“It’s okay. Stupid question,” he admitted, rolling his shoulders. Absolving her was what he did best.
“You’re not the only one wondering,” Hazel said after a bit. “I know he wasn’t exactly helping out with the wedding plans, but this is…” She shook her head.
Beyond the pale
didn’t suffice.
Absurd
struck her as naive.
It was clearly not impossible. Sadie’s pretty, now bruised face served as proof.
“I’ll stay with her, if you want to grab a shower,” Dylan offered.
“Are you saying I stink?” Hazel quipped. She essayed a smile, but her heart wasn’t in it.
She had to admit that a shower would probably do her good. She could still smell the stench of carburetor fumes mixed with the pungent, grassy scent of the wildflowers that stubbornly pocked the landscape on either side of Mulholland Drive.
Hazel took another sip of coffee and pushed herself out of her chair. Dylan’s chair. Dylan’s coffee.
Not for the first time, she felt a pang of regret for encroaching on his territory and giving so little back. She didn’t have the means. Dylan and Ward made upwards of six figures a year and could afford to own a newly refurbished loft on the swankiest half of Aulden Way. They drove Teslas and BMWs and strutted around in five hundred dollar leather shoes.
Just yesterday, they had flown Hazel back from Missouri in Ward’s private jet.
“I’ll take her to her mom’s place when she wakes up,” Hazel promised, returning Dylan’s mug to him. She’d only drunk about half. “But I should head in first, let Marco know she’s…not well.”
Sadie had drifted off into a chemically induced sleep before she could tell them if she wanted anyone to know what had happened to her—or indeed if anyone other than Frank already knew. Until she woke up, Hazel would keep her secret.
She trusted Dylan to do the same.
He nodded as he slid an arm around Hazel’s waist and gently pulled her to him. “You’re a good friend, you know that?”
His lips were a warm pressure on her brow, something vaguely paternalistic in the peck. Hazel squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she
could
mind. Wishing she had the strength to say,
No, I’m not
. Guilt choked her. She was too spineless to admit it aloud.
The bathroom door proved a welcome barrier from the weight of Dylan’s affection.
Hazel switched on the shower before she had even stripped out of her clothes. The sound drowned out the chaos in her head. If she hadn’t left for Missouri—if she hadn’t become so tangled in family affairs, maybe she could’ve done something.
Her reflection in the mirror put paid to that hope. She was twenty-eight, with bags under the eyes and red splotches all over her face from the morning chill. Her arms were weak, shoulders rounded with a little more flesh than was strictly necessary, per
Cosmo
. Doffing her shirt did not improve matters. She was small where she should’ve been big and wide where her hips could’ve stood to be narrower. There were bruises on her skin, too, but nowhere near as bad as the one Sadie bore.
Even if they had been—Hazel had asked for every single one. She’d begged Ward to hurt her. She would’ve crawled and kissed the floor for Dylan to pull her hair and call her names.
She wasn’t strong.
Stop wallowing
, she mouthed to the woman in the mirror. It didn’t take long for her reflection to blur behind a cloud of steam once Hazel switched the spray on hot.
* * * *
Dylan was still in the bedroom when Hazel emerged in a fluffy white towel. So was Sadie, chest rising and falling with steady breaths. “I called in sick,” Dylan said, preemptive.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Hazel replied, when what she meant was
thank you
.
He shrugged. “Figured you’d feel better if you knew she wasn’t alone.”
“And what am I?” Ward asked from the doorway. “Chopped liver?”
He had changed out of his sleep clothes into a white suit with a burgundy shirt. His brown-blond hair brushed the collar at his nape. He wore no tie around his neck. He liked to say it clashed with his flush, playboy persona.
The truth, if Dylan’s word was to be believed, was that Ward hadn’t yet mastered the intricacies of fastening a necktie knot.
“You’re not taking another day off,” Dylan told him bluntly.
Guilt biting at her insides, Hazel nodded. “He’s right.” Following her to Missouri because Hazel didn’t know how to be on her own anymore was bad enough. “There’s not much any of us can do, anyway.”
Ward looked set to protest, but seemed to think better of it. “Fine. There’s breakfast if you’re hungry.”
