Читать книгу Scandalise Me - CAITLIN CREWS - Страница 8

Chapter Two

Sarah.

That name seemed to echo through the club, drowning out the music, slamming everything else straight out of his head. It seared through Hunter’s whole body like a lightning strike, only much darker. Much worse. Much more damaging.

He should have known.

If he hadn’t been so thrown by the appearance of Zoe Brook—like a jolt of caffeine, dressed in slick dark colors that only emphasized the powerful punch of her smoky, blue-gray eyes and lips painted a dusky shade of red—he would have seen this coming, surely. She was wearing too many too-expensive clothes, for starters, which meant she wasn’t flashing any skin. She hadn’t thrown herself at him in lieu of a greeting. There was absolutely no reason at all she should get to him, much less make an entire club filled with far more conventionally beautiful and accessible women simply...fade.

And yet she’d been the only thing he could see, from the moment she’d locked eyes with him.

But women like Zoe didn’t approach him at all these days, much less in places like this. They didn’t seek him out. They thought they knew all they needed to know about him, and he went out of his way to confirm their low opinions. They condemned him from nice, safe distances, way up high on their moral high grounds, and he liked it that way. He didn’t want to be near anyone he could ruin, not ever again.

He should have known.

Sarah was still the noose around his neck, all these years later. Forever. Deservedly—and he’d been kidding himself, thinking that he could avoid it now that he was back in New York. Imagining he could ignore the terrible truth. Blowing off his old friends’ attempts to finally do something about what had happened to her, a decade too late.

“I beg your pardon?” He hardly sounded like himself, whoever the hell that was.

Zoe’s smile affected him more than was healthy. Far more than was wise. “You heard me.”

“Yes. But I don’t think I know what you mean.”

Her smile deepened, and he felt thrust off-balance. Angry and needy instead of his preferred state of numbness. Something like lost—and it was that last he found unforgivable. He’d accepted that he was the worst kind of man a decade ago. He’d proved it every day since, hadn’t he? Why couldn’t that be the end of it?

But it never was.

“Oh, I think you do,” Zoe was saying almost cheerfully. “But you can pretend otherwise, if you like. I won’t think less of you. I doubt that’s even possible. Either way, I’ll expect you at my office tomorrow morning at ten.”

“Your expectations are destined to end in disappointment.”

“I hope not.” Her perfectly wicked brows rose, and he didn’t know what was the matter with him, that she could threaten him and he wanted her anyway. “I’m very good at getting what I want, Mr. Grant. You don’t want to test me.”

“Are you blackmailing me, Ms. Brook?”

Her smoke-colored eyes filled with a gleaming sort of triumph, making her look nearly beautiful in the club’s dark light. But Hunter had made beautiful women his life’s work, and Zoe Brook didn’t fit the bill. She was too sharp, too edgy. Her full lips were too quick to a smirk and her cool, blue-gray gaze was far too direct and intelligent. Her dark hair was thick and inky, her figure trim and smooth beneath clothes that murmured of her success in elegant lines, but she wasn’t anything as palatable as pretty. He liked softness and sweetness. Obliging whispers, melting glances. She was too...much.

And that was without knowing that when he touched her, he caught fire.

“That would suggest that there’s something about your ex-girlfriend that could be used to blackmail you,” she said after a moment of consideration. Her mouth twitched. “Are you saying there is?”

“I have no idea. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Hunter smiled. “But then, everyone knows what a dumb jock I am.”

“I don’t think you’re dumb,” she said, and not in a complimentary way. “Whatever else you are.”

“You may be right,” he agreed, amused. “It takes a certain level of intelligence to remain this committed to my own destruction.” He held her gaze. “But that still doesn’t mean I know what you’re talking about.”

There was a small pause, and the world crept back in. The insistent pulse of the club’s loud music. The distant sound of laughter. His own heart, pounding hard.

“You’re remarkably self-aware for a Neanderthal, I have to admit,” she said then, as if she was extending an olive branch.

“I was a Neanderthal professionally, never socially. It’s a crucial distinction.”

“Are you telling me you’re the way you are deliberately?”

