by Maisey Yates
“I know I’m just a dumb jock,” Hunter replied with the genial grin he’d trotted out a million times before, in any number of press conferences over the years, and Zoe loved him, deep and hard and frightening, “but I can still read. You remember the terms you drew up in the firm’s partnership agreement, don’t you? It takes a majority vote among equity partners to remove one of their own. I read it all by myself.”
Jason wasn’t smiling anymore. “That will never happen.”
“Oh, it will,” Zoe assured him. “I suspect the partners here are well aware of your little side business. I’m confident that none of them would like Hunter to make that business the cornerstone of his image rehabilitation tour, as discussing the firm’s connection to your moonlighting as a pimp is unlikely to make the bar association happy. To say nothing of the firm’s clientele, none of whom would enjoy having their relationship to a pimp speculated about in the press.” Her lips crooked. “I’m just guessing.”
“Who do you imagine would believe you?” Jason wasn’t hiding anymore. The truth of who he was stamped on his twisted, furious, ugly face, and he took a step toward Zoe as if this was a decade back and he’d use his hands if he wanted. Some part of her wished he would. He’d find things had changed. “In case you’ve forgotten, Zoe, you’re nothing but a whore. As I’ll be more than happy to tell the entire world.”
Hunter tensed again, harder, and his blue gaze went homicidal, but Zoe stepped forward, because it all came down to this moment. She’d fantasized about it for years. She’d schemed and she’d plotted and she’d gone over it in her head a thousand times. More.
And it was still better than she’d imagined.
“I’m not afraid of you any longer,” she told the architect of her deepest, darkest shame. The monster beneath her bed. This small, pathetic man who preyed upon the weak—but she wasn’t weak anymore. “I’m not the one who’s about to receive a lifetime achievement award. I’m not the one who’s built up such a shining reputation, based entirely on the perception that I’m good and kind and deeply committed to charity. I can have Hunter tell the world your entire sordid story, and what will it matter to me? No one will connect me to it, and even if they do, you’ll still be tarnished.” She leaned forward slightly. “Tainted. Forever.”
“No one will listen to a word you say.” But Jason didn’t look as calm as he had before, or anything like amused.
“But they might listen to me.” Hunter smiled then, and launched into his spiel, deeply earnest and sincere, as if he was playing it to the cameras. “The thing is, I’m changing my life. I’ve seen the light. I’m not a superstar football player anymore. I’ve let my family down and I’ve betrayed all my fans. I’m just a guy who’s only good at one thing, and that’s why I’ve decided to work as a football coach at Edgarton High. For free, until we win a state championship.”
Jason’s eyes narrowed at that, and Zoe took great pleasure in the beads of sweat that broke out across his forehead.
“You’ve heard of Edgarton, haven’t you?” Hunter asked, conversationally. “Not a great place, or a great team, for that matter. I figure the state championship is a few years off. And, of course, that’s where Sarah was from. But I’m sure you know that.’
“Sarah Michaels was a white-trash tramp,” Jason said, harsh and quiet, one ugly slap after another. “From an entire family of born losers. I did her a favor. At least the kind of whoring she did for me, she got paid. She would have done much worse, and for much less, had she stayed in that dump.”
“I bet those were her final thoughts,” Zoe said, her voice a deliberately cool breeze in the tense room, her eyes fixed on the enemy. Almost there. Almost. “Gratitude for all your ‘help.’”
She wondered if Sarah knew, somehow. If she was out there somewhere and could see what Zoe was doing. Sarah, who had been Zoe’s first friend in New York City. Sarah, who had been Zoe’s only friend once everything got so dark. Sarah, who had loved Hunter first, enough to leave him out of this nastiness. She flattered herself that Sarah would have supported this.
Zoe watched Jason breathe, more heavily than before. Then she watched the older man adjust his tie, smooth his hands down his jacket.
Nerves, she thought, with great satisfaction. Jason was betraying himself at last.
“You have ten minutes to decide if you’re retiring or getting kicked out and then outed,” she said into the simmering silence. “And I have to tell you, I don’t care which you choose. I win either way.” She caught Jason’s eye, and held it, and it was almost worth all these years of suffering to see that little spark of uneasiness. Of something a good deal like fear. “I like to win, Jason. You should congratulate yourself. You taught me how.”
Jason stood as still as a statue, and Zoe thought she could almost hear his twisted mind whirl, turning it over and over, looking for an exit strategy, a way to outplay them, a way to come out the winner. Zoe glanced at Hunter, who nodded almost imperceptibly in support, but she felt it bloom inside her, warm and bright like one of his smiles.
“Time’s up,” Hunter drawled after ten long, bitterly quiet minutes dragged by. He straightened and moved toward the door. “I have that meeting.”
For a moment, Jason was silent, and Zoe wondered if she’d misjudged this, if they’d all miscalculated—
“I’ll leave the firm,” Jason gritted out, grudgingly, sourly, hatred heavy in each syllable, and distorting his face. His flat, pale eyes were the stuff of nightmares. But Zoe had been having this same nightmare for years now. She was over it. “But I’ll give the media my own reasons for it.”
“I don’t care what you tell the media,” she told him, not making the slightest attempt to hide her satisfaction. Her triumph. “Just so long as you leave this firm and all your victims behind. Because let’s be clear. Your pimping days are over. You leave this firm and you say goodbye to your little ring. You lose everything except your good name. Just like we all lost everything the day you ‘took an interest’ in us.”
Jason sneered at her, and she knew that face. She knew this man. This nasty little man, who was so vain he believed they’d actually leave him anything. Just wait, she thought.
“I wouldn’t pop the champagne just yet, Zoe,” he said. Murderously. “It will take more than that to best me. I’m adored by this entire city. This country. These little games of yours won’t change that.”
But then, Zoe was counting on that. They all were.
“Time to talk to your partners,” she said, and then she smiled, big and bright and she didn’t care if he saw it, because it was over. It was finally over.
She was free.
* * *
She was free, and that made her foolish. Sentimental and soft.
Or maybe that was Hunter.
That first night, she couldn’t help herself. Jason quit the law firm as they’d told him he must, and she and Hunter had walked out of that loathsome building together, stunned. Victorious. They’d been in a taxi together before she could think better of it, and he’d pulled her into his lap, kissing her again and again, as if she was a marvel.
How could she do anything but fall into the man who had shared this exquisite, hard-won triumph with her? How could she keep herself from enjoying him?
Just this one last time, she told herself as the cab lurched its way south. As Hunter kissed her, deep and slow and long, as if he was content to do nothing else. As if there was nothing else. Just his mouth on hers, the dance of tongues and teeth and longing, his hand at the back of her head and that hard body of his below her, around her.
As if it could never end, when she knew better.
And in the morning, Jason Treffen was all over the news, puffed up and magnanimous, talking about how he’d felt it was time he left his law practice to better dedicate himself to his charity work.
The unsubtle subtext was: Aren’t I the most wonderful man alive?
“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 hadn’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 sh
e’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.
