She sat bolt upright in bed, covers pooling around her. Hazel idly noticed that she was wearing one of Malcolm’s shirts, though it hung awkwardly around her smaller frame.
“What are you doing here?” Sadie gasped. Then, to Malcolm, “What is she doing here? You said you wouldn’t—”
He laid a hand on her shoulder. “Hush. She came to us. Didn’t I tell you? She figured out your secret.”
The pleasure Malcolm took in announcing this turn of events more than matched Sadie’s shock. She winced when he pulled open the drapes, fumbling for the covers before she seemed to think better of it.
No, there’s no point hiding. I know.
“How did you find out?” Sadie asked, warily meeting Hazel’s gaze.
“Your mother is very worried,” she answered obliquely. “You might want to give her a call, tell her you haven’t jumped off a cliff.”
“There’s still time,” Malcolm chuckled. “But in the meantime, champagne?”
Sadie blinked at him as though she couldn’t puzzle out the question. Malcolm patted her shoulder, evidently taking her silence for acquiescence.
“No hair-pulling while I’m gone.”
Hazel barely reacted at the slide of his hand down her arm. Her revulsion toward him struggled to keep pace with the overwhelming betrayal she felt for Sadie. “How long?”
“Hazel—”
“How long has this been going on?” Hazel gritted out, undaunted.
You’ll tell me. You owe me that much.
Sadie raked her hands through her hair. Even woken from a dead sleep, she was still beautiful and put-together, a sheep in wolf’s clothing. “I tried telling you—”
“Answer the goddamn question. Is this why you helped me find a job?” Every chance she’d had thanks to Sadie was tainted now by the knowledge that behind Sadie’s altruism lay a far darker force. “Or were you in his pocket even earlier?” Hazel huffed out a mirthless laugh. “You helped me pack my shit and leave campus because
he
told you, didn’t you?”
“No,” Sadie said, shaking her head. “No, it wasn’t like that.”
“You’re in his bed,” Hazel spat. “You of all people…” Her voice cracked.
You who knew everything he did to me, who listened to all the gruesome, intimate details.
Another Jenga block settled onto the tower she’d been building in her mind since she’d found the first photograph. “That’s why you were always the one to tell me about the video uploads.” She had never wondered why Sadie seemed so canny in finding that piece of history. Every time Hazel had it taken down, it lay hidden for a while, then resurfaced in some other forum.
And Sadie dug them up like a dog trained to pick up a particular scent.
“You knew.”
Just as Hazel’s vision began to cloud over with the irrepressible envy that came so naturally to her, Malcolm sauntered back into the bedroom. “Here we are,” he murmured, the scent of his cologne weaving around Hazel like a fine mesh trap.
She took the freshly replenished champagne flute when it was pressed into her hands, decorum too deeply ingrained to refuse. Blood hummed against her eardrums.
What was she doing? Why this compulsion to shift blame from Malcolm to literally anyone else—even when his hands were clearly pulling all the strings?
Malcolm had another glass for Sadie. “I’m impressed. I don’t see any blood spatter. Decide to shake hands and let bygones be bygones after all?”
Hazel broadcast her disbelief with a snort. Her temper flared again at the sight of Malcolm lingering by Sadie’s side, subtly suggestive. After Penelope, it was an easy illusion to forge. Hazel doused her wrath in champagne, throwing her head back and downing half the contents of the glass before she could think better of it.
Alcohol burned her throat on the way down.
Poison.
Hazel froze.
No, Malcolm would never incriminate himself in such a way. He was too careful.
“I, for one, am glad this is all out in the open,” he forged on blithely. “We’re on the same page, we’ve cleared the air. Isn’t that better?”
Sadie glared at him. “You planned this.”
“I saw an opportunity,” Malcolm corrected, pleasant for the space of a heartbeat, before his smile took on a darker slant. “Watch your tone.”
“Or what?” Hazel huffed. “You’ve already blackened her eye once.”
Until the words were out of her mouth, she hadn’t realized that connection. But it made sense—Sadie’s refusal to involve the authorities, let alone take it up with Frank. Her efforts to hide the swollen face from her own mother. The night she had called Hazel and couldn’t get in touch—it hadn’t been suicidal thoughts that had driven her out of the city, but the razor edge between coming clean and remaining a pawn in Malcolm’s game.