“Aren’t we all?” he asked, more harshly than he’d intended. Giving too much away, he saw, when she tilted her head slightly to one side and regarded him with uncomfortable frankness.

He needed to walk away from this woman. He needed to end this conversation. He didn’t know why he couldn’t seem to do it. Why he stood there before her as if waiting for her to render judgment—when he knew she already had. Before she’d arrived, no doubt, or she wouldn’t have sought him out like this.

When it shouldn’t matter anyway.

“I’d be very careful playing this game, if I were you,” he said quietly. Too quietly. Showing more than he should, again. “You might not like where it goes.”

“Don’t worry,” she said, something so sharp in her gaze it looked like hatred, and that shouldn’t have surprised him. Not anymore. It certainly shouldn’t have made him feel so hollowed out, as if she’d done it herself with a jagged spoon while they stood here like this, close enough to touch. “I’m not going to hurt myself because you’re mean to me, Mr. Grant. I’m not her.”

It was a shot through the heart. Unerring and lethal.

Zoe Brook smiled again, wider than before.

“Ten o’clock,” she told him while he stood there like a dead thing, as he was certain she’d intended. Her amused drawl in place and that cool fire in her eyes that reminded him of the sea outside his family’s rambling cottage high on the Maine coast, where he’d seen this precise shade of dangerous gray at Christmas. And that rawness in him that grew the more she looked at him and saw nothing but the dark and terrible things he’d done.

Hunter preferred himself empty. At least then he knew who he was.

She reached over and pressed a business card into his hand. “Don’t be late.”

And when she walked away, he stayed where she left him, as surely as if she’d cut him off at the knees.

As if there was nothing left of him but shattered pieces. Shadows and lies where his bones should have been. Ruins of the man he’d never been.

* * *

This is the life you made, he told himself when he finally pushed his way out of the club into the cold, crisp February morning some time later, the slap of winter harsh against his face.

Hunter hailed a cab out on the frigid avenue and then stared out the window as Manhattan slid by on the jerky trip back toward his soulless, minimalist penthouse that towered above Wall Street: the perfect crypt for the walking dead, he’d thought when he’d bought it a few months back.

After all, he’d been the one to punch that smug referee in the face in December in the middle of a hotly contested call; he’d known what he was doing and he’d known what was likely to happen when he did it. He simply hadn’t cared enough any longer to bother restraining himself. His whole career had been an exercise in pushing limits. He’d been benched, fined, reprimanded. He’d once told a reporter that he wanted to see what it took to be ejected from the NFL altogether—and as he’d finally proved, he hadn’t been joking.

“And behold,” he’d told two of his three college roommates with his typical self-aggrandizing swagger at their depressing annual dinner, before their odd vigil had become even more upsetting than it usually was with an anonymous letter and a host of unsavory accusations he didn’t want to think about.

He’d shown off his scraped knuckles with the pretense of great pride, fooling neither of the men who had once known him so well, but that was how they’d rolled for years. Big smiles. Great stories. A howling abyss within.

Or maybe that was him.

“I am a success in all I do,” he’d said, grinning widely at Austin Treffen and Alex Diaz as if they were all still eighteen years old and bursting with hopes and dreams and grand ideas about what their lives would be. Instead of what they actually were. What they’d let themselves become in these years of silence. Bought and paid for. Complicit. “As ever.”

But he didn’t want to think about Sarah Michaels, especially now that Zoe Brook had thrown her in his face. He’d been avoiding it since the night she’d died, but fate and that damned letter Austin had slapped down on the table that night in December had intervened.

Ten years ago, Hunter had suspected that Sarah had betrayed him after their three intense years of dating, from college into their first year of life in New York City. That, he’d thought, was why she’d broken up with him back then. He’d believed guilt over her behavior had led her to take her own life that awful night, and he’d never forgiven himself for his role in her decision. That he’d been terribly wrong about her had been clear after she’d died, and that had been bad enough. But the letter Austin had received had suggested it was so much worse than that—so much more—

Hunter didn’t see how he could live with what he knew now. With himself, for not knowing it then.

