Page 99 of The Revenge Agenda

I snigger quietly. “Don’t you want to know about him?”

“I already know all about him. My lost boys are gossips, and I cook with Molly every week. I know the damn man’s shoe size, for crying out loud.”

“He’s very special.”

“I know.”

“How?”

“Because he caught your interest.”

If only she knew how wrong that was. “Ian caught my interest, and he was cheating on us both the whole time.”

She squeezes me a little tighter, laugh full of the life it had when I first moved in here. “That man never had your interest. Got you into bed, sure. Strung you along, of course. But held your interest? Not even a tiny bit. You never once stopped by to tell me you were in love with him.”

She’s right about that, and I don’t even know why exactly. I’d thought I was at the time. I’d thought Ian was amazing, and while we didn’t talk or spend all our time together like Hunter and I do, I’d still thought I had it good.

No, you’d thought you finally found your match.

Like the thought has sucked the life out of me, I sit up, pulling away from her hold, trying to keep the tears back that are pushing at my eyes.

“I’ve never cared that I have ADHD,” I tell her.

“I know.” She eyes me. “But you do now?”

I go to shake my head and stop. “I think … I think that’s what’s getting to me. All this time, I’ve been focused on Hunter and how Ian screwed him over. But … he screwed me over too. And not about the cheating thing. He made me feel … he lied to me. Made me think I’d found someone who understood me because he was going through it too.”

“He told you he had ADHD?”

Not in those exact words, but he knew what he was doing. “He made me trust him. He used it like it was a convenient excuse, and I didn’t think I cared, but I do. He used who I am against me. That’s not okay, Aggy. But he did it, and he gets to keep doing it. He gets to keep hurting people, and I hate it. He did it to me, and he’s still doing it to Hunter, and he’ll do it to other men who don’t deserve it. I want to make it stop.”

“You’ve always had a very strong moral compass.”

“I don’t like it.”

She reaches over to squeeze my hand. “In a world where there is so much bad, it’s one of the most valuable things to have.”

“I want to be able to move on.”

“Then work out how to do that.”

I deflate, completely empty and powerless. “I don’t know how.”

“Maybe not yet. But you will.”

Chapter 29

Hunter

“Are you okay?”

Rush shifts again, looking even less put together than usual. His buttons aren’t done up right, and when I tried to point it out to him, he popped the top one to fix them, got distracted by the elevator, and hasn’t gone back to them again. His tie is crooked, his curls have a weird part going on, but more than his physical appearance, it’s his eyes. Dazed. Unfocused. I want to take some of it away.

We reach our floor, and before Rush can break ahead to drop off Ted’s coffee, I tug him around the corner into a nook out of sight of the main office. Then I unbutton his shirt quickly and match them up in order again.

When I’m done, I look up, hoping to find him watching me with that indulgent smile, but he’s staring blankly into space instead. “There you go.”

He smooths his free hand down the front of his shirt. “Right. Thank you.”

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