Page 88 of Season of Seduction

Liam shook his head. “Are you still on that?”

Hunter continued to stare at him.

“Fine! Yeah, I threw it out. If you’d forced her to make a choice, it would have hurt more than you just walking away.”

“You don’t know what she would have done. Neither of us do. You’re not God, dammit. You can’t just dick around with our lives because you think you know best.”

“You would have done the exact same thing and you know it.”

“Bullshit,” Hunter replied. “I wouldn’t have robbed her of the right to choose.”

Liam narrowed his eyes. “I chose to protect the people I love from getting hurt.”

Hunter nearly choked on a bitter laugh. “Do you think Kat left because she was happy that you’d made the decision for her? Do you think I’m happy? You fucking asshole.”

Liam’s nostrils flared and flushed color flagged his cheekbones. “Where do you get off telling me what I should or shouldn’t do?”

Hunter straightened and stabbed a finger into the center of Liam’s chest. The other man flinched but didn’t back up. “There! How can you say that when you did the exact same thing to Kat and me? You might not have told us what to do, but you cut off our options. You made it so the only option remaining was what you wanted. How is that any different?”

Liam froze. He looked like he’d been hit with a brick. “Fuck.”

Satisfied he’d made his point, Hunter dropped his hand. “Flip it around, man. Think how this looks to her. To me.”

“Fuck,” Liam repeated, rubbing a hand over his face.

Hunter pushed past him and into the bedroom. Kat’s stamp was all over the room, from a basket overflowing with hair ribbons to a tube of lip gloss on the nightstand at her side of the rumpled bed.

Christ, that bed. He glanced sidelong at Liam, who still stood in the bathroom door, and couldn’t stop his head from going there. On their bed, him and Kat and Liam. No room for the surplus of pillows.

“You need to get her back here,” Hunter said. “Shouldn’t have let her leave.”

“As pissed as she was? No stopping her.” Liam’s weary voice was closer than Hunter expected. “Are you forgetting she punched you? She’s probably at Adele’s, anyway. You remember Adele?”

Hunter rubbed his stomach and grinned at the memory of Kat hitting him. The circumstances were shit, but she was hot when she was mad. “Yeah. Blonde, cute, hooked up with the accountant?”

r /> “That’s the one. She’s still with the accountant and she and Kat are still tight. The two of them holed up at Adele’s place for days after you left.”

Liam crossed to stand at the foot of the bed. “Kat and I have had a good life. I think we could have a better one. That’s why I called you.”

“To rub it in my face?”

“No. To ask you to help make it better. Look, I—shit.” Liam gripped the bed post, and swore again.

Hunter frowned. Liam wasn’t making any sense. “Yeah, I got that tonight was some kind of fantasy trip or whatever. Didn’t exactly work.”

“Dammit, that’s not what we’re doing.”

“Then what exactly are you doing? Besides jerking my chain.”

“I haven’t talked to Kat about it.”

“That much was obvious.”

Liam gave him a dirty look. “Will you shut up? Kat was really busted up when you left. I couldn’t fix it, and that sucked. And I was pissed at you, too.”

“You were probably turning fucking cartwheels with me out of the way.”

“Stubborn son of a bitch. Kat wasn’t the only one who wanted you to stay.”

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