He was a heartless, soulless man, he knew: blind and selfish to the core. He’d wasted his life as if he’d been on a mission to do so from the start. He’d disappointed his family, his friends, both football teams he’d played for in his career, all of his fans. He’d squandered each and every gift he’d ever been given. He’d let the only girl he’d ever loved walk away from him, straight into the hands of a monster, and he hadn’t noticed anything but his own pain and jealousy.

And he knew these were the least of his sins.

Because he still remembered every moment of that night ten years ago, at the annual Christmas party at Austin’s father’s law firm. How Sarah had come to him with all that dark pain on her face and he had liked it.

Can I talk to you? she’d asked. Please?

Maybe later, he’d said, making such a show of not caring, of hardly paying attention to her. This is a big night.

It was about time she’d felt some of what he was feeling, he’d thought. He’d liked that she looked lost and scared and tentative, all things Sarah Michaels had never been. He’d assumed that she was finally recognizing what a huge mistake she’d made in breaking up with him. He’d thought it was so ironic that he’d been entirely faithful to Sarah even though he was the professional athlete—that she’d been the one to cheat on him, and with Austin’s father, no less.

He’d been so smugly certain he was the victim. So self-righteous that Sarah had done this terrible thing and he—out of respect for who she’d been back in college, he’d told himself piously—had opted to keep it to himself. Because he was such a great guy.

And because he was all things petty, because he’d thought that shattered look on her face—all about him, he’d been so certain—wasn’t quite enough, he’d taken the whole thing a step further and asked the bimbo he’d been parading around on his arm to marry him, right there in the middle of the Christmas party in all of the elegance and old-money sparkle Treffen, Smith, and Howell claimed as its own.

He’d watched Sarah leave the room as the champagne was popped, looking small and beaten, and all these years later he was still ashamed of how deeply satisfied he’d felt then. He’d had no idea that that would be the last time he’d ever see her. That he’d spend the rest of his life wondering if, had he known he’d never lay eyes on Sarah alive again, he might have done something differently.

One shade up from sociopathic, Zoe Brook had said. She had no idea how right she was.

Then again, if she knew about Sarah, maybe she did.

* * *

Zoe didn’t take a full breath until she shut her apartment door late that night, cutting herself off from the world at last. She tugged off her boots in her entry hall and padded barefoot into the apartment that ambled over the whole of the third floor of a prewar brownstone on the Upper West Side.

She let herself breathe in deep as she moved through the living room with its commotion of bright colors, letting her Tough Bitch Mask drop away. Here at home, she was someone else. Here, she was the Zoe she might have been.

The Zoe who hadn’t been ruined.

She moved into her bathroom as she stripped out of her work clothes, headed for the pretty claw-footed tub perched on the black-and-white checkerboard tiled floor. She turned on the water and poured in a sachet of her favorite bath salts, letting the lavender scent work on her.

There was more Jason Treffen in her head than usual tonight, and it made her edgy.

Her interaction with Hunter Grant this morning hadn’t helped. The thing was, she’d wanted to touch him again, standing there in the middle of a strip club, of all places. She’d wanted to touch him, and that didn’t make sense. Not for her.

Her skin felt itchy. New. As if it wasn’t hers any longer. And that strange notion threw her right back into the past.

Her grandparents had raised her grudgingly after her own parents took off, reminding her daily that they were doing no more than their Christian duty. And that was exactly what they’d done. She’d grown up in the high desert of southern California, whole worlds and a long drive away from glamorous Los Angeles. It had been bitterly cold in the winter, brutally hot in the summer, and there was always that unsettling desert wind, sweeping down from the stark, brown mountains to keep everyone on edge.

Zoe had tried her best to love her grandparents and their pinched-mouthed charity they’d never allowed her to forget would end the day she turned eighteen. She’d tried. School hadn’t come easily to her, but she’d applied herself and excelled her way into a scholarship—because she’d had no other choice if she wanted to escape.

When she met Jason Treffen at a scholarship student function her senior year at Cornell, he was charming and kind. He understood. And because he did, when he offered to help her, she let him.

She still couldn’t forgive herself for that.

He’d paid off her student loans because, he said, he knew promise when he saw it. He’d hired her as a legal assistant at his very upscale law firm in New York City, and Zoe had been so grateful. For the first time in her life, she’d felt cared for. Pampered, even. As if she’d been worthy of love after all, despite her grandparents.

