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“You seem to want to throw what happened to you in my face, so let’s do this. Let’s make it as awful as possible. Name a price. You know I can pay it. I’m richer than God.”
“Of course you’re making this about you. That’s what men like you—”
“There are no men like me,” he bit off, all the violence he was holding in check in his voice then. “Not for you. Not now. Name your price.”
“Go to hell!” she threw at him.
She surged to her feet in a blind explosion, but he’d expected that. Wanted it. He met her, feeling a kind of deep satisfaction when she swung at him. He felt her fists land on him, harder than he’d anticipated, and he let her do it. He didn’t even raise his own arms in defense.
“Hit me harder,” he told her gruffly, watching that dark light in her eyes, that grim cast over her face. “Make it hurt, Zoe, or what’s the point?”
She swayed on her feet, her breath coming in harsh pants, but the gray eyes that met his were a wild winter storm. The dead thing behind them was gone, and though he knew that was good, he also knew it must hurt. And still she held her fists in front of her like weapons, as if she had no idea how small they were. Or as if it didn’t matter, because she’d fight anyway.
His Zoe. Completely incapable of surrender.
“Hurt me,” he said again, more intently. “Don’t you know how this works? Shit always rolls downhill. So consider this an incline.”
She was still breathing too hard. She looked forlorn and terrified and fierce all at once, and he knew that if he tried to touch her she’d come straight out of her skin. He concentrated on the faint sting from the blows she’d landed on his chest, each one proof she wasn’t as lost as she looked. She hadn’t disappeared beneath that ice. She was still right here, no matter how much it hurt her. Or him.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she gritted out after a long moment, as if the words were torn from her throat.
He waited until her gaze moved to meet his again. Held it. “Then don’t.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Yes,” he said. Implacable. Sure. When he was neither of those things in anything but this. “It is.”
Zoe jerked her head away, turning it to the side as if that would hide the way her face crumpled in on itself, and he had to stand there and watch that. Stand and do nothing but wait while she pressed one of those tight fists to her lips, as though she could beat back her own tears if she had to. If it came to that.
“Let’s hurt the person who deserves it,” Hunter said quietly, and though she didn’t look back at him then, though he saw the hint of moisture at the corners of her eyes and the fist at her mouth tightened until her knuckles went white, Zoe nodded. It was jerky and stiff, and it seared straight through him as if it was his own pain, but it was a nod. “As it happens, I have a few ideas of my own.”
* * *
He called Austin from the car as he drove toward Edgarton that afternoon, the way he’d done every afternoon since Zoe had taken him there. First because she’d ordered him to do it and he’d decided to take that ride. And then only partly because of that, though that was one more thing he wasn’t ready to think about.
“Who is this?” Austin asked in lieu of a greeting. “I don’t recognize this number. I’m pretty sure the previous owner accused me of being a stalker.”
“We need to meet,” Hunter said, ignoring the dig.
“I definitely don’t recognize this voice. You know you can’t keep playing the head-in-sand routine if you call meetings, right? People might get the wrong impression and think you care about something.”
“Tomorrow night. I don’t care where. Bring Alex.”
“Alex is actually a grown man, Hunter, with his own very busy schedule, which you would know if you ever took his calls. I don’t keep him in my back pocket.”
“There’s someone I want you both to meet,” Hunter said impatiently, and he didn’t know if it was his tone of voice that did it or the fact that there could really be only one reason he’d want to make introductions to the two of them, but Austin was quiet for a moment.
“Who?”
Zoe had said she was fine with this, that she wanted to do it because it dovetailed so nicely with her own plans, but Hunter still wanted to protect her if she changed her mind. Because this might be the only way she’d ever let him protect her, he thought darkly, and the truth was she was far more likely to simply punch him again.
