Here it is. Chapter Three. Believe me, I surprised myself with how early this update is happening.

But on the downside, I don't know when the next update will happen 'cause my school will reopen after the summer break and school after vacations is hellish.

A quick word on the chapter: it has a higher percentage of cuss words than the previous ones. It is Hunter, again.

This story is going to alternate between Hunter and Tori's POVs.

And once again, thanks to all of you who reviewed and favourited and followed: maryeemeeh, Son of Whitebeard, Yung Warrior, Karkoolka, Lady Katherina, ConfidentialAuthor and mercscilla.

It is always nice to know how the story is being received.

Do review this time around too. Let me know how you feel about it: good, bad, ugly, I'll accept it all.

Alright, enough of me, on to the story…

Hunter

If I talk of getting out
I only hear the laughter loud
It's got an ugly echo

Somewhere there's a secret road
To take me far away I know
But 'til then I am hollow

In this trouble town
Troubles are found
In this trouble town
Fools are found.

-Trouble Town,

Jake Bugg.

It is cold.

My breath is coming out as white wisps.

Like clouds.

Through the window, I can see the snow on the road.

White. Pure. Death.

I cannot fully see what I am doing. It is hazy; blurred.

There is a noise from downstairs.

It is faint.

On another day, I would not have heard it but that day I do.

It somehow forces its way through the impenetrable, sturdy walls and makes itself heard.

I hurry down the stairs, my legs working automatically.

And there she is. Lying motionlessly.

I move forward, too shocked, too numbed, too innocent to understand, to realize.

Her hand is cold.

Lifeless.

I still do not know what to believe.

"Wake up," I think I whisper, my hands tightly wound around hers.

But she does not.

Her hands are on my cheek. She is saying something.

But I can't hear her.

There is a loud sound in my head, something that is keeping me away from her.

Her voice is becoming distant, she is going away. She is leaving me.

Alone.

I have to lunge forward, grab her hands, stop her from leaving me.

"Don't go."

I shoot up from my bed, the covers removed from my body, tangled around my feet, a sweat all over me.

I feel her hands coming around me from behind, around my wrist, working their way up to my chest.

"Hunter?"

Her voice is feeble; shaken. I realize her hands are shaking against me.

Shit.

I have to gulp to remove the sandpaper feel from my mouth.

"I'm sorry," I whisper, my voice cracking.

I never wanted to scare her. I never want to scare her. Not her.

She presses herself against my back, her head resting there.

There is no reply, just the sensation of her fingers on my chest, drawing circles there.

"Are you okay?" she asks softly, her voice stronger than before.

"Yeah," I manage to say.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

I feel myself shaking my head.

I never want to talk about this.

The nightmare was nothing different to the regular ones: redoubtable, sordid and inchoate.

Animistic.

The place haunts me, the memories haunt me, so much so that I cannot bring myself to talk about it.

Or think about it.

I don't know what scares me more: the events or the consequences.

Her hands drop to my waist, her legs coming around my sides.

I take her hands in mine.

"I am sorry," I whisper.

"It's okay."

"I did not want to scare you."

"You did not scare me, Hunter."

I turn around to face her, bringing her hands to my face.

Her eyes are fixed on me, her fingers caressing my cheeks.

It is one long pure moment of bliss, happiness, as I hold her in my arms, her touch lingering on my skin.

We do not speak, we bask in each other's warmth.

We do not talk about the gross inappropriateness of the situation. We just look at each other, every passing second tempting us to cross the line.

There is no reason for us not to do so. But still, we don't. We have never crossed that fine line in the last three years. I do not know why, I have never asked that to myself.

All I know is that we have not and that in some convoluted way has made this shit between us seem normal.

Initially, Blake might have been the reason that held us back. But with time, Blake started becoming insignificant, inconspicuous to the two of us. In his own way, he had hurt the two of us and that in some strange toxic way, made us believe that we had the right to do whatever we were doing.

The inconsequential flirty comments and the sidelong glances slowly turned into something bigger.

And before we knew it, it had inflated into this huge mess.

We have never talked about it: our relationship. She has never questioned my one night stands, I have never questioned her dates. We have known everything yet have gone on to create something like this: something so strong, something so sure, that it scares me.

I guess, somewhere down the line, we fell in love with this imperfectly perfect mess and never wanted to come out of it.

