Scandalize Me

by Caitlin Crews

  “That was not exactly what I had in mind when contemplating his downfall and disgrace for the past ten years,” Zoe said, standing in the kitchen she’d have thought Hunter never used, stealing bites of his bagel.

  She was wearing nothing but one of Hunter’s T-shirts. It fell low on her thighs and made her feel small and cherished, like a beloved girlfriend, and she knew better than that. She knew better than the kind of intimacy it suggested, or the way he grinned when he swatted at her hand, as if they were those kinds of people. Normal. Something like right.

  But that sick, sentimental part of her wanted to feel what it was like. No matter how badly it was going to hurt later.

  “He’ll get his,” Hunter said, standing there in all his lean glory on the other side of the center island. He took a swig from his coffee and then pointed the mug at her. “I promise you that. Alex has been waiting his entire life to take Jason down. Didn’t you see that one reporter ask if there was trouble in paradise—the divorce, leaving the firm, changing his entire life in a very short span of time?”

  “I saw Jason handwave it all away by acting like all of those things were his very own idea,” she replied darkly. “Mostly because he’s so good and loving and moral and righteous. And I saw them eat it up the way they always do.”

  “There are cracks everywhere he looks, Zoe,” Hunter said softly. “It’s only a matter of time. You’ve destroyed him. It’s not going to take much for that facade of his to shatter.”

  And he was so open, so bright, that guilt swamped her—and he saw it. He saw everything. For a moment that shrewd blue gleam made her breathless.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” he asked.

  It was harder than it should have been to smile. To fight that tide of misery back, to force herself to look the way she should after the night they’d had. After what they’d done. Happy, at the very least. Whatever the hell that was.

  “What could possibly be wrong?” she asked, but she could see her light tone didn’t fool him at all.

  And then the doorman called up from downstairs to tell him he had a delivery, saving her from having to pretend any further, because Austin had sent Hunter flowers.

  Epic flowers. Delicate tulips and all manner of lilies, orchids and succulents and plump, round chrysanthemums. Explosions of hydrangeas in blues, purples, pinks and whites. When the parade of deliverymen finally left, Hunter’s apartment was filled with them. They stood in the once-sterile great room, now exploding with so many colors it was almost dizzying, surrounded by all the competing scents.

  “Does he think he missed your funeral?” Zoe asked.

  And Hunter laughed. Real laughter, delighted and intoxicating, and it shook her. She could see, suddenly, who he might have been. Who he would be again, once all of this was behind him. If Sarah Michaels had gone to a different firm after college. If he’d spent the past decade doing something other than mourning out loud and in public like that, so everyone could see and hate him the way he hated himself. If she’d never hunted him down and dragged him into her orbit, back into this terrible mess.

  Sarah had loved him enough to let him go. How could Zoe do anything less?

  But even then, even when it was so clear what she had to do, she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  Because he picked her up and pulled her legs around his waist, and by the time he put her down again, she’d forgotten everything but the fierce joy of his hands on her body. The slide of his gorgeous torso against hers.

  He kissed her mouth, her cheekbones, her eyelids, as if she was the celebration. His perfect mouth moved into an intent sort of smile that made her blood seem sluggish and hot in her veins. So she lifted herself up on her toes, wrapped her arms around his wide shoulders and kissed him back.

  Again and again, until there was no telling who was kissing who, when it was only heat and desire and this. Them.

  This one last time.

  Zoe explored him, taking it slow. Imprinting him onto her fingertips, her lips. Making it last, so she’d have it to remember. She stripped the clothes from his body, tasting every bit of hard, smooth skin she discovered along her way.

  And she didn’t care that she was barefoot and decidedly rumpled, her hair hanging all around her, because he lay her down on his pure white couch and he moved over her as if she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. And even though she knew better, she let herself believe it. Just for now. She poured it into her kiss. She let him see it on her face.

  She couldn’t seem to help herself.

  Hunter nipped at her lower lip even as his hardness nudged her center, insistent and demanding where she was molten and soft, teasing her. Making them both shudder.

  He said her name and then he thrust into her, hard and deep. Then they were rolling, and she was on top. He sat up, too, his hands at her waist, and it was her turn to move, to ride him, to tease him, to take him deep inside her and then pull back, to writhe and dance them both to that edge—

  “I love you,” he said, as he threw her straight into that fire.

  And Zoe shattered all around him, into so many pieces she knew she’d never be the same again, especially when he said it again as he followed.

  But when she could breathe again, the words he’d said still echoed inside her—like a wish, like a prayer—and she knew it was time.

  Past time.

  “Come on,” he said into the crook of her neck, those possessive hands still clasped to her, still holding her against him. He was still deep inside her, and she was so miserable it felt like being wrenched apart, deep within. Like some kind of organ failure. “I need a shower.”

  Zoe pushed herself away from him, and it was much harder than it should have been to sit up. To let go of him. To climb up off that couch.

  To do this thing she didn’t want to do, but had to do. She knew she had no choice.

  She never, ever had a goddamned choice.

  “I’m going,” she said, pushing the words out hard. Fast. “I have to go.”

