by Maisey Yates
He waited until her gaze moved to meet his again. Held it. “Then don’t.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Yes,” he said. Implacable. Sure. When he was neither of those things in anything but this. “It is.”
Zoe jerked her head away, turning it to the side as if that would hide the way her face crumpled in on itself, and he had to stand there and watch that. Stand and do nothing but wait while she pressed one of those tight fists to her lips, as though she could beat back her own tears if she had to. If it came to that.
“Let’s hurt the person who deserves it,” Hunter said quietly, and though she didn’t look back at him then, though he saw the hint of moisture at the corners of her eyes and the fist at her mouth tightened until her knuckles went white, Zoe nodded. It was jerky and stiff, and it seared straight through him as if it was his own pain, but it was a nod. “As it happens, I have a few ideas of my own.”
* * *
He called Austin from the car as he drove toward Edgarton that afternoon, the way he’d done every afternoon since Zoe had taken him there. First because she’d ordered him to do it and he’d decided to take that ride. And then only partly because of that, though that was one more thing he wasn’t ready to think about.
“Who is this?” Austin asked in lieu of a greeting. “I don’t recognize this number. I’m pretty sure the previous owner accused me of being a stalker.”
“We need to meet,” Hunter said, ignoring the dig.
“I definitely don’t recognize this voice. You know you can’t keep playing the head-in-sand routine if you call meetings, right? People might get the wrong impression and think you care about something.”
“Tomorrow night. I don’t care where. Bring Alex.”
“Alex is actually a grown man, Hunter, with his own very busy schedule, which you would know if you ever took his calls. I don’t keep him in my back pocket.”
“There’s someone I want you both to meet,” Hunter said impatiently, and he didn’t know if it was his tone of voice that did it or the fact that there could really be only one reason he’d want to make introductions to the two of them, but Austin was quiet for a moment.
“Who?”
Zoe had said she was fine with this, that she wanted to do it because it dovetailed so nicely with her own plans, but Hunter still wanted to protect her if she changed her mind. Because this might be the only way she’d ever let him protect her, he thought darkly, and the truth was she was far more likely to simply punch him again.
He let it sit there a moment, the realization that he’d take either one.
“You’ll find out tomorrow,” he said gruffly to Austin. “Unless you want to lecture me more about my telephone habits? Compare me to an ostrich again? I’m sure you can insult me much better than this, Austin. It’s like you’re not even trying.”
“Hunter.”
He waited, and it was as if history and memory compressed, somehow. As if it snapped tight in both of them at that same moment, reminding him of a thousand other phone conversations, as many long, late nights, all those hours upon hours they’d spent in each other’s company learning their own private language, making themselves their own form of family.
Reminding him again how much they’d lost.
“Listen,” he began, inadequately, because he was pretty sure this was all his fault. He was the one who’d left. The one who’d never looked back. The one who’d been so determined to pretend nothing was happening, then or now.
But Austin was talking again. Heading him off as if he already knew where this was going.
“It better not be a fucking florist,” he said, and Hunter couldn’t help but grin. “I’m not kidding.”
* * *
The Edgarton High football field lay under two feet of fresh snow and likely would for weeks, which meant these practices took place indoors in the old, drafty gym.
Hunter hated the gym.
The scratched-up floors bent and squeaked beneath the pummeling of so many adolescent shoes, the smell of damp surrounded them like a humid choke hold, and the small, high windows were much too far from the ground to let in what little winter light was available.
The whole depressing place was a fire hazard.
Didn’t they fire your ass? Aaron, the punk wannabe quarterback, had demanded that first day. The kid had been puffed up and scowling as if he thought he was a much bigger man. But that hadn’t concealed the dazed longing in his dark eyes, letting Hunter know how badly he’d wanted to be convinced Hunter was the real deal. That something—anything—was. Why should I listen to anything you say?
Because I’m a goddamned legend, Hunter had retorted. And you suck.
And yet, defying all reason and his own uncertain temper, his small, sad group of kids not only kept coming to his increasingly difficult weight sessions and his killer drills—all better suited to teams that were already at the championship level than one with their decided lack of skills, because Hunter thought they might as well start hard—but they seemed to bring more new players with them each time they came. Until it looked less like an afterthought in that weight room, that sad old gym, and more like an actual team.
Today the sight of them made him harsher. More demanding. Because he refused to fail anyone else.
He refused.
“You, uh, doing okay?” Jack, the actual football coach, not that anyone had been observing that title in weeks, dared to ask him. Hunter had the team running speed drills. Again and again and again, up and down the length of the old gym floor, pretending he couldn’t hear the mutinous grumbling as they went.
“They have to be able to do this perfectly when they’re exhausted,” Hunter said shortly. “It’s about mental toughness.”
“Yeah,” Jack said, in one of those too-agreeable voices that meant he didn’t want to argue, not that he actually agreed. “Sure. But, um. Are you...?”
“I’m fine,” Hunter bit out, short and rough.
