Hunting the Fairy Tale

Chapter 49 - Broken Flutes and Limp Cinderellas

Willow

Tanner hands me a cup of coffee, which I gratefully accept. It has cooled down a bit too much during my complete collapse into a weeping pile of broken mush, but it still tastes nice. I should probably feel highly embarrassed about my disastrous loss of self-control ending in a crying fit, but I'm not.

I could sit here and think about it for a hundred years, but I'll still not be able to explain why I'm becoming more and more at ease in the presence of Tanner Trent, the one boy who'd had me on the verge of running away screaming since the first time I saw him wink at me in Detention.

I honestly believe I would be dissolving into a puddle of mortification right now if the boy sitting on the beanbag next to mine was anybody other than Tanner. Perhaps even Hunter.

Paisley always says that Tanner is so imperfect and messed up that he has no capacity to judge others. That might be an explanation. I feel no condemnation coming from him; he is not even giving me strange looks.

I glance at him, where he's calmly eating one of the tuna and mayonnaise sandwiches he'd made for us. The boy continues to tie my brain into knots. One minute he'll be incredibly kind and sweet, and the next, I honestly would love to punch him really hard, but I suspect that it would hurt me more than it would hurt him.

Right now, I'm just grateful to him for trusting me enough to enlighten me sharing with me a story that I had to hear, even though it tore my heart in two. I'm truly grateful he is here with me; it is oddly comforting.

"What happened to your hand?" I ask when I notice that the skin of his right hand's knuckles is broken and raw. He glances at it, looking a little uncomfortable.

"It ran into an obstacle. It's nothing."

It doesn't look like nothing to me. I put my mug down and rise from the beanbag to find the first aid kit in the kitchen.

"Seriously, Prissy, it's nothing," Tanner protests when I return to my seat in the living area, put the first aid case on the floor between us and take out some disinfectant, cotton wool and a tube of ointment. I ignore his objections, taking his hand in mine. Surprisingly, he doesn't resist; he merely blinks at me, looking a little confused.

"Shhhht," I hiss, applying the disinfectant to the broken areas. He winces slightly but doesn't say anything; he probably realises that it's better just to let me have my way. "These are your hands, Tanner. If something happens to them, they won't be able to cook anymore. That would be truly tragic."

I give him a long hard look. I realise that I'm sounding and acting a little bit like Aunt Beth when Hunter is being careless with his injuries. Thinking of Hunter and his injuries causes my throat to close up again, I can feel fresh tears threatening another uncontrollable bout of crying.

Oh! No!

"Besides," I add hastily, trying to distract myself. "They're bleeding slightly, which makes me wonder about that cheesecake you made and these sandwiches."

"I washed my hands! I didn't bleed in the food, Priss!" He tries to pull his hand away, but I hold on tightly, clicking my tongue at him and resume my task, ready to grab his hand if he tries to pull away again.

"Thank you for telling... or rather showing me what happened," I say after a while. "A lot of strange things are making more sense to me now. But to be honest, I still don't see how I could help Hunter because I still don't understand why he wants to run away from the people who clearly love him so much."

I think of Uncle Ryan's face in the video, the depth of pain in his eyes. How could Hunter want to cause his father that kind of pain again by removing himself from his life? Doesn't he realise how much Uncle Ryan loves him? I know he loves him back; I can see it. It makes no sense to me.