  Because she wasn’t sure she’d say them, otherwise. Hunter was the most tempting thing she’d ever seen, stretched out on that couch of his, the stark whiteness of it calling only more attention to what a perfect specimen he was. As if he’d been carved from marble, gilded in bronze. His eyes were still bluer than all the California days she’d ever seen, and they were lazy on hers now. Indulgent.

  “Okay,” he said. He didn’t understand. “Where are you going? Also, you’re naked.”

  “This is over,” she told him, aware that she sounded too stiff. Too awkward. “I’ve wanted revenge for over a decade, and we did it. But there’s no reason to continue this...” But she couldn’t think what to call it, and he was sitting up with that narrow look on his face, and she couldn’t seem to pull in a full breath. “I want to thank you, of course.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t thank you?”

  “Don’t do this.”

  Zoe could tell he understood then, in the way he stared at her as if she was killing him. The way his voice came out, too dark and too rough.

  “Besides,” she said, making herself sound cheerful, though she was afraid it came out psychotic, “you have the attention span of a gnat. Everyone knows it. I think you deserve a starlet or two after all your hard work, don’t you?”

  “And don’t pretend this is about me.”

  Zoe couldn’t look at him anymore. She found the royal blue dress she’d worn to the law firm in a heap at the bottom of the spiral stair, and felt better once she’d pulled it on. She’d taken down a monster in this dress. She could survive this last battle, too.

  “I love you,” he said again.

  But that was impossible.

  “No,” she said, clipped and certain. “You don’t.”

  She ha
dn’t seen him move, and now he was standing there right in front of her, pissed off and hurt and she hated this. She hated that she couldn’t reach out the way she wanted to do. She couldn’t have this. She couldn’t have him.

  Zoe was furious with herself that she’d pretended otherwise, when she knew. She’d always known.

  “You can run out of here naked if you want,” Hunter gritted at her. “I won’t stop you. I won’t make you do something you don’t want to do, Zoe. Ever. I meant that.” His face went fierce, and that made her feel soft and tremulous inside. “But don’t you fucking tell me what I feel.”

  “You don’t know what he did to me,” she threw at him. “You have no idea what I did. How many times I did it. What happened to me.”

  “You did what you had to do to survive,” he said flatly. “Do you really think I’m going to blame you for that?”

  “Maybe not now. But you will. It’s inevitable.”

  “There isn’t a single thing you could tell me that would make me want you less,” Hunter told her, his voice hoarse and those blue eyes so intent on hers. “Not one thing.”

  “People say that. Then they hear things they can’t get past.”

  “Who are you talking to?” He chided her gently. “You know some of the things I’ve done. There were whole tabloids dedicated to them.”

  “You did those things by choice.”

  “Which makes me an asshole. And makes you a—”

  “Victim? Survivor? Whore? It’s all the same thing. Marked and changed and different from everyone else. Ruined.”

  “Beautiful,” he contradicted her, soft and fierce. The way he looked at her felt like a touch, falling everywhere his gaze did. Each cheekbone. Each eyebrow. “Strong. Sexy. Gorgeous.” Her forehead. Her mouth. “Not ruined, Zoe. You couldn’t be ruined if you tried.”

  “Hunter.” She loved him. It was why she had to leave before he saw the things she wanted most to hide. Especially from him. “I can’t do this.”

  “You can’t or you don’t want to?” he asked. She saw the vulnerability in him then, and it ripped through her, tearing her up.

  “Both.”

  His hands were on his hips and he let out a long breath, as if he was winded. She wanted to touch him again. She wanted to hold him. But if she didn’t leave now, she knew, she’d fall apart in front of him, and she couldn’t do that. She owed him this. A goodbye he could believe, so he wouldn’t chase after her. As Sarah had done for him a decade ago.

  So he could live a life outside Jason Treffen’s shadow. Zoe might have exacted her revenge on the man, but he’d still destroyed her. There was no changing that. Hunter could be free of that, at last. She wanted that for him. For one of them.

  She started for the door, but she couldn’t help stopping when he called her name, as if her body was conspiring against her.

  “I love you,” he said again, with even more of that painful ferocity, as if it was tearing him apart. “That’s not going to change just because you don’t want to believe it. It’s never going to change.”

  “You love a ghost,” Zoe said. She turned back to face him and hated herself when she trembled at that look in his beautiful eyes, on his perfect face. “She died ten years ago, Hunter, and I’m not her replacement.”

  “I can tell the difference.” That was anger there, mixed with the hurt, and that was better. She told herself that had to be better. “She took herself out. You didn’t. You fought. You’re nothing like her.”

  She jerked her head at the flowers surrounding them, like a wall of fragrance. Like her own wake.

  “Your friends lost her, too,” she said. “You should give them a chance.”

  “This is not about Sarah, and it’s not about them,” he threw at her. “How stupid do you think I am?”

  That stung. “I don’t think you’re stupid at all.”

  “Then stop treating me like a dumb jock. I know how you feel about me. And I know how much that must terrify you.”