She had chosen wrong.
Hazel staggered.
“You all right, baby?” Malcolm made no move to approach her. “You seem a little…woozy.”
It didn’t escape Hazel that he hadn’t bothered denying that he’d been the one to hit Sadie. She tried to lock her knees. This wasn’t the time for a panic attack. Yet the sensation of legs going soft and rubbery under her was not so easily dismissed. Hazel could’ve sworn she felt her grip around the champagne flute becoming lax.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have let him pour me a drink without watching.
How many campus flyers did it take for such a simple lesson to sink in?
She told herself that GHB didn’t act so fast. No drug did. This was just her overactive imagination, fueled by too much champagne on an empty stomach.
Wasn’t it?
A tiny mound of white powder clumped at the bottom of Sadie’s flute, dissolving fast.
Malcolm’s grin blurred at the edges of Hazel’s vision. He still knew how to play her. He had distracted Hazel with barely any effort, sneaking in a surprise attack before she knew what was happening.
“Fuck you both,” Hazel growled and, with the last of her strength, hurled her near-empty glass at the wall. Shards sprayed the floor and bedspread like snowflakes in a storm. Light caught on the splinters, refracting into a thousand colorful rays.
Sadie cried out, ducking to cover her face from the shrapnel. The champagne glass spilled from her hand, harmlessly disgorging its contents all over the sheets.
On the wrong side of the debris-littered carpet, Malcolm was too bewildered, too slow to react. Hazel bolted for door of the suite, her knees threatening to buckle under her.
Get out. Get out now.
She groped for the handle with a weak fist, keenly aware of her slowing pulse. It twisted open after two attempts. The door swung inward.
“Hazel!” Malcolm’s shout reached her from too far away to matter.
Stumbling, Hazel lurched toward the elevator. She remembered the layout of the corridors and knew where she had to go, but her steps were sluggish, body weighed by the cement in her limbs.
Come on. Just a little farther.
A man was exiting the shiny steel cabin. Hazel staggered past him, heedless of his bafflement or the spectacle she was making of herself, and furiously stabbed her finger into the L button.
The elevator doors began to close before Malcolm rounded the corner. Hazel sunk to the floor, her vision pinholing until darkness swallowed her up.
A cheery, all-instrumental cover of
La Vie en Rose
trilled from the speakers, lulling her into a dead sleep.
* * * *
The nurse stayed with her, checking her blood pressure and jotting numbers onto her chart long after Hazel was told she would have to talk to a police officer. The hospital insisted. The hotel would probably prefer it, the nurse added under his breath.
“People will sue for a paper cut these days.”
“Yes, well. Date rape drugs tend to be a little more serious,” the officer shot back, making little effort to conceal her annoyance. She looked like a capable, no-nonsense sort of woman, her curly black hair tamed into a neat bun low on her nape. “Could I have a minute alone with Ms. Whitley?”
Hazel slammed the brakes on her apprehension. It had to come to this. Sooner or later, she had always known Malcolm would land her in hospital.
“So I
was
drugged?” she clarified, once they were alone. Her clothes were gone, a backless paper gown draped over her body in their place. It crinkled when she moved.
The uniformed officer cocked an eyebrow. “You knew?”
“I think… I’m not sure and I can’t prove it, but I think it’s not the first time he’s tried something like this.” Hazel dropped her gaze to her hands. “We went to college together. It’s a long story.” And like all stories, it involved a monster and a handsome prince, only they happened to be one and the same. Hazel blinked away the thought. “I’m sorry, that’s not relevant, is it?” Embarrassed, she huffed out a dry chuckle, trying to cast her mind back to recent history. “Um, there was a man in the hallway. He saw me as I was leaving.”
“We’ve spoken to him. And your toxicology report came back positive—”
“His name is Malcolm Pryce,” Hazel blurted out, emboldened. “The man who did this to me.”
I have you now, you son of a bitch.
Her eyes stinging with hot, unshed tears, she added, “He’s staying at Omni, in room—”
“Ma’am, let me stop you right there.” The officer seemed uneasy, her pen no longer scratching against the notepad. “Mr. Pryce already made a statement. He claims you attacked
him
.”
The revelation was a punch to Hazel’s solar plexus.