It wasn’t until the second time Jason asked her to go out to dinner with a friend of his—because the old guy was lonely and Zoe was a pretty girl who could be friendly, couldn’t she?—that she got that sick feeling in her gut. It wasn’t until one or two more “favors” ended with increasingly intense negotiations for sex that Jason suggested later she should have accepted, that she finally understood. That she finally saw the wolf in his gleaming sheep’s robes.

But by then, of course, she was trapped. Jason was good at what he did. And even better at punishing the girls who didn’t play along. He was rich and powerful and connected, and, as he told her repeatedly, no one would believe her anyway.

It took Zoe three long, horrible years to buy her freedom. She watched other girls give in. To drugs, to despair. She almost wavered herself—it was so hard, and she was so alone, and did she really think she could beat a powerful man such as Jason at his own game?—but then her friend Sarah had taken her own life.

And that had changed everything.

Zoe had understood she had to escape. She had to. Or all of it—Sarah’s death, what she’d suffered those terrible years, what had happened to the other girls—would have been in vain.

She had to escape, or Jason won.

Zoe twisted her long black hair into a messy knot on the top of her head now, and tested the water in the bath, letting it run through her fingers. And it all rushed back. It flooded into her, demanding her surrender, the way it always did.

Insisting she remember everything.

Do you really believe you can run away from me? Jason had laughed at her that last day in his dark wood office so high above the city, when she’d thrown her hard-earned check down in front of him and told him she was done. Leaving. Free at last. I plucked you from obscurity. You don’t have anything I didn’t give you, and you never will. Remember that.

You made me a whore, she’d thrown at him, hatred and terror and disgust making her voice too thick. Too obvious.

Whores generally close the deal. He’d looked so pleased with himself. So smug. Not in the least bit concerned that she was getting out from under his thumb. That’s the point of whores. What you do is play dangerous games. You’re lucky there are so many men who enjoy paying for the privilege of that kind of tease.

But she’d had one or two nights that had tipped over that edge, hadn’t she? When they’d simply taken what they wanted. And the way he’d looked at her then, she knew that he knew it.

Yes, she’d hissed at him. Lucky is exactly how I feel. I’m overcome with gratitude.

You will be, he’d assured her.

Years had passed and she still couldn’t get the ring of his laughter out of her ears, erase that vicious smile from her memory.

Hello, Zoe.

He’d surprised her backstage in the green room of one of the nighttime shows that taped locally that time, where she’d been shepherding a client as part of her first job in PR. She’d stared at him, hoping he’d disappear the way he sometimes did in the nightmares she’d refused to admit she’d been having since her escape from Treffen, Smith, and Howell.

But, of course, he’d only smiled at her.

It wouldn’t kill you to be polite, he’d said, kindly, but she could see the monster in his eyes.

In fact, she’d said, it might.

His smile had only deepened, turned friendlier. Jason Treffen at his most dangerous.

Enjoy that sassy spirit of yours, he’d said, as if he’d been bestowing a gift upon her. It won’t last.

Some of her coworkers had burst into the room then and had been wowed at the sight of Jason Treffen, saint of New York, standing there with a lowly new PR associate like Zoe. She’d had to smile politely while he took pictures with them. When he’d slung an arm around her shoulders. While he’d chatted with them, doling out his usual host of platitudes and insights, all of which took on a nightmarish hue should you happen to know what lurked beneath it.

He’d engineered that meeting, she knew he had. To remind her that whenever he so desired, he could reach out and make her feel slimy and cheap. Used.

Zoe had already vowed she’d take him down some day. After that run-in, she’d determined that she wanted it to hurt. And her desire for revenge had burned in her, a naked flame, hot and bright. Eclipsing everything else.

You exist because I allow it, he’d told her at a charity event not five years ago, cupping her elbow in his hand and making her feel as if a thousand insects swarmed over her skin. Everything you own, all you’ve accomplished, is mine. I gave it to you and I can take it away, Zoe.

She hadn’t been quite so young then. And she hadn’t much cared that she was dead inside.