Jack flinched, but Hunter couldn’t seem to modify his tone. Not when he was angrier than he’d ever been, and he couldn’t do a single thing about it. He couldn’t fix Zoe. He couldn’t save her. He couldn’t change a single thing that had happened to her, just as he hadn’t been able to save anyone else. Sarah. Even himself.
He couldn’t even touch her the way he wanted, because that wasn’t what she needed. She’d said he’d made it about him and he, by God, refused to let that happen. He’d take Jason Treffen apart with his own hands if that was what it took—
He realized he was scowling, and that Jack was staring at him.
“Why?” he asked. It came out in a growl. “Do I not seem fine?”
Jack raised his hands in surrender and didn’t ask again.
“You can decide what kind of losers you want to be,” he told the pack of kids later that same bitterly cold evening. They were panting on the floor at his feet, stretched out across the scratched gym floors with the drafty walls letting too much winter in. Looking as if they thought they might die—or had already died. Which meant that he must have been doing something right. “The kind who gives the better team a fight or the kind who wastes everyone’s time. Entirely up to you, gentlemen.”
There was a long, angry, tired sort of silence. He almost smiled.
“You get to decide who you are,” he continued, arms over his chest, scowl firm on his face. “You either get up and keep playing when it hurts, or you hobble off the field and you don’t come back. Very few choices in life are this simple. Relish this one.”
“Says the guy who got booted a month before the Super Bowl,” someone muttered.
“And is fighting, like, twenty lawsuits,” someone else replied, to a smattering of laughter.
“I wish I saw some of that smart-assed spirit in these drills,” Hunter snapped, and the laughter died off. “Understand this right now—you’re the only people in the entire world who give a shit what happens to you. You might not like my choices, but for better or worse,
they were all mine. Now make yours. Get up. We’re running another drill.”
It was hard not to smile at the moaning then, and he wasn’t sure he succeeded.
“If you can’t handle it, leave now,” he barked. “Your choice.”
“What do you know about choices?” Aaron, who was apparently not smart enough to act appropriately cowed by all of Hunter’s bluster, demanded as he got to his feet. “Not like this is anything more than a vacation for you. We’ll still be here long after you get bored and go back to your real life.”
“Are you here to make friends?” Hunter growled, staring the kid straight in the eyes. “Sing happy songs and braid each other’s hair? Is that why you keep coming here, Aaron? Or do you want to suck slightly less at football?”
And he saw it then: that hint of steel on the kid’s face. The way he stood straighter, though he must have wanted to eat and sleep more than he wanted his next breath. As if he’d decided, then and there, that he wanted this more. Even if it was only to show Hunter that he could.
That was how it began, Hunter knew. He remembered it, as if it was from a different life. That drive to be something else. To be better.
“Don’t worry, dude,” Aaron said with a sneer, something flashing in his dark eyes that made Hunter feel something very much like proud. “I wasn’t picking out my prom dress just yet. You can calm down.”
“While you can give me fifty push-ups,” Hunter retorted. “And if you don’t learn how to speak respectfully, you’ll be doing them all night. Dude.”
And it wasn’t until he had the team running drills, Jack starting to shout out commands from the sidelines as if he was feeling like a coach himself, Aaron counting out his push-ups in a markedly more polite tone, that Hunter allowed himself that smile.
* * *
This was a lot harder than she’d anticipated.
Zoe ducked out of the cold wind in a recessed doorway halfway down the block from the bar where she was supposed to meet Hunter, her heart clapping so hard against her ribs she thought it might leave bruises.
It was one thing that Hunter knew about her past. A horrible, deeply upsetting thing that she’d spent a whole day trying and failing to come to terms with. But why had she agreed to walk into a public place and tell two more people the secret she’d hidden away all these years?
Especially when one of them was a Treffen.
For a terrifying moment, she couldn’t breathe.
She didn’t know how long she stood there, fighting off the panic. Would she simply fall apart where she stood? Right there on the street? Was it wrong that some part of her wanted that, so at least she wouldn’t have to talk about this again? But slowly, she pulled air into her lungs. One long breath, then another. Eventually, she stood straight. Calm. And when all that noise in her head had quieted, she made herself walk out into the flow of foot traffic again, then the rest of the way down the block, as if she was fine.
Because she was fine. She was.
She had to be fine, one way or another.
Because she could hardly expect to take down the monster who still lurked in every single one of her nightmares if she couldn’t have a simple conversation with two men who, Hunter had assured her, hated Jason Treffen as much as she did.
Hunter. His name in her head, her heart, like a drumbeat. Images of him in that bed, on top of her, inside her. His face, tormented and drawn, when he’d told her to hit him harder—
She couldn’t bear that he knew. She couldn’t stand it. It made her feel wobbly inside, as if she might dissolve at any moment. But she had no choice but to pretend she was made of stone instead.
She never had any choice.
The bar in question was a private club in a boutique hotel. There were two actual velvet ropes and a stone-faced sentry at the final door to navigate before Zoe was admitted to the enclosed rooftop space. It offered views of the quiet Lower East Side street below with the immensity of Manhattan looming everywhere above them, filled with a noticeably elegant and star-studded crowd there, no doubt, to bask in its exclusivity.
It was pretty. She could breathe.
