“Is that how you white girls think? Guy does something decent for you and now he’s your bitch?”
“I was thinking friend, but…” Hazel shrugged, struggling to play off the sudden thrum of annoyance that kindled at Travis’ needling. Ever since she had accused him of harassing her—unfairly, as it turned out—their working relationship had been more than slightly strained. “’Case you haven’t noticed, Sadie ain’t white.”
He waved a hand. “Spare me. You two’re as small town as it gets. Alabama, right?”
“Missouri,” Hazel corrected, rounding on him. Travis had a head on her in height and weighed about twice as much, most of it in the muscles bulging under the sleeves of his black T-shirt. “You got a problem with that?”
Travis smirked down at her. “Spoilin’ for a fight, are we? Guess some of that Parrish shithead must be rubbing off.”
A flush of heat choked off the retort Hazel wanted to deliver. She inched back. “You’re a jerk.”
“And you’re an idiot,” Travis said, as though it was self-evident. “This why you turned down my offer? You figured you’d make your extra cash screwin’ him instead? Damn, I knew you weren’t the brightest but that’s pretty fucking dumb, Tinkerbell.”
“I turned you down because
I’m not like that,”
Hazel snapped.
I can’t be.
Her porn career had begun and ended with that leaked home video. She had no desire to revive it. If that made her a prude, so be it.
She made to push past Travis, but he caught her elbow. For such a large man, he was surprisingly gentle. Firm, but not to the point of bruising her. Unfortunately, Hazel had been grabbed one too many times before.
She swung out with her fist, aiming for his nose but catching his chin instead.
Travis staggered to the side, righting himself with a groan.
“
Fuck!
” Hazel shook out her wrist. It was as if her hand had been thrust through a meat grinder.
Not so long ago, she’d scolded Ward for hitting a man with a closed fist. To her surprise, failing to tuck her thumb didn’t make it hurt any less.
“You crazy bitch,” Travis huffed, rubbing his jaw. “Hell was that for?”
If she could’ve strung words together, Hazel might have said something about being touched when she didn’t want to be and men who thought they could do to her as they pleased out of some bizarre sense of entitlement.
That frustration paled in the face of the very real ache arcing up her elbow.
Travis sighed and took her wrist in a massive hand. “Don’t slug me again,” he warned.
“Is…is it broken?” Hazel gasped, blinking back hot tears. After the sudden jolt of fear and the burn of humiliation, came shame—shame of resorting to violence when she should’ve known better, shame of lashing out against someone who hadn’t struck first. Horror, too, because this wasn’t who she was.
Nothing less feminine than a young lady who goes around hitting boys,
Mrs. Whitley’s rebuke rang in her ears. It had stung when she was seven and already bigger than most kids on the school playground and it stung now, as Travis checked her fingers with a meticulous touch.
“Not broken,” he ruled, “but it could swell. Best ice it fast.”
“Marco’ll love that,” Hazel sniffed.
Travis shrugged. “Tell him I called you a slut. Seems to be the way to give him an apoplectic fit.”
Hazel retrieved her hand. The thought of letting him take the fall stung as bitterly as her knuckles. “Why—why would you say those things?” she sniffled, adding one more layer of pathetic. “About Ward. You made him sound like some kind of creep who’s using me for sex. You don’t know him.”
You don’t know me.
Something in Travis’ almond black eyes told her otherwise. “You ever wonder how people like him get as rich as they do?”
“He inherited his company. He’s not Tony-fucking-Soprano.”
Travis snorted. “I don’t know if you’re naive or you’re just protecting your cushy retirement from this life of luxury…” With a jerk of the head, he indicated the unpainted, rust-bitten lockers and bare floors. Indelible spatter stained the cement, there since before Hazel had begun working for Marco. “But he ain’t Prince Charming.”
Slurs were easier to deflect than the strange certainty in Travis’ voice.
“And I’m no Cinderella,” Hazel said and brushed past him on her way into the diner. She had a job to do. The last thing she wanted was to second-guess everything she knew about her not-really-but-maybe, sort-of boyfriend.
