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He didn’t share that part with Aaron. He only stared at him as the kid’s breathing changed from that wild, angry panic into something more manageable.
“I’m not going to be at practice for the next few days,” Hunter continued evenly. Because he had to get used to that hollow place Zoe had left inside him before he unleashed it on these kids. And because he’d decided he should drive up to Boston and offer an overdue apology to his long-suffering parents while he was feeling so benevolent and bruised. “But you better be. And believe me when I tell you that when I return, your attitude needs to be adjusted. One hundred percent. Do you understand me?”
Aaron looked like the kid he was then, sagged there against the wall, and Hunter’s chest felt a little bit too tight. Maybe more than a little.
As if he’d been frozen, too, all these years, and Zoe had melted all that ice away.
“I understand,” Aaron said after a minute, and Hunter nodded.
“If you don’t, you’ll figure it out in push-ups and extra laps,” he said darkly. “Count on it.”
He hesitated a moment, then reached over and clapped Aaron on his shoulder, feeling the boy’s breath rush out of his body. And then he walked away, back toward his car and New York and all the other things he needed to do—but not before he saw Aaron grin, wide and hard and kind of painful at the floor between his feet, as if he was afraid someone would see and take it from him.
But not too afraid. Not enough to stop.
Chapter Eleven
The world didn’t stop turning just because her world had shifted off its axis, Zoe found.
There was still her work, which she told herself she’d never enjoyed more. She sorted out a politician’s unfortunate sexting scandal, tutored a debutante on how best to counteract her reputation as an airhead in order to raise money for a charity close to the heart no one knew she had, and started initial talks with a band who wanted to make a splash with their first new album in ages.
She’d lived more than thirty years without Hunter Talbot Grant III. Why should a week without him seem so empty? This was the good life, she told herself as one day turned into the next, and she was perfectly fine. Perfectly fine. This was what it looked like when Jason Treffen was neutralized and she could simply...live.
Except Hunter refused to disappear the way she’d assumed he would.
He’d showed up for his usual meeting a few days after that last wrenching scene in his apartment, shocking her. She hadn’t been ready to see him. She hadn’t been ready to watch that low, easy saunter of his, or see that cool, assessing gleam in his blue eyes. He’d walked into her office as if he owned it, then thrown himself down on her couch with all the nonchalance in the world.
She hadn’t been prepared for how much it still hurt. So much she had to sit down at her desk, for fear her legs would betray her.
“What are you doing here?” she’d asked him, in some shaky rendition of her usual businesslike tone.
“It’s Tuesday,” he’d said, as if that was an explanation. When she’d only stared at him, his mouth had crooked slightly. “I have a standing Tuesday meeting. I require that much consultation about my image, so damaged is it. You said so yourself.”
“Jason left the law firm,” she’d said, helplessly. Something had rocked through her as he stared back at her, vicious and extraordinarily painful.
“I know. I was there.”
“This isn’t necessary any longer.”
There’d been a gleam in those blue eyes of his that had made her feel hollowed out. Raw.
“Do I strike you as rehabilitated, Zoe?” he’d asked, more dangerous than she’d ever seen him.
Which was when she’d admitted to herself that she didn’t want him coming to her for his image. That she’d looked up, seen him in her doorway, and hoped against hope that he’d decided not to take no for an answer—
But he’d promised her he’d never do that.
She’d been appalled at herself, that she should want him to do it anyway. At the sad truth that she was still so weak.
And worse, she’d been certain Hunter had known it.
“Let me get Daniel,” she’d thrown back at him. “He’ll be taking over your account.”
“Of course he will. With a song in his heart, I’m sure.”
“If you have a problem with that,” she’d said tightly, “there are a number of other public relations firms in the city that I’d be happy to recommend to you.”