“What?” Her voice failed her, throat closing up with a mixture of disbelief and shock. It was just as well that she was already sitting down.
“He’s pressing charges, ma’am. Do you have an attorney? Someone you can contact?”
Hazel shook her head. She couldn’t process the question, couldn’t get past the bombshell that Malcolm had saddled her with the blame. “How… There was another woman. My friend, she saw everything…”
She knows everything.
“How can he say
I
attacked him when he’s the one who drugged me?”
The officer pursed her lips. “Ma’am, I understand this is hard, but you have to remain here.”
Or else
seemed implicit in the instruction.
Hazel clammed up at once.
“Ms. Ling has corroborated Mr. Pryce’s version of events. She claims you became enraged when you discovered that she and Mr. Pryce were having an affair.”
It was easy to believe. Sadie, dressed in Malcolm’s clothes, sleeping in his bed, the perfect mistress for a playboy with money to spend on more than one woman. Hazel didn’t fit the part, so she had been cast as the jealous ex who couldn’t let him go.
Nicely done.
It was a deft bit of thinking on his feet from Malcolm.
“I really must advise you to call a lawyer.” The officer stepped closer to the bed, boots squeaking on the sticky tile floor. “Ma’am, I have to take you in as soon as the doctor discharges you. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
No
. Hazel let her head drop back against the pillow. “I need to make a phone call.”
* * * *
All told, Hazel’s stay in jail amounted to less than three hours—the time it took for her to be processed, for bail to be determined and for Ward to pay it. They drove away in silence. Hazel didn’t ask why Dylan wasn’t with him. Part of her was afraid to find out. The other couldn’t muster more than grim acceptance at the thought of his deciding to pull away. She was surprised when Ward parked the BMW in front of four-seven-one Aulden Way.
“I can head home,” Hazel started. “My car’s probably—”
“It’s been towed,” Ward replied. “Sorry, I checked. You were parked in a yellow zone overnight.”
“Oh. I can take the bus?” Once at the hotel, she’d been too deep into her own head to pay attention to the color of the curb. After the past twenty-four hours, Hazel couldn’t muster the energy to fret. Her regrets were steep mountains and she had only the strength of her feeble arms to pull herself up.
“Do you…not want to be here?” Ward asked at length. He had cut the engine, plunging them into silence as the car baked in the late afternoon heat.
Hazel shrugged. She knew it wasn’t good enough. Ward deserved better than her half-truths and constant drama. Even if the sex was good, she was more trouble than she was worth.
To Hazel’s surprise, he reached across the gearshift and gently placed his hand over hers. “Come up. I’ll make coffee. We can talk.”
“Only if there’s Jack.” She feigned a smile, which he mirrored, but neither of them could do a very good job of pretending.
A better woman than Hazel would have made the hard choice and ripped off the Band-Aid. Said,
no, Ward, it’s over
. Hazel was not that woman.
Greedy for memories she could pore over later, she ran her hand over the banister on the way up the stairs, treasuring every dip and snag in the metal, enjoying the echo of their discordant steps as they ascended one floor, then another. Whether it was a matter of design choice or building codes, she was glad the architects responsible for the renovation of the warehouse hadn’t installed an elevator. The slow, breathless climb masked some of the tightness in her chest.
She had prepared her last visit to the loft so many times that it was almost a relief to finally reach that inevitable threshold. The next time she took these stairs, it would be for good. Dylan had already retreated from her. Ward would be next.
The grating screech of metal on metal embedded itself onto Hazel’s brainstem as she walked through the door. Bathed in the soft afternoon light, the loft was awash in shades of taupe and amber, the occasional oily gray-black gleam where stairs met floor or couch legs clashed against cow hide rug.
“Hazel?”
Dylan’s voice tore her from her silent study. There he was, stalking out of the shadowy corridor that led to his room and stalking brashly toward her. Hazel had never learned how to flinch from his touch.
“Oh, thank God…”
Before she could speak, Dylan had his arms around her shoulders, embracing her tightly enough to curtail her breaths.
Who needed oxygen, anyway?
“Easy,” Ward cautioned.
“Shit, you’re right.” Dylan released her at once. “How—did everything go okay? Do you want to sit down or—I can make you something to eat.”