The cacophony of bad muzak crackling from the ceiling speakers and two dozen voices trading mid-morning chatter over empty coffee cups instantly wrapped itself around Hazel. She tried not to think of what Ward had told her last night—
company hasn’t been doing well since Dad died, we owe more than you think. Money I didn’t earn.
She pretended she couldn’t feel Travis’ eyes on her back as she started her rounds.
* * * *
Unlike what she had told Dylan, it wasn’t Sadie that kept Hazel from heading straight back to the loft after she finished her shift. For all that Hazel knew, Sadie was enjoying a night of debauchery in some club—as she had been wont to do before she got involved with Frank. Truth be told, she had no idea.
Hazel had checked her phone periodically throughout the day in case Sadie decided to reach out, but since their argument, their relationship had been as strained as it was distant.
She pushed her cell up the small wooden desk and tried to focus on the lecture. It was only her first since Mizzou and though she had expected something considerably easier, she was fast becoming aware of the hard work she would have to put into catching up. Had she chosen English Lit, the terminology might have been familiar, but management was an entirely different language. Hazel strained her mind to focus.
At the front of the room, the professor barely looked older than the youngest of his students—a bracket in which Hazel was surprised to count herself. He seemed more nervous than anyone else in the room, tripping over his words every couple of sentences and trailing off on tangents when he started reading from the slides. She wondered if this was his first time teaching.
As surreptitiously as she could, Hazel glanced at the faces around her. Men and women of all ages sat at single desks, some with plastic bags around them, as if they’d stopped in for class on their way home from a grocery run, others with English-to-Spanish dictionaries piled beside them.
Come to think of it, she would’ve been intimidated, too.
Despite the frequent stammer and stumble, the lecture moved apace. Hazel did her best to copy everything on the board, including the reading assignment, and hastened to pack up when the professor wished them a good night. She thought of stopping by the lectern to ask if there was any material she should have read
before
enrolling, but paranoia held her back.
What if he realized she was too dim to take his course and demoted her to Math 101? What if he laughed her out of the room?
Wary, Hazel thought better of it.
The night was warm, a sticky breeze blowing through the city streets as she stepped out of the stuffy, concrete hall. The deserted sidewalks of East LA did not inspire her to linger, no matter how mild the weather.
Hazel spurred her steps, chasing her shadow under the dim glow of yellowish streetlights. The neighborhood was no more frightening than the one she lived in. The same graffiti dotted overflowing trashcans and festooned bus shelters in garish shades of green and purple. Here and there Hazel saw the same free-hand motif repeated on telephone poles and rolled down metal doors.
Gang sign.
There were a few all over town, as easily recognizable and ubiquitous in the poorer areas as mushrooms after rain.
The Volvo was just a few feet away. Hazel blew out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Next time she would have to find a parking spot closer to the college entrance, for her own peace of mind.
In her haste, Hazel didn’t notice the sleek silver BMW conspicuously parked behind hers until the headlights switched on, blinding her with their glare. She dropped her car keys on the pavement. “What the hell—”
The driver’s side door opened with a click.
For a short, bewildering instant, Hazel mistook the man stepping out for Ward and nearly launched into a stream of complaints about the fright he’d caused.
Then she registered his voice and confusion gave way to panic.
“Can I carry your books?”
Malcolm
.
Hazel rooted her sneakers to the cement underfoot. There was nothing to be done about her juddering heartbeat, but she could at least try to fight the urge to flee. He’d chase her. She knew that no one would come to her aid—not in this neighborhood, not when any argument between them, no matter how violent, might look like a domestic.
Then again, people were just as good at turning a blind eye back home, in sunny, pristine, all-white, middle America Dunby.
“What are you doing here?” Hazel gritted out. The sense of déjà vu was not enough to shatter that last remaining shred of hope that this might all be a misunderstanding. An accident.
Giving Malcolm the benefit of the doubt was a lesson too-well learned to forget now.
“I came to see you,” he replied, as though it should have been obvious. “Well, that, and as nice as the view from my suite at Omni is, I get so
bored
of glittering city lights.”
