“He didn’t give me a choice—”
“They found GHB in my system,” Hazel told her sweetly. “At the hospital. Malcolm was going to rape us. Or maybe just me,” she amended, “and make you watch. Maybe even shoot another video.”
Sadie balked, oily liner melting into the shadows beneath her eyes. “I—I didn’t know.”
“That’s your new refrain. You didn’t know. You’re sorry. You had no choice.”
How could you?
Hurt blossomed in Hazel’s chest like a swelling bruise.
I trusted you
was the boiling core of her fury.
I thought you were my friend
made walking away possible, no matter how gratifying it was to see the fear in Sadie’s eyes when her shoulders struck the row of lockers behind her.
Hazel had been here before, albeit in another place, with another young woman backing away from her in fear. Once, sex and dread had been two sides of the same coin, and Hazel dealt in the currency often and diligