Dirty Sexy Secret (Green County Book 1) (6 page)

Which made this hard. I couldn’t pick a fight with her to win her trust. I couldn’t do the dishes and stay out of the liquor, or hold the door for a few teachers. This was
Hazel
.

It took me six months. Six months of sitting in near silence, bickering with Sam. Finding books for her and helping her clean after dinner. Handing her her lunch in silence as I herded her and Eli out the door. Putting up with ice cold feet shoved under my leg on the couch while she shouted abuse at the basketball game.

Six. Fucking. Months of showing up when she went quiet and moody, sitting near her without pushing past my initial, “you good?” And her standard, “fine.”

Six goddamn months.

Longest months of my life.

But some of the best, when I looked back. Hazel, when she gave someone her love and loyalty, did it completely and utterly.

Eli was easy. He’s impossible to not love and so fucking broken by the accident that she fell into him without thought.

I earned it.

Made it different. Special. I wasn’t her brother and I was ok with that.

I was ok with all of it until the night it changed. Six months and two weeks after I started the slow campaign to win Hazel over.

She broke.

Hard.

Came completely and utterly apart, so shattered that I couldn’t see my girl, my lost Hazy girl with her broken heart.

It was her birthday. She hadn’t told Nora, hadn’t told anyone. Spent the week leading up to it quieter than normal, sinking deeper into herself.

Hazel and I had an agreement. She wouldn’t tell Nora when I was spiraling if I didn’t fight or drink.

I didn’t tell Nora when she was lost in her own grief if she didn’t cut herself.

It was unspoken but it worked and we kept each other--not healthy, but not toxic.

Sometimes I think that’s all either of us could ask for. We were keeping each other’s secrets, even when neither of us had any real clue what that meant.

That day, I found her in her room.

She was in her room, wearing an oversized t-shirt and scrunched up socks on her skinny ankles and blood trickled down the inside of her thighs.

She stared at me, all wide eyed fear and choking grief, and whispered one plea.

“Don’t tell Nora.”

“What the hell, Hazel,” I whisper and she flinches. Stares at me with tears in her big blue eyes.

“He never missed my birthday.”

And it slayed me. I hate seeing the people I love cry. So I pulled her into me, cradling her and she sobbed, these silent, heartbroken shaking things that left me so desperate to fix this, to fix her, that I’d have promised anything.

I’d have walked through fire, to stop her tears and put a smile on her face. And she didn’t want that. She just wanted my silence.

Easy enough to give her.

Secrets. Those were the things that bound us, me and Hazel. Not the grief or the accident. It was our fucking secrets.

She wept in my arms until she fell asleep, and I tucked her in bed, stealing away with her knife and her tears soaking my shoulder.

I thought it would be what brought her to me. What finally made her trust me.

The next day, she looked at me over the breakfast table, and her eyes were as cold as the winter sky.

It’s not surprising, to wake up alone. What surprised me was that she caved long enough to come back to the couch, to let me finger her in the kitchen.

Another secret in a long line of them, another retreat in an endless series of retreats.

Hazel Campton was the girl I could never quite shake, and not just because she’s the one I’ve always cared about.

A low groan from the floor pulls my attention from my thoughts and to the sleeping giant slowly waking up. He groans again and shoves up off the ground, all long lanky limbs and shaggy hair flying a million directions.

“Dude, why the fuck’d you let me sleep on the floor?” he grits out, giving me a frown.

I shrug. “You passed out, Eli. And I wasn’t dragging your drunk ass to your room.”

Because of course Eli had a room in Hazel’s house. He was her brother, the one she loved with a wild kind of reckless, the one she turned to when shit got rough.

She liked me, even trusted me with her secrets and loved to get off against my fingers and lips, but I wasn’t the one she turned to.

If it were anyone but Eli that she chose, I’d probably have shot them a long, fucking time. As it is, I swallow down the bitter pill and shift to stand. “Come on, brother. We’ve got to report in still.”

“Breakfast first!” a sharp voice calls from the kitchen and Eli groans, rolling to his back, letting his head thump against the rug.

Hazel appears in the doorway, a mug of coffee roughly the size of her head already cupped between curved fingers. Her hair is a mess of curls pulled to the top of her head, and she’s wearing one of Eli’s old college t-shirts and a pair of yoga pants.

I swallow down my annoyance that she’s wearing another man’s clothes—he’s her brother,
our
brother—and cock an eyebrow.

“Mama’s?” I ask, watching her carefully.

Ah. There it is. Her expression goes flat and blank, the smile flickering for a heartbeat before she blinks, and it’s back, bright blinding, with just enough sarcasm to make me grin.

“Fine,” she says grumpily. “But you’re buying and when she wants one of us to do the dishes, you two can flip for it.”

She doesn’t wait for us to argue or take her up on the offer. She spins on her heel and whistles for Smith, yelling over her shoulder as she hits the stairs that she’s leaving in ten minutes.

For a long minute, Eli and I stare after her and then he slides a curious look at me. “Take it y’all sorted out your shit?” he says, too casual.

I give him a grumpy face. “Dude.”

“She’s avoided you for months and then you pass out on her couch after she decides to let us act like a family again. What the hell am I supposed to think?”

“You aren’t,” I say, flat. “You’re supposed to let me and Hazel work our shit out the way we always have, and back off in the meantime.”

Eli glares but he doesn’t say anything as I rub a hand through my hair. Sigh a little. “Come on, Eli. Don’t analyze this shit. You know she runs hot and cold with me. So let’s just enjoy it until she decides it’s not working for her anymore, and pulls back. Ok?” I offer him a small smile, and because it’s
Eli
he falls for it. Nods along and stands, shoving his big fucking feet into shoes and petting Smith who wandered back downstairs without his mistress.