His features only came into focus once he’d stepped between Hazel and the white cones radiating from the BMW. Suddenly the headlights limned his silhouette in gold, blond hair like a halo around his winsome face. He
was
a handsome man. He’d been a beautiful baby, grown into a mischievous but adorable toddler, and from there it was a short and painless journey to the kind of cocky charm that made teenage girls sigh and doodle hearts in the margins of their notebooks. Hazel knew because she had met him at a time when she was still susceptible to rakish charms.
It wasn’t just that. Malcolm was the full package. Smart and funny, he could make friends out of anyone, be they professors, students, or the Dean himself. But all that easy charm exacted a price—paid in full by women like Hazel in the shadows, behind the scenes, when no one was looking.
“I have nothing to say to you,” Hazel told him, immediately regretting the timid cadences her voice had instantly acquired.
The girl who had raised a fist to a man twice her size was nowhere to be seen.
Malcolm tilted his head to one shoulder and sighed. “We both know that’s not true. You had plenty to say to Penelope.”
So that’s what this is about.
“You didn’t want us talking, you shouldn’t have sent her to bully me.”
He laughed, a light and handsome sound that tugged at Hazel’s heartstrings even as she felt scorned by his glee.
“Is that what you want to call it? And here I thought you two were friends… At least that’s how
I
remember it. Do I have it wrong?” Another step forward brought him within arm’s reach of Hazel. He could have, but he made no move to grab her. “Weren’t you two as thick as thieves? I seem to recall that you shared a bed.”
His lilting voice was a claw jammed into Hazel’s chest and spun like a fork through spaghetti.
“We shared a lot more than that.”
Because you made us. Because we had no choice.
Malcolm clucked his tongue, insouciant. “It’s no good envying her after all these years. Don’t you know grudges are unhealthy?”
A car zoomed past them, headlights briefly illuminating Malcolm’s side and casting a different set of shadows on his face. Hazel looked to it for help she knew wasn’t coming.
Malcolm followed her gaze. “You’re right,” he sighed, “we should take this somewhere more private. Hop in.” He gestured to the BMW, the broad arc of his arm graceful and mesmerizing, a magician’s misdirection before a gullible audience.
“No.”
He whipped his head around. “What did you say?”
“I’m not going anywhere with you and if you don’t stop following me around, I’ll go to the police.”
“And tell them
what?
” Malcolm scoffed. “That you bumped into your ex-boyfriend?”
“This isn’t college anymore. You can’t lie your way out of every misstep.”
And I’m not afraid of you
. She held that last part back, wary of provoking him to prove her wrong. “I’ll get a restraining order—”
Malcolm was on her in a few short steps. Hazel backed up until her shoulders struck the roof of the Volvo. Her textbooks made for a flimsy shield held out in front of her chest. There was no need for them. Malcolm stopped just short of touching her.
“
I will obey and serve you, grant you full use of my body and mind
… That’s what you promised, remember? You accepted my right as your master to do anything I chose, whether in punishment or not.
Unconditionally
. Then you fled from me. You didn’t think how that would make me feel, did you?” His gaze bore into her. “All you cared about was yourself. You were selfish and cruel. I thought you were better, different than all those other women, but…” Malcolm shook his head. “I was so wrong about you.”
“You had Penelope.” The comeback was a weak, soft-spoken plea. Hazel barely found the breath for it as she grappled with the shock of a thousand sharp barbs digging into her chest.
I’m sorry
became
I had no choice.
She couldn’t think with Malcolm so close.
“And that makes it all right?” he snapped, voice raw and hurt. “You were
mine
.”
Out of nowhere, Hazel recalled the sheer amount of pride she had once taken in that word. It wasn’t the commitment women of her mother’s generation might have aspired to. It didn’t involve a ring, or a pin, there was no wedding date to count down to. But that only made it better.
What Malcolm had given her was special. She’d felt as though she had been asleep her whole life and being with him had awakened her to experience the world in a new way. He’d made her feel beautiful and strong. He’d proved to her that it was all right to trade virtue for vice.
In his arms, she had become a lustful, greedy, rapacious creature. She had wounded and learned to love her wounds, one after the other.