"Hunter?"

She breaks the impregnable silence.

"Yeah?"

She leans in, resting her forehead against mine.

"Go to sleep," she whispers.

"I'm sorry."

I still cannot get her tremulous voice and quavering hands out of my head.

I hate myself for being someone – something – that scared her.

"You don't have to apologize."

"I scared you, didn't I?"

"No-"

"Don't lie, Tor."

She looks into my eyes, faint lines of acceptance, resignation crossing her face.

"I did not want to scare you."

"I know."

"What did I do?"

"Nothing."

"Tori," I stress.

"Hunter, it was nothing."

I stare at her, refusing to believe her.

She sighs and then raises her voice; words firm, resolute.

"It was nothing. You did not do anything. So shut up and go to sleep."

She pulls away from me and lies down on the bed.

I run a hand through my hair before checking the time.

3:50 in the morning. Splendid.

I lie down, reluctant to go back to sleep.

"You have to sleep, Hunter," she mumbles. "I know what you are thinking."

I have to chuckle at that.

It is miraculous, to say the least, how she manages to understand what I am thinking.

Always.

Wordlessly, she scoots closer to me, burying herself in the crook of my arm.

I spend the next ten minutes trying to go off to sleep.

But sleep does not come.

Every time I close my eyes, I can see her. Flashing in front of my eyes, reminding me things I do not want to remember.

"Tor," I whisper. "Are you awake?"

"Yes," she mutters.

I am about to open my mouth when she says, "But I plan to sleep and if you have some crazy nocturnal idea in your head, such as riding your bike through the woods or going for a swim, please, count me out."

And, just like that, like always, she manages to make me forget about all my worries.

"Am I this predictable?" I groan.

She chuckles, her head bouncing against my side. She turns around, lying down on her stomach, resting her chin on my chest.

"You are a little predictable," she tells me, a teasing smile on her lips.

I shoot her a dirty look and she grins back at me.

"But they were fun," I tell her. "Especially, the swim."

"They were everything but fun," she retorts. "How is swimming in ice cold water fun?"

"And," she emphasizes. "How the hell is riding through the woods at the middle of the night, in absolute darkness, fun? It is morbid."

I laugh at her response.

"You are no fun, Tor," I say.

She frowns.

"That is the second time I have been told so in the last twenty four hours. Am I boring, Hunter?"

"Nah," I tell her. "Mostly you are not but yeah, you can sure be a killjoy if you want to be."

She lifts her head from my chest and sits up on the bed.

"I am really boring, aren't I?" she gasps.

"Gee Tori, I was kidding," I say as I prop myself up on my elbow.

"I feel old, Hunter," she whispers. "I feel it in my bones."

"Now, you are just being dramatic," I say, falling back onto the pillow. "Come on, go to sleep."

"No nightly adventure?"

"No," I reply. "Let's just try sleeping."

"Hunter, let's go out," she says, switching on the light from the bed.

My eyes squint close at the sudden exposure to the light.

"Tori, it's four in the morning," I cry.

"So?"

I bury my head underneath the pillows.

"Get up, Hunter," she says. "We are going to go do something crazy."

"Like what?" I groan.

"I don't know," she whispers impatiently. "Something crazy."

I remove the pillow from my head.

"Tor, come back here."

She glares at me before finally giving in and lying down beside me.

"You are not boring," I say.

"No?"

"No."

"I don't want to be boring."

I stretch my hand to reach the light switch near the bed and turn the lights off.

Her eyes are moist and they glisten in the dark.

My hands are working automatically now: turning about, I put them around her, my head hovering above hers.

"Hunter," she whispers.

It is her own way of telling me that this is where it has to stop, this is where we have to draw the line.

I do not pay attention to her.

I too know that this is where it all ends.

"Tomorrow," I tell her. "We'll go out, drink cheap beer, get drunk and dance like stupid teenagers. Deal?"

She smiles, her lips curving into perfection.

"Deal."

Light filters in through the window, forcing me out of my sleep. Tori is still asleep beside me, her legs tangled with mine.

The realization that it is a Sunday alleviates my spirits. I can stay in bed, not having to worry about reaching the academy on time.

She stirs beside me, her eyes briefly opening for a second before she closes them again and goes back to sleep.

A smile spreads across my face at that.

I don't know where her words came from last night.