That’s an annoying kick in the gut. Even Hazel’s damn dog likes Eli more than me.

Then Hazel is jogging down the stairs, golden hair a trailing mess behind her, and I forget to care.

Eli doesn’t get to fuck her on the counter.

Gabe doesn’t get to keep her fucking secrets.

I’m the only one who she looks at like that. Considering and cautious and nervously hopeful.

And I’ll fucking take that. Just like all those damn years ago, when I was coaxing out her trust. I’ll take it now, until she finally realizes that it’s safe.

That
I’m
safe.

I
expect things to be awkward. Maybe because I ran last time, before they could get awkward, I expect some kind of—pressure?—from Archer.

I forget that this is
Archer
and he’s made a fucking art form of waiting for me.

So there’s a flicker in his eyes, a lazy heat that is intoxicating before it’s banked and shut down, and he’s offering me a quick grin and that brusque once over that is how Archer shows care—checking me to make I’m meeting his standards of okay.

He did that shit when we were in school, for me and Eli and he does it now.

Spilling into Mama’s is like falling through time, the boys pushing and shoving and me a half-step ahead, rolling my eyes and flushing a little as the truckers eye us like we’re overgrown children intruding on their peace and quiet.

Not a completely inaccurate depiction of the morning’s happenings, but it’s also Mama’s, which means it’s
ours
and while I might have hidden behind my brother and Archer in school, today I meet those grumpy stares with a cold look that sends interest my way and turns the less curious away.

Eli huffs a laugh as Archer grabs a couple menus—not that any of us need it—and slide us toward an empty booth. We’re barely sitting, me scrunched against one side of the booth with Archer’s big body boxing me in, Eli across from us, when Hailey Lewis hurries up.

Eli’s big eyes get bigger, almost frantic, and Archer snickers at my side. “Hi! Oh my gosh, I didn’t expect you today. Um, do you want your usual? I can tell Nora you’re here, but coffee, first, right?”

“Hey, Hailey?” I say, sugar sweet, and her wide brown eyes cut to me.

Pretty sure she hadn’t even seen me or Archer, she’s so damn focused on Eli. She always has been—poor thing has been obsessed with Eli since she first laid eyes on him in high school.

“Hazel!” she almost squeaks, her eyes wide and a little bit unsettled. Like she doesn’t want to see me at my brother’s side. “I—um. When did you get back to Green County?”

I stare at her, long enough that she flushes and squirms in place, before I let a small smile curl at the edges of my lips. “Tell Nora we’re here, would you?”

She flushes and nods once, hurrying away with her head down like a scolded puppy.

“That wasn’t nice,” Archer says through a smile. I lean against him briefly and shrug, letting him feel the motion roll through me. “Neither is her chasing poor Eli for the past damn decade.”

Archer laughs, and I drink down the sound. I want to lick it from his mouth again. Want to drag that arm on the table around me until I’m pushed up against his side, nestled against him like it’s where I belong.

It
is
where I belong.

“Well, well. Look what finally decided to roll into their diner,” Nora says, her voice a familiar drawl. Her gray eyes are hard as they rake over us, but warm, too.

That’s Mama Nora. Hard and warm and home. Archer flashes her a quick grin and Eli slides out of his side to pull her into a hug. She huffs out a breath, and pats his back affectionately as he lets her go, and she grins at us.

“What are y’all doin’ here? I heard the mayor and Chief of Police were sitting down with the force, today?”

Archer shrugs. “They are. We’ll be heading there after breakfast. But Hazel doesn’t keep shit in her house.”

I flush and dig an elbow into his side. “You’re a bastard,” I snap.

Nora arches an eyebrow at me. “Hazel Beth,”

“I’m eating, Mama,” I protest before she can get started, because if there’s anything that bothers my adoptive mother, it’s her kids neglecting themselves. “Archer is just being an ass.”

She smiles, and nods. “Alright then. You three behave and I’ll get us some food. Eli,” she waits til he focuses on her and frowns, “Be nice to Hailey. I need her to wait tables and she can’t do that if she’s crying in the back.”

Eli makes a face, but he nods.

Nora nods, once, a fiercely satisfied smile on her face. And I meet Archer’s eye, quietly questioning. And he nods and squeezes my shoulders.

Archer and I have always worked together, to keep Eli happy and safe. To keep Nora from worrying too much. It’s why we kept each other’s secrets, when Archer was drinking and fucking everything that moved in high school, and when he caught me cutting.

We were never the ones who mattered—Eli and Nora did. An unspoken agreement between us, to keep them happy and unaware of the worst of our dysfunction.

I wonder if that will always work.

If our secrets will shatter under the weight of our new—whatever the fuck it is, him getting me off, and me sleeping in his arms.

I shove that thought down and focus on my family as Nora returns with coffee and a big plate of bacon, Hailey trailing her with the rest of our food.

When the boys leave me, with a quick hug from Eli and a smirk from Archer, I wander to the local library.

Because the truth is, Archer and Eli slamming into my little house and even before that, Gabe at the coffee shop, shook me up. Reminded me that I’m not an island, I’m not a girl bound by deadline in a city where no one knows me or worries about me.

I’m
home
, and people care about me here. People that I care about, even if I’m not ready for all of their questions and concern.

I’ve been hiding for six months, and even longer than that, for four years, since I left Green County and refused to even consider the idea of coming home.

And I’m tired. I’m tired of being alone and having only my dog and my echoing thoughts to keep me company. I’m tired of all the fucking regrets that keep me locked up in my head and away from the people I love.