After a moment, he let her go, and Zoe let herself breathe.
“In a few months, maybe three, I’m going to propose,” he told her in the quiet that surrounded them, and she could hear his smile in the dark. As good as a light. “I’m telling you now so you can start preparing yourself.”
“Propose what? Sexcapades? We already have those, don’t we?”
He smacked her on her bottom, hard enough to make her laugh.
“Marriage,” he said. “I figure you’ll turn me down at least three times. Fear, disbelief, some misbegotten notion that I shouldn’t tie myself down to someone like you. I’ll offer to come up with a binding prenuptial agreement, which will enrage you, and you’ll accept my loving proposal by doing something insane, like punching me, probably in public. I can’t wait.”
“Idiot,” she muttered, but she was grinning. She crawled up over his perfectly sculpted chest and kissed him, hard. Then again, the way, she thought, she planned to keep right on doing for the rest of their lives.
“Is it three months yet?” he asked when she pulled away.
“Not yet,” she said against his mouth. “You don’t want to say anything too crazy tonight, Hunter. It could ruin the whole thing. Scare me off.”
One of his hands came up and fisted in her hair, and she shivered, wanting him as desperately as she always did. More, because every day now, she trusted him more.
And the more she trusted him, the more she trusted herself, too.
“Then we better practice,” he murmured against her mouth, and that easily, she was needy. Hungry. “So we’re ready when the time comes.”
* * *
They went together.
“Do you want to go in alone?” he asked when they were outside the office where, Zoe knew, Alex waited for them. Where she would tell her story in all its sordid, uncompromising detail, and make herself a very pointed nail in Jason Treffen’s coffin.
She felt that panic again. She swallowed hard, searching his face.
“I don’t want—”
“I swear to God,” he said, his voice impatient but his blue eyes kind, so kind it made a lump swell in her throat, “if you say anything to me about the things you think I don’t want to hear—”
“You won’t want to hear them,” she said fiercely.
“No,” he said evenly, his gaze never wavering. “I won’t. Because I love you, Zoe, and I will marry you no matter how many times you freak out about it, and I’ll hate every second of this because I hate that you had to live through it. But you did. And look at you. You’re a wonder. The most amazing woman I’ve ever known. If you can sit and tell your story, if you can go on national television and accuse Jason to his face, then I can sit with you and hear that story. I can share the burden.” His beautiful mouth crooked. “Or try. I’d like to try.”
She was overwhelmed. Tears pricked at the back of her eyes and she didn’t care if they fell.
“I love you, too,” she whispered.
That grin of his deepened, went cocky. As if he’d always known it would end this way, that he’d win. But then again, maybe she had, too. Maybe they both had.
Maybe that was the point.
Hunter reached over and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, and then he waited.
Zoe looked at Alex’s door, and pulled in a deep, hard breath. To mark this momentous occasion, her outing as one of “Jason’s girls,” she’d worn white. Crisp white jeans and a flowing cream top. Virginal and pure. She’d seen Hunter’s smile when she’d emerged from her bedroom this morning, and she’d known the symbolism wasn’t lost on him.
Because she might be about to tell the hardest story she knew, to a man who would use it as a weapon to take down the monster who’d tortured her for over a decade, but she still knew PR. She could spin anything. Even this.
She’d always wanted revenge on Jason Treffen, but this was better. This would be justice.
“I’m ready,” she said.
Hunter stood beside her like a bodyguard. The wall between her and the world that she didn’t need to carry around inside herself any longer, because he’d do it instead. He’d be her shield, just as she’d be his.
They deserved a future free of the past. Free of ghosts. Free.
And there was only one way to do that.
“This might get a little bit crazy,” she warned him again, for the last time, and he only smiled, then reached over and took her hand, lacing his fingers through hers.