I have spent enough time with her to know her fears and worries, her masks and defenses. I know that she has her own share of problems. I know that her life has been a far cry from a fairytale.

But unlike me, she tries confronting her problems, she tries dealing with them, she tries solving them.

I gave up that years ago: the best way to survive is to shut everything out, coop them up, compartmentalize them and shove them away somewhere so far away that they can never come back to screw me up.

But sometimes that does not work.

I pay no heed to that voice in my head. I hate that voice. I hate their point-blank correctness.

I do not know what snapped in her last night that she felt it so important to go out and prove herself. It did not seem like the right time to ask and all I cared about back then was to calm her down.

That is what I have always wanted to do: save her, shield her, protect her. Just like she has always been there for me, unconditionally, completely, selflessly, I, too, have always wanted to be there for her. Just be there for her.

"Slept well?" she mumbles, rubbing her eyes.

"Good morning," I say, turning to face her.

"Yeah, I did."

"Good," she says. "Will you stay for breakfast?"

"I could," I say.

"Okay. I'll whip something up."

There is silence for some time, with her snuggling close to me.

She rubs her thumb against my cheek.

"Thanks."

I raise my eyebrows.

"For last night," she shrugs. "I made a complete ass out of myself last night."

I smile.

"That's fine. Everyone is allowed that."

She shrugs.

"You are probably wondering where all that came from."

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

She shakes her head.

"The day my sister left, my parents had a fight. They thought I was asleep but I wasn't. I was awake, listening to them. My dad had been drunk, like always and he kept on shouting things – words – that I did not understand. And somewhere in between, he told my mom that she was boring. That it was all falling apart because she didn't try harder, because she was satisfied with what she had."

I am forced to acknowledge how familiar it all sounds: abusive father, subservient mother.

Fuck.

I shut down those thoughts and concentrate on her words. By now, her voice has cracked, tears welling up in her eyes. I wrap my hands around her wrist, tugging her closer to me, whispering that it is alright.

She sniffs into my chest. Her voice barely reaches me, muffled to muteness, but even in the soft whisper, I can sense her pain, the hurt, and the fear, "I don't want to be my mom, Hunter. I don't want things to fall apart because I wasn't brave enough to take the next step."

I realize there are things which are going unsaid here: things about us.

Us. Whatever we are.

I know I should say something, assuage her fears, tell her that we won't fall apart but all my words of reassurance dry up in my throat, failing to grasp and gauge something so ambiguous.

Late in the afternoon, I am at my office in the Wind and Thunder Ninja Academy, discussing the course of the Annual Exam with Cam.

This is one of the things I hate about my job: planning for an exam.

The other being, correction of scripts.

Pure torture.

I have to feign my interest and concern about the event with the Samurai. He, for one, treats this as his baby.

He keeps loading me with mundane technical details of the examination, which I very conveniently do not fully register.

My mind is too preoccupied for this.

Every instant, I am reminded of Tori's outburst, every one of her words like daggers stabbed into me.

I understand her fears, her worries and misgivings. I understand them because I too have them.

How long can we actually go on like this? Maybe we have exhausted our time, maybe we have had this liaison for far too long. Maybe this is it: where we let it go.

"Hunter?" Cam's voice forces me out of my trance.

"Yeah?"

"Are you even listening to me?" he asks me tiredly, removing his spectacles, pinching his nose to remove the sweat.

"I'm sorry," I mumble sheepishly. "I zoned out."

He eyes me suspiciously as he puts his spectacles back on.

"Is everything alright between you and Tori?"

His words surprise me, to say the least.

"Huh?" I eject.

He rolls his eyes.

"Look," he says. "I don't know what you two have going on and I don't even want to know but if that in any way hurts Tori-"

"Cam," I cut him off. "We are friends. That's it."

"If that's what gives you sleep at night then so be it," he says, a tinge of sarcasm in his voice.

I don't reply; I am too tired to fight with him about something that I myself don't know what actually is.

I just stare at him, challenging him to go on.

But he does not.

"We will decide about the exam some other day," he says briskly as he gets up from the chair and walks out of the room.

I suddenly want to bang my head against the desk.

Me and my stupidity.

I spend the next few minutes doing what I do best: brood. It feels nice to lose myself in my thoughts, no matter how dark and twisted they are. I am painfully aware of how moribund it all sounds.