  She could see how he fought himself, his hands in fists at his side. She knew exactly how hard it was for him to keep from coming to her, because she felt it, too. Need and longing coursed through her, clamoring inside her, demanding she not do this—

  But the fear was worse. And she knew she couldn’t do it again. She couldn’t trust herself. If she loved something, if she trusted it, she was wrong every time. Her grandparents. Jason. Hunter deserved better than that. Than her.

  And she knew that no matter what he said, she was broken beyond repair. Broken where it counted. He didn’t want that. He couldn’t. He wanted that girl he’d loved a long time ago, who’d left him before he’d discovered what she was, and hadn’t lived to let all of that darkness turn her into...this.

  “You took him down,” Hunter said quietly. So fiercely that it beat inside her like its own harsh drum. “Don’t let him take this.”

  But that was the point, wasn’t it? It was too late. It always had been. Jason Treffen had taken the best part of her a decade ago. What she had left was good, and it was hers, but it wasn’t what she might have been. It wasn’t what Hunter deserved.

  She loved him enough to see that.

  Zoe smiled at him, but it felt like acid, and he took it like a punch. Hard and to the gut. She saw him flinch, and that only made her hate herself more.

  “This is the right thing to do,” she said.

  “Are you trying to convince you or me?” he threw back at her.

  And so she did the only thing she could: she walked away.

  * * *

  Hunter drove out to Edgarton the next day, hours earlier than the usual time he showed up for his makeshift practices. He waited until classes were in session before he walked into the school, not wanting to cause any kind of commotion. Not wanting anyone to see him until he got what he came for.

  The security being as nonexistent as ever in Edgarton High, it didn’t take him long to find Jack’s classroom simply by walking the halls until he happened upon it. Jack looked different standing at a blackboard. He stood taller, was more engaging. Because he knew who he was when it involved math, Hunter thought. Just as Hunter knew who he was with a football in his hand. It was what he could do, what he was good at.

  He might have been walking around without a heart since Zoe had ripped it out and flattened it right there in front of him, but he could still throw a football. He supposed there was magic in that, somewhere. And as he’d wasted enough of his life feeling sorry for himself, he might as well use it.

  He stood in the hall until Jack glanced out and saw him, then he indicated the other man should come out and speak to him with a simple lift of his chin. Jack look startled. Hunter heard his voice rise, ordering textbooks opened and talking stopped, with the supreme confidence of a man who expected to be obeyed in his domain.

  Jack closed the door behind him gently as he stepped through it, and cleared his throat a few times as he moved into the hall. He looked around as if surprised to see that Hunter was alone—or, Hunter reflected, maybe he simply wasn’t comfortable looking Hunter in the eye. That made him feel like an ass, so he made an effort to adjust his stance, to ratchet back that unconscious level of aggression he suspected he broadcast automatically. Maybe he always had.

  Maybe that was why she’d left—but he stopped himself. He knew it wasn’t. Just as he knew that he had to let her choose. He’d promised her that he’d never force her into anything. He couldn’t rescind that promise because things hadn’t gone the way he’d wanted them to go. That would make him no better than Jason.

  But Jack didn’t relax. As if the man who commanded that classroom so easily was only a role he played. And suddenly, shockingly, Hunter realized where he’d seen that before. In himself. In the dumb jock role he’d played for his more intellectual friends, the whole world, all the way back to
the ruthlessly smart Sarah, who he’d believed cheated on him with the most intelligent man they knew: Jason. He’d been playing his clown role ever since.

  And Zoe was the only one who hadn’t bought it.

  That insight stunned him so completely that for a moment he hardly knew where he was.

  “I knew this day would come,” Jack was saying, and his rueful tone snapped Hunter back into the here and now. “It’s okay. I’ll think of something to tell them.”

  Hunter only stared at him and Jack cleared his throat again, shifting from one foot to the other.

  “Do I make you uncomfortable?” Hunter asked. Jack look startled, but then he grinned.

  “Only in the sense that you’re built like a tank, and could crush me with one hand,” he said. “Maybe two fingers? But I wouldn’t say that makes me uncomfortable. Reasonably cautious, perhaps.”

  Hunter found he was biting back a grin. “Caution is good.”

  “They won’t thank you, so I will,” Jack said after a moment, his own grin fading. He straightened, squared his narrow shoulders. “What you’ve done here made a difference. I know what kind of prospects these kids have, and they do, too. They’ll carry this with them for a long time.” He took a breath, and met Hunter’s gaze straight on. “No one in Edgarton will ever think you’re anything but a hero, Hunter. That’s who you are. Not that story they tell on SportsCenter, stitched together from disgruntled old teammates and too much envy. I hope you know that.”

  It took Hunter a very long time to catch his breath against that sudden pressure in his chest, that mighty fist around his head, making him think he might burst wide open, betray himself.

  “I’m not a hero,” he said gruffly, when he thought he could speak. “Not by a long shot. Ask anyone.” Ask Zoe, who he couldn’t save. Not from Jason. Not from herself. Or Sarah, who he’d never tried to save. “I only came here to make myself look good. It was a cynical manipulation from the start.”

  Jack’s gaze didn’t waver on his.

  “Maybe that’s why you came the first time,” he said evenly. “But that’s not why you kept coming back.”