelling of the horrors I experienced on Isla Cara. And I just know that in the process of laying all that out, I’ll have to tell, in detail, the things I did.

It requires me to tell them the shit they did to me.

It requires me to tell….

I surge to my feet and turn to the post holding up the entrance to the gazebo. And because it’s the closest thing to me, I hit it with my closed fist.

Then I hit it again.

And again.

And again and again and again and a?—

“Hunter.” I pull my punch when she speaks, but I don’t look at her. “Are you okay?”

I let the moments tick by in my mind.

“Can we sit?” she asks.

I think about it. This will be the closest my mother and I will have been since I got here.

This is the first time it’s just the two of us.

And I’m here, facing down all my demons, and I’m not too sure who’s winning.

Breathe with me, Hunter….

I look at Amelia. Her face is neutral, her hands clasped in front of her. Patient. Waiting.