I can’t imagine why you’d bother, she’d said, and she’d been so proud that she’d stood there as if turned to stone, as if it didn’t matter that he was touching her.

Why do I do anything? Again, that nasty laugh. He’d dug his fingers into the tender place above her elbow, making her whole arm numb. She’d remembered that he’d liked pain. Inflicting it, watching others suffer it. But she’d only stared back at him, cool and unimpressed, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of reacting. Because I can, Zoe. I can do whatever the hell I want. Remember that.

The last time she’d seen him had been some months ago. She’d been in a very fancy restaurant celebrating the birthday of one of her former clients, who also happened to be a heavyweight in New York politics. She’d expected to see Jason there, working the party in his usual way, and she hadn’t been disappointed.

She’d braced herself for the inevitable encounter—but he hadn’t approached her. He’d been reveling in a crowd of admirers until a young woman appeared at his side and whispered something in his ear.

Zoe had seen the way Jason let his hand rest a moment too long on the young woman’s arm. She’d seen the way he’d turned to look down at her, seen the flash of that repulsive smile of his that had made her stomach lurch from all the way across the room. She’d seen them turn toward the door, the woman stepping out to walk in front of him, so he couldn’t see her face any longer.

That face which had been a blank except for her eyes, which were dark with self-loathing and sheer, stark misery.

Zoe knew that expression. She knew. It had been like a kick to the gut, so hard she hadn’t been able to breathe, and she’d had to stand still and watch.

Then she’d felt something else—that creeping, sickening feeling that told her he’d seen her. Sure enough, when she’d jerked her gaze away from the young woman who hurried from the party and out into the fall night, Jason was watching her.

He’d held her gaze across the crowd. So arrogant. So superior. She’d clenched her fingers so hard around the stem of her wineglass that she’d left deep grooves in her own flesh. She’d worried that she might be sick where she stood.

Jason Treffen had merely smiled. Pleased, as ever. Winning, as usual.

Zoe sucked in a breath now, snapping herself back into her own bathroom. You’re safe, she told herself, again and again, until her heart rate smoothed out. She stepped into the hot water, and sank into its silken embrace until she was submerged up to her chin.

At last, it was time. The whole country was gearing up to celebrate Jason Treffen and his many years of humanitarian “service” to all, and that was where Zoe came in. It was time to take him down. It was time to hit him where it hurt. Past time.

It was time to do some winning of her own.

And Hunter Grant—who had dated Sarah Michaels back when Zoe and Sarah were both caught in Jason’s trap, who had broken that poor girl’s heart, who had flaunted another woman in Sarah’s face on the night she’d died, and that was assuming he hadn’t been doing something far worse—was going to help her do it.

Or Zoe would destroy him, too.

No matter how he made her feel.

* * *

Hunter hated Midtown with a passion.

He hated the streets crammed full of grim worker drones, so self-important and brusque. He hated the building that housed Treffen, Smith, and Howell, an architecturally uninspired black box indistinguishable from the rest of the block it stood on. He hated the press of the crowds on the streets outside. The ubiquitous hot dog vendors, the stink of the subways that rose up through the grates at his feet, the black sparkle of the listless fountain that dominated the courtyard entryway to the building and stood waterless this time of year, like a metaphor.

He hadn’t set foot in this building since the night of that terrible Christmas party ten years ago.

But he was under siege from at least three different lawsuits these days thanks to his antics, and so he’d finally agreed to meet his legal team today in this hateful place. This grand, gluttonous monument to so many lies.

Hunter knew he could very well run into Jason here. And probably would. The man’s name was etched into the wall, after all. He didn’t know what he’d do if that happened.

He knew what he wanted to do, what he should have done ten years ago: punch the smug, insufferable bastard in the face, which was only the smallest part of what Jason Treffen deserved.

Maybe it was time to make sure he got it—but, of course, that would require action.

Austin had spent the time since their ghoulish little December anniversary dinner exposing his father for the monster he was to his family. Alex had spent it plotting out ways to further make Jason pay, publicly. Austin and Alex had plans. They wanted to take Jason down and they had ideas about how to do it. Austin had already done his part. Alex was working on his.