Hazel thanked him. She wasn’t. The thought of spending the day serving other people food and drinks could usually rout her appetite pretty effectively. Something to do with being surrounded by glistening plates of fries and burgers and tacos took the thrill out of stuffing her mouth.
It hadn’t stopped her scarfing down her mother’s home cooking while she was in Missouri, though, nor indulging whenever Dylan decided to whip something up in the kitchen.
“By the way,” he murmured. “How are you feeling?”
Hazel performed a quarter turn as she slid on panties and jeans under the towel. Embarrassment was an odd thing to claim after Dylan had trussed her up in his playroom and warmed her ass with paddles and floggers. All the same, Hazel found herself resorting to locker room antics to uphold some pretense of modesty.
“In all the excitement,” Dylan explained with a rueful smile, “we didn’t get the chance to talk about last night.”
“Ah.”
Last night’s events already seemed so distant. Since finding Sadie, Hazel hadn’t thought much of her two near-painful orgasms in swift succession, or Dylan pounding her while Ward got off in her mouth. A twinge of discomfort persisted in the crease of Hazel’s thighs, where the edge of the dining table had bitten into the flesh. But that was the extent of her discomfort. She couldn’t complain.
“A little sore,” she confessed, knowing that Dylan would ask probing questions until she admitted it if she tried to avoid the subject. He wasn’t as bad as Ward when it came to post-coital self-doubt, but he wasn’t immune, either. Like Ward, he seemed to think that being a good Dominant meant debriefing after every scene. Hazel hadn’t been in a relationship where that was the norm before. She was doing her best to adjust.
But this time, Dylan didn’t settle for banalities. “Was it… Did I hit you too hard?”
Hazel slanted a glance toward the bed as she strapped on her bra. “Am I going joyriding after work, you mean?” she retorted, meeting Dylan’s gaze. He had such deep, dark eyes that sometimes, when the light was low enough, she couldn’t distinguish between pupil and iris.
A muscle twitched in his square jaw as he looked away.
“You didn’t,” Hazel added. “You were awesome.”
You always are.
She kissed the top of his head on her way out. “Try not to let this get to you.”
This
, meaning Sadie, meaning Hazel nearly tripping herself up with the certitude that her best friend had taken drastic action over some guy.
“I’ll see you later?”
“I’ll be here,” Dylan promised, squeezing her hip.
The pressure of his hand on her flesh lingered long after she’d walked out of his bedroom.
* * * *
Rush hour had yet to hit the greater LA area. Ward wove cleanly between a few early morning commuters, the silence in the front seat of the BMW shaken only by his occasional humming.
Hazel couldn’t tell if the nonchalance was just an act or if Ward had effectively shelved the tumult of the past couple of hours like he did his college years—like he’d once done with Hazel’s secret. She was grateful for it. Too quickly, the scenery outside her window changed from fashionably grungy warehouses and converted factories into a strip of squat, square restaurants and shops crammed shoulder to shoulder on either side of just another access route into the city.
Ward pulled right up to the curb and put the BMW in neutral.
“Thanks,” Hazel said, already reaching for the door handle. “I’ll get the Volvo filled up this afternoon—”
“May I make a suggestion?”
Hazel arched her eyebrows.
Shoot.
“Don’t take this on by yourself. Sadie needs help.”
“I know.”
“Not the kind that a friend can provide,” Ward clarified, holding her gaze. “I know you want what’s best for her. It’s very noble. But she’s going to have a lot of anger…”
“I really need to go,” Hazel said.
Ward clamped his lips together. She could tell he wanted to say more, had probably spent the drive to Marco’s thinking up ways to drive his points home. He was an arguer at heart, and a damn good one, at that. But he seemed to know when to give up. This wasn’t a topic over which his reasoning could hold sway.
“All right,” he sighed. “See you tonight?”
Relieved—and hating herself for it—Hazel leaned across the gearshift and kissed him. She could do that now. Ward and Dylan were no longer her dirty little secret.
“See you.”
She was out of the car before he could tug at her heartstrings. The bells above the diner door chimed as it swung open and shut. It had a lock, but Marco only used it for Labor Day and Christmas morning. The rest of the year, the diner stood open twenty-four-seven, the ghosts of breaded meat and potatoes and grilled cheese hanging thick in the poorly ventilated interior.
