In Silence

CHAPTER 4

Hunter gazed at the row of unopened bottles: beer, wine, whisky, vodka. All sins from his past. Each a nail in the coffin of his life. He kept them around to prove that he could. Such a strategy went counter to traditional AA teaching, but he was a masochistic son of a bitch.

Hunter thought of Avery and anger rose up in him in a white-hot, suffocating wave. Once upon a time they'd been the best of friends: him, Matt and Avery. Before everything had begun spin-ning crazily out of control. Before his life had turned to shit.

He pictured her sitting next to Matt at his family's dinner table. All of them laughing, swapping memories. Reveling in the good old days.

What part had he played in those memories? Had they shared stories that hadn't included him? Or had they simply plucked him out as if he had never existed?

Shut out again. Always the one on the outside, looking in. The one who didn't belong.

"Wnat's wrong with you, Hunter? What went wrong with you? "

Good question, he thought, gazing at the bottles, squeezing his fists against the urge that swelled inside him. The urge to open a bottle and get stinking, fall-down drunk.

He'd been down that path; he knew the only place it would lead him was straight to hell. A hell of his own making. One populated by children screaming in terror. One in which he was helpless to stop the inevitable. Helpless to do more than look on in horror and self-loathing. In despair.

Hunter swung away from the bottles. He sucked in a deep breath and moved deliberately away from the kitchen and toward the makeshift desk he had set up in the corner of his small living room. On the desk sat a computer, monitor glowing in the dimly lit room, fan humming softly. Beside it the pages of a novel. His novel. A story about a lawyer's spiral to the depths.

If only he knew the story's end. Some days, he thought his protagonist would manage to claw his way up from those depths. Other days, hopelessness held him so tightly in its grip he couldn't breathe let alone imagine a happy ending.

He pulled out the chair and sat, intent on channeling his energy and anger into his novel. Instead, he found his thoughts turning to Avery once more.

What caused a man to douse himself with a flammable substance and strike a match?

He knew. He understood.

He had been there, too.

The blinking cursor drew his attention. He focused on the words he had written:

Jack fought the forces that threatened to devour him. To his right lay the laws of man, to his left the greatness of God. One wrong step and he would be lost.

Lost. And found. He had come home to set things right. To start over. He had already begun.

And now, here was Avery.

All together again, he thought. He, Matt and Avery. The same as when his life had begun to implode. How would this affect his plans? The timetable of events he had carefully constructed?

It wouldn't, he decided. Things would be set right. His life would be set right. No matter how much it hurt.