While Hunter was avoiding the entire thing, as if that might make it go away. Along with most of the texts and calls he received from his old friends, while he was at it.

He didn’t bother scowling at his reflection in the gleaming elevator doors before him as he rocketed up toward the firm. He knew what was looking back at him. If anything, Zoe Brook had been too conservative in her rundown of his flaws.

The doors slid open, and Hunter wasn’t at all surprised to see a young woman standing there, looking sleek and polished and delighted to see him.

Looking like déjà vu.

“Hello, Mr. Grant,” she said, smiling. “I’m Iris.”

If he had to guess, he’d say she was the latest incarnation of what Sarah had been. The title had been Legal Assistant back then. But if this one was another of Jason’s girls, doing paralegal work was the very tip of the iceberg.

And that twisting, nasty feeling in his gut told him he knew exactly what that iceberg entailed, and that this girl was part of it. Up to her neck and drowning, no doubt.

One more victim he couldn’t save. How many were there now? How many more would there be before he actually did something about it? How many people could say their blind inaction had an actual body count?

“Nice to meet you, Iris,” he said, and he could hear the gravel in his voice. That banked fury, as toothless as the rest of him. He forced a smile. “Are you here to make sure I don’t get lost?”

“Mr. Treffen sent me to collect you,” Iris said. “He wanted you to drop in and say hello before your meeting.”

If she noticed the way Hunter froze, or the way his smile vanished from his face, she was too well trained to comment on it. And God help him, he didn’t want to think about Jason fucking Treffen’s training program.

“It’s this way,” she said.

But he didn’t follow her when she started to move. He stood there by the bank of elevators, wishing he was a different man.

“Mr. Grant?”

“Please tell Mr. Treffen I don’t have time to see him today,” Hunter said, his voice clipped. Because I don’t know if I’ll try to kill him with my bare hands. Or if I should try to stop myself if I do. Or if—even worse—I’ll do nothing at all. “I’m sure he’ll understand.”

Iris’s polite mask never altered. “Of course,” she said smoothly.

And Hunter let her walk away, straight back into hell, the way he’d let Sarah ten years ago. He even told himself it was better that way.

Because he made every single thing he touched that much worse.

* * *

That evening, Austin escalated to all-caps texts.

Having avoided one Treffen today, Hunter thought he’d do well to avoid the other, too. Not that it was fair, precisely, to lump the two together.

Good thing Hunter didn’t care.

The winter night had slammed down outside, dark and frigid and uninviting. It wasn’t much better inside his mausoleum of a penthouse, which seemed to loom all around him tonight, swollen black and thick with all his sins. He sat in the dark, watching SportsCenter on his laughably huge television that took up the better part of one vast wall.

He blew out a breath when Jason Treffen appeared on-screen, remembering that this was one of the reasons his old friends were so motivated to act. Now, when Jason was a few weeks away from being celebrated on national television, and every other advertisement seemed to trumpet his smiling face, as if he was running for office. Unopposed. The coverage was relentless.

Treffen, tireless advocate for women, in his first and most in-depth interview!

Treffen, defender of the downtrodden and personal benefactor to so many, opens up at last!

It was almost a relief when the regular programming returned, and one of Hunter’s former teammates—who happened to be suing him—appeared on the screen. Hunter muted him, not wanting to hear, yet again, a rundown of the ways in which his ejection from the NFL was a blessing for all concerned.

But, “He’s never been a team player,” he could see his former wide receiver say, directly into the camera, as if he knew Hunter was watching him, sound off or not. This was all part of the same song and dance that every single person in pro football had been performing since mid-December, whether they were filing lawsuits against him or not. Hunter could recite it himself, nearly word for word.

Out for himself. Not a team player. Prima donna. Waste of potential, waste of resources, narcissistic—

Blah-blah-blah.

It seemed like the perfect time, then, to call an old friend he didn’t want to talk to, to discuss a subject he still didn’t want to think about.

I know about Sarah, Zoe Brook had said. Which meant he hadn’t stopped thinking about it, no matter how little he wanted that.

“Stop texting me.” Hunter grunted into his cell phone when Austin answered—profanely, as expected. “You’re like a fourteen-year-old girl. I’m busy.”

