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.