Scandalize Me

“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.