Scandalize Me

She didn’t look away. That long-ago December night reared up between them, so real she could almost reach out and touch it, however little she wanted to do such a thing. But Zoe knew more than her share about ghosts. How they festered. How they grew.

“Did you love her?”

She wasn’t sure she’d meant to ask that. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Hunter blew out a breath, and suddenly, the space between them didn’t feel like nearly enough. But she couldn’t seem to move, and his arms were around her, tight, keeping her right where she was, tucked up against him as if she belonged there.

“I was eighteen when I met Sarah,” he said after a moment. “Twenty-three when I lost her. We broke up and got back together a hundred times in those years. We were kids. If she’d lived, if she’d never gotten mixed up with Jason Treffen...” He sighed. “She was hungry and ambitious, passionate about everything, and I didn’t have that kind of drive. I think she would have left me eventually for someone who did.”

He smiled then, crooked and quiet.

“Yeah,” he said. “I did. I really did.”

He watched her then, and Zoe had the strangest falling sensation, as if everything was spinning all around and instead of it making her sick, she wanted nothing more than to let it sweep her away. The same way she had in her office, what seemed like such a long time ago.

At least now she knew why.

“I’m not Sarah.”

She hadn’t meant to say it like that, so stark and blunt. But she was unable to hide the panic, the desperate tide that threatened to drag her off into the dark. She felt as if she was crumbling into pieces right there in his arms, into ash and dust that could blow away into nothing at the first hint of wind.

“I know that,” Hunter said quietly, his blue gaze never wavering from hers.

“You can’t save me, either,” she retorted, as if he’d argued with her.

There was a red thing inside her, hot and dangerous, and for the first time in years, she had no strategy. No plan. She just...hurt. She loved him and she knew better and she hurt.

“I don’t need your white horse or your pity or whatever this is. I can’t help you bring her back to life. Do you understand me?”

He shifted as if she’d sunk something sharp and deadly deep into his side. She let him smooth his palm over her cheek. She felt the heat of it, the strength, and God help her, but she’d never wished so deep or so hard that they were both other people.

That she was.

“I’m long past saving, Hunter,” she said, a broken thread of sound, revealing everything. All of that mess inside her, still. The broken pieces, the shadows and the regrets and the terrible shame. “It can’t be done.”

“The thing is,” he said. “I’m pretty sure you’ve already saved yourself.”

His skin against her skin. His hand so gentle, so sure. His eyes so blue they took over the whole world, making her heart feel far too big for her chest, as if it might spill over, burst free, all through the apartment and down to the cold street outside, and she knew this couldn’t last. She knew she couldn’t let it. But here, now, she couldn’t help herself.

She leaned into his hand. She let herself pretend.

“Not yet,” she whispered.

* * *

After a few days of intense plotting, they were shown into a lush conference room on the highest floor of Treffen, Smith, and Howell by a deferential young woman whose carefully blank expression made Zoe’s stomach hurt.

But it also fueled that deep, black anger inside her. Reminding her exactly why she was doing this. Exactly why she had to do this.

The last time she’d been in this building didn’t bear thinking about, so she stood by the window and stared out at New York instead, gleaming there before her in the last of the afternoon light, looking so pretty and perfect and dusted in white, like a snow globe. As if nothing terrible could ever happen in the midst of all that gilt-edged urban beauty.

She wasn’t aware that she’d made a noise until Hunter came to stand beside her, lending her his vast strength without even touching her. It hit her, then, how terribly she was going to miss him, miss this—but she couldn’t let herself think about that now.

“You okay?” he asked.

She’d dressed to be more than okay. She’d dressed to kill, all sharp edges and royal blue, with that promise of payback in every line. Nothing submissive or subordinate or terrified about her. No mourning clothes. Like a sword. Like the avenging angel she’d made herself, just for this.