Read Blindsight: Part Two for Free Online Page B

biceps and letting out all the pent up frustration I’d held in for the last two years. “I thought I loved him. I thought he loved me.”
    “How could you put the one you love in danger?” Hunter huffed into my hair and I looked up. “Sorry.” His eyes softened when he caught my gaze.  
    “It’s okay. You’re right. It seemed like Brant was trying to escape from the moment we got married. He worked long hours from the beginning, but he didn’t even care that I was left alone and hurting. My mother tried to console me when he was gone, but her consoling turned into harping when all she ever did was defend him and make me feel like I was being a spoiled brat, an arrogant rich girl, but I didn’t want to be a rich girl. I never wanted any of that shit!” I screamed in frustration before Hunter’s hands latched around my wrists and pulled me to him again.  
    “Hey, don’t pull away from me. What he did to you was bullshit, Erin. No self-respecting man would ever leave his wife at home if he didn’t have to. And no self-respecting man would ever get involved with JW willingly…” he finished and his fists tightened almost painfully around mine.  
    “Hunter...” I twisted my hands away. “That hurts.”  
    “Fuck.” He let go instantly, the faraway look in his eyes suddenly replaced with remorse. He tilted my palms to his lips and placed delicate kisses at the center of each.  
    “No one good ever got involved with JW. I don’t mean to say that your husband deserves what’s coming to him, but he deserves some retribution.”
    “What about you? You’re involved with JW. What am I supposed to think about that?” My emotions were a pendulum swinging from one extreme to the next, but how was I supposed to feel?  
    “Hey.” His wrists caught mine again, this time with gentle force. “I didn’t ask to be with JW. That power was taken from me when I was a kid and my mom was fucking killed. I had no one. I was a punk teen with no friends and no way to feed myself. I was desperate, Erin. You’ve got to understand that.” Our faces just inches apart, Hunter begged me to believe him. “I've been working every day since then to get out. Keeping him at arm's length, making it clear that my life is my photos, not this. But getting rid of JW isn't easy.” He ran a frustrated palm through his short strands. “I watched the tank ahead of me get hit by a suicide bomber. It was brutal, Erin. Watching those guys get blown apart handing out candy and toys to kids. One of the guys I was closest to told me just the night before how he lost his sister to a random, gang-related drive-by back home. It fucking haunted me. The very next day, he's helping a little civilian kid and then gone.”
    “That must have been terrible to see,” I uttered. “It could have been you in that tank.”
    “It was, and it could have been. Sometimes I think it should have, coming home to someone who manipulates and brutalizes people... I never forgot that conversation with that soldier the night before. That's why when I came back, I wouldn't have anything to do with JW. So much violence in the world, and JW making it worse right here on my streets, I couldn't be a part of it anymore. Until you.” 
    “Hunter...what were you a part of before?” I struggled to finally ask one of the questions that had danced in my head. “What did you do?”
    “I never killed anyone, Erin. Never. I bruised a few people when I was young, but I couldn't take the blood. The cold-calculated killer isn't me. Some of those guys--the look in their eyes is chilling. They don't feel.”
    My hands stretched to his face and cupped his angled jaw as I held his gaze. “You protect people." I crawled into his lap to wrap him in a hug.
    “Look at you getting all sweet,” he teased, but I heard the emotion in his voice.
    I stared into his glowing green eyes, emanating with energy that I couldn’t place. My palms tingling and the hairs on the back of my