But somehow, to me, this is normal.

The vibration of my mobile phone on the table fills the room with a loud sound.

It is Tori.

"Hey Tor," I say into the phone.

"Hi Bradley," she says.

And, from her voice, I know that she is smiling and that for some stupid reason makes me smile too.

"Hi… What's up?"

"We have a date tonight," she laughs, her voice radiating life.

"Yeah, I remember."

"Still at the Academy?"

"Yeah," I sigh. "Cam got a little carried away."

"Tell me about it," she mutters.

"Remind me never to come shopping with the girls," she grumbles.

I chuckle.

"Let me guess," I say. "You are waiting outside the trial room."

"Nailed it."

"Don't be too grumpy, okay?"

"Don't be too preachy, okay?"

"I'll come pick you up later," I tell her, laughter getting the better of me.

"You better do," she growls. "I will need a lot of beer to forget these cotton candy dresses."

I can hear her giggling behind me; vibrant, infectious. Her hands come around me, locking them around my shoulders.

"You are walking too fast," she purrs, her voice close to my ears.

Too close.

I think she is way more drunk than I am.

No. I am sure that she is way more drunk than I am.

Fuck.

There is a loud clamorous buzzing in my head. I don't feel like… me. The world does not seem like the… world. Nothing seems like itself.

Argh.

I hate this feeling. I hate losing control. I hate not knowing what is happening.

"Hunter," she says, her speech slurred. "I can't walk anymore."

And, with that, she pushes me down into the sand.

She bursts into hysterical laughter.

"This is so much fun," she cackles.

"You are drunk, Tor," I whisper.

"So are you," she laughs. "But this is fun. So very very very fun."

"We'll feel horrible in the morning," I say, horror lacing itself onto my words.

She groans.

"Now who is being a killjoy huh?"

Killjoy.

"Tori?" I ask her. "Who told you that you are boring?"

She looks at me.

"I'm too drunk to think about that, Hunter."

"Don't lie, Tor."

"Dustin."

I am surprised at how complaisant she is.

Guess this is what alcohol does to you.

I feel her body language changing beside me: her body stiffening. "I know he was just kidding but… There was the other thing too."

"Other thing?"

"Fuck," she curses. "I feel like puking."

I snort.

"Jerk," she mutters.

"So… what about that other thing?"

"Huh?" she groans, holding her head in her hands.

"Dustin told you something," I help her.

"Oh… um… he didn't really say anything. I just felt supremely pissed with myself 'cause I was the only one who didn't know where her personal life was heading."

Fuck.

The atmosphere suddenly turns claustrophobic; suffocating. I cannot breathe, asphyxiated by her words, her words insinuating that we become something more.

And, at that moment, the realization comes crashing in that the reason we have not gone on to become something more is because of me.

Fucked up me.

Because I am too scared to take the next step. I feel smothered by that thought and I have the sudden urge to run: get up and run away.

"Tori," I say. "We have to go home."

"Hm," she whispers, resting her head on my shoulder.

I feel my body tensing at the contact with her. I have to pull away, lose her touch. It suddenly feels too much: this feels too overbearing.

I can't take this.

"Hunter," she mumbles. "Come here."

"Tori," I say firmly, this time. "Let's go home."

"Why are you being so fucking irritating, Hunter?"

Argh.

I hate her being so… drunk.

I get up on my feet, pulling her up, bringing her to stand in front of me.

She sticks out her tongue at me puerilely.

"Killjoy," she says in a singsong voice, coming closer to me, removing the distance between us.

Shit.

She crashes into me, blinking her eyes at me.

Big stupid beautiful eyes.

And, for a moment, her eyes clear, the drunken glaze in it disappears and I feel myself on edge. I am aware of every tiny occurrence: her chest rising and falling against mine, her parted lips, her eyes trained on me and then, her hands pushing their way underneath my t-shirt, my muscles reacting to every touch of hers. Her lips are now on the side of my neck, placing the most delicate of all kisses there; featherlight.

"Tori," I rasp.

She pulls back to meet my gaze: the most innocent of all expressions on her face and… something more.

Hope.

I am aware of the walls closing in again, the feeling of discomfort and unease worming onto me at this sudden change, at the sudden realization that she wants more.

That I have to give more.

I have to pull back; walk away.

Away from her, away from these expectations.