“Busy doing what, playing hard to get?” Austin let out a short laugh. “Because last I checked, you don’t have a job.”

“I have shit to do. Didn’t realize I had to clear my schedule through a social secretary.”

“You’re sitting in your lonely bachelor pad, all by yourself, weeping over your glory days on ESPN On Demand,” Austin said disparagingly. “Aren’t you?”

Ouch. “I’ll repeat—stop texting me. When I’m tired of my glory days, you’ll be the first to know.”

“News flash, douchebag, this isn’t even about you. It was never about you.”

“Then you have even less reason to harass me.”

“Of course your reaction is to disappear.” Austin sounded exasperated. “Why am I surprised? Why did I think this time would be any different?”

“Because you’re such a giddy optimist?”

“This is what you do,” Austin said, as if he hadn’t heard Hunter’s sarcasm. “You did it ten years ago, you’re doing it now.”

“This conversation is reminding me why I don’t do girlfriends. Should we talk about where our relationship is heading? Do you feel fat? Are you going to tell me about your hurt feelings next?”

“I think you exhibited your feelings all over the football field, and the tabloids, for the past ten years,” Austin retorted. “All while keeping as far away from this cesspool as you could.”

Hunter didn’t say anything, because it was true. After Sarah’s death, he’d bailed. He’d moved out of the apartment he’d shared with Austin and Alex in New York, without a word. He’d gotten himself transferred to Dallas by the start of the next season, and he’d never had any intention of coming back to New York. Or to these old friendships that had once been more important to him than his own family.

“Do you have something in particular you wanted to talk about, Austin?” he asked now, scrubbing his face with one hand. “Or did you just want to reach out and sweet talk me? I appreciate it, I do, but next time, no need to call. Flowers would be fine. Don’t really like roses, though.”

“Is this what happens to you if you’re not playing football? Stop talking about flowers.”

“Tulips would do. I also like stargazer lilies. And the occasional hydrangea.”

He had no idea what he was talking about. But he was also smirking into the darkness all around him, which felt like an improvement. It reminded him of those long-ago days when he would have called Austin a brother.

“Did you get hit on the head today?” Austin asked. “Harder than usual, I mean?”

It only made Hunter want to talk about, say, shrubbery. Lawn ornaments. The little-known joys of vegetable gardens. He restrained himself, barely.

“I get it,” Austin said with a familiar edge in his voice, when moments ticked by and Hunter remained silent. He’d sounded much the same the last time Hunter had seen him, in some swanky bar or another, where Hunter had pretended he was the kind of man who cared about...anything. “This is the part where you hide in plain sight, right? Pretend you’re not involved? Just like you did back then?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hunter lied, and it was impossible to imagine he’d been making jokes about flowers only moments before. As if he and Austin were still close. He needed to remember that he’d lost everything the night they’d lost Sarah. Every single thing he’d ever thought was important. “I’m right here. Having this phone call, when usually, that number of stalkery texts leads straight to a court order.”

“I don’t know why I’m surprised. Is there anyone in your life you haven’t let down, Hunter? Anyone at all?”

He thought of his deeply appalled parents, who had never understood his desire to play football, much less his penchant for public scandals involving his notably bad temper and far worse decisions. His brother JP, the mogul in the making, who only shook his head at Hunter’s antics, but certainly didn’t depend on Hunter for anything. Even his younger sister, Nora, who had once looked at him with all that hero worship in her eyes, had spent all of their traditional Grant family Christmas up in Maine sighing heavily every time she’d found herself alone with him. As if his expulsion from football had finally forced even her to see him the way everyone else did.

“You should have sent a bouquet, Austin,” Hunter said now. “Much less drama and disappointment all around.”

Later, he sat in the dark, with only the television for company, and told himself he liked it that way.

He was thirty-three years old and he’d alienated every single person who’d ever meant something to him. Some men earned their lives of quiet desperation, their solitary confinement. An empty house, an abandoned life, another long winter all alone.

Zoe Brook was kidding herself: there was no rehabilitating him. There was no point pretending.

Hunter had never been destined for anything but this.