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.