After nearly a week’s absence, Hazel barely resisted the urge to turn tail and run back out to the BMW. Ward was likely gone, anyway.
She tilted up her chin and forced her feet into motion.
“Ah, there she is!” Marco’s booming voice echoed from the kitchen. “How’s the family? Did you bring pictures?” A divorced father of one, Marco was as fond of children as he was volatile with grown-ups. When he’d found out that Hazel’s sister-in-law had given birth to her first child, he’d been all too eager to grant Hazel a leave of absence.
Sadie was the one to tell him, albeit against Hazel’s will. She’d been instrumental in softening his prickly heart.
Hazel thought of her newborn niece back in Missouri, of her freckled, beautiful young mother rushing the christening because she’d already lost two babies to miscarriages and had learned to live in fear. She patently avoided thinking of her own parents at all.
“A few,” she told Marco, “on my phone. Want to see?”
Emmalee, one of Marco’s recent hires, sauntered out from behind the counter to take a look as well. So far, no one had asked about Sadie. Hazel wondered how best to broach the subject. Straight-up lies were not her strongest suit.
“Travis,” Emmalee called into the back of the diner. “Come out here, fool. Hazel’s back.”
Oh, God.
Hazel forged a smile. Her last head-to-head with Travis had led to name-calling. Always one to pick avoidance over a fight, she didn’t relish the prospect of rehashing what had been little more than a misunderstanding blown out of proportion.
“Wait until Sadie sees these,” Emmalee cooed. In her early forties, she looked as if she’d descended from the silver screen sometime during the war. Her crimson lipstick and red-painted fingernails were staples of pin-up art and she wore them well.
“She has,” Hazel fibbed. “I went by her mom’s last night. She’s, uh, not feeling well.”
“Her mom?”
“Sadie.” Hazel glanced to Marco, whose soft spot for Sadie was the only reason Hazel had been hired in the first place. “I suggested she stayed home today, sleep it off.”
“Is it serious?”
“I don’t think so.” If she claimed otherwise, Marco might be tempted to take Sadie a bowl of chicken soup. “Just one of those twenty-four hour bugs. She’ll be on her feet in no time.”
“Is that what the kids call’em nowadays?” Travis drawled from the back of the diner.
He moved with eerie grace for such a big guy. Hazel had been intimidated when they’d met and she was still intimidated by him now, knowing that he had seen her amateur porno online before it was taken down thanks to Ward’s clever scheming.
“We used to say
hangover,
” he added, fixing Hazel with a smug stare.
“If Sadie says she’s sick, then she’s sick,” Marco snapped. “Bah, get to work, all of you. I don’t pay you to sit around…”
Hazel locked her phone keyboard, already tuning out his vociferations. She hadn’t missed this part of her job during her brief holiday—the yelling and the bullying were almost worse than the minimal pay and grabby patrons—but complaining about it did no good. She’d put up with worse to make ends meet. There was always another wide-eyed country girl willing to take over if she couldn’t hack it.
Emmalee and Travis had learned that lesson fast, post-hiring. They dispersed quickly to wipe down tables and refill the cups of the one or two patrons scattered around the diner. Hazel prepared to do the same when Marco touched a hand to her elbow.
“You sure she’s okay?” He locked his gaze on Hazel’s, probing.
“Yeah. She’ll be fine,” Hazel promised.
She has to be
.
Marco nodded, but didn’t appear convinced. Hazel wondered if he knew about Sadie’s engagement, if he felt as though he’d been passed up. She locked down the thought. Jealousy was all too familiar a sentiment. It poisoned everything.
Chapter Two
Aching down to the marrow of her bones after a day of darting around the diner like a headless chicken, Hazel heaved herself out of the plastic seat as the bus slowed to a creaking halt. Ward had offered her a ride home from work, but she’d declined. The bus stop was only half a block away from the loft on four-seven-one Aulden Way. In this neighborhood, she wasn’t afraid to be outside after dark.
She tried not to drag her feet on her way to the apartment. The day wasn’t over yet. She had to get Sadie home, figure out what they could do to keep her away from Frank. It wasn’t a return to normal after her brief stint in Missouri, but it could’ve been worse. At least Hazel had Ward and Dylan to back her. She hated to admit it, but without them she wasn’t sure she would’ve been able to keep it together when Sadie called, let alone after.