She was fine.
“Zoe.”
She stiffened, more ice than stone, but it was Hunter, pushing himself away from the wall near the entrance to meet her. And then she hated herself, because she’d let him see her reaction. It was as if she didn’t fit in her own skin anymore. It made her feel things she’d gone to great lengths to keep from feeling for all these years. Vulnerable. Small.
She watched his too-clever eyes narrow, knowing he saw too much. As usual, damn him.
And then she hated him, too, because he didn’t reach over and touch her. Oh, no. No fingers at her cheek, no touch against the hair she’d let fall around her shoulders tonight. Hunter thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers and he stood too close, so close she could almost feel that drugging heat of his—but he didn’t touch her the way she knew he would have before.
Before she’d told him the truth about what she was. Before he’d discovered that she wasn’t that incandescent creature she’d seen reflected in his gaze when he’d moved inside her.
Before.
It was only to be expected, but that didn’t make it any easier. And she hated that it hurt. So much more than it should have.
“Let’s do this,” she blurted out, with perhaps a touch too much aggression. He blinked.
“You don’t have to do anything.” His voice was so calm. A hint of his drawl, no sign of temper or pain or heat. “You don’t have to meet them. You can turn around right now and leave. I’ll still do whatever you want me to do to help bring him down. You don’t have to involve anyone else if you don’t want to.”
“I want to.” Her lips felt numb, but that didn’t matter. So did her heart. She’d do this anyway. “Let’s go.”
But Hunter didn’t move. He frowned down at her, his gaze moving over her face, and she felt nothing but a howling within. Because he’d wanted to touch her so badly he shook with it, before. And now he knew how filthy she was, how polluted, he kept his hands to himself. She hadn’t imagined he’d be any different from the whole rest of the world, so there was no reason that should feel like a punch in the stomach. Like betrayal.
No reason at all.
She unzipped the coat she wore with more force than skill, then unwound her scarf from around her neck, scowling at him as she did it.
“Hunter. I said I want to do this, which means sometime tonight, please.”
“What are you wearing?”
Zoe knew what he meant, but there was temper and heartache and panic pounding at her temples, in her veins, in every breath she took, and she wanted to hit him again. Harder this time. With something very heavy, like one of the nearby tables.
“I believe we call them clothes.” She eyed him, hoping she looked as unfriendly as she felt. As she wished she felt. “But you can call them whatever you want. I don’t really care.”
He blinked again, and she thought he tensed, but when he spoke again his voice was still perfectly smooth. If a shade darker.
“I’ve never seen you in jeans before.” He said it as if it hurt his jaw. “Or red.”
“It’s been a big week. Why not reflect it in my wardrobe?”
His gaze moved over her, and she hated the fact her body responded, shivering into the heat of it, letting that damned need bloom wherever that blue gaze touched.
“I like it,” he said.
“That was, of course, my singular goal.”
His mouth crooked then, as if he knew. As if he’d been there tonight when she decided it was time to come out of her Ice Queen cave of sleek mourning clothes. As if he knew perfectly well that she’d been unable to get that hot gleam in his blue gaze out of her head when she’d pulled on the dark black skinny-legged jeans that hugged her legs and the red top that wrapped around her torso, leaving a deep V open in front. As if he knew exactly what she’d been thinking when she slid on the killer heels in a
leopard print that demanded attention and did wicked things to her walk, especially on wintry sidewalks.
As if she was completely and utterly transparent, after all these years of hiding herself away.
And that same fire licked at her, reminding her. The air between them pulled taut. She saw that awareness in his gaze, that same bright blaze.
But he still didn’t make a single move to touch her, and that burned through her like poison, drowning out everything else, sitting heavy on her chest like the tears she refused to cry. Not here. Not in front of him. Not when it already hurt this much.
She wanted to scream, to swing out at him, to burst—
“Come on,” he said quietly, using his chin to point the way, as if even the smallest touch would be corrosive. As if she was infectious. It was her worst nightmare come true, and this man had been inside her. She felt nauseated, and then furious at herself for expecting anything different. “They’re over here.”
Zoe would have said her heart had been ripped out such a long time ago that it couldn’t break any further. That it couldn’t possibly crack the way it did then, shattering into all those jagged pieces that cut at her every time she breathed in.
But she walked where he pointed her anyway, because it was better than falling apart. She’d have to save that for later, when this was over. When Hunter couldn’t see her do it. When she could make sure he’d never, ever know. That no one would.
Alex Diaz and Austin Treffen waited at a private table far in the corner, and both stood when she appeared, both as good-looking and obviously powerful as she’d expected. Zoe told herself they were like any other clients. Rich, accomplished and probably evil. It was always best to assume that from the start. Fewer surprises, she’d always found.
She supposed it said something about her that the thought soothed her.
“I don’t need an introduction,” she said, pulling her professional persona around her like a cloak and even forcing a smile, surprised when it came easily. As if nothing had changed, even if it felt as though everything had. “I know who you are.” She shook hands the way she always did, brisk and confident, as if she felt either. “Alex. Austin. I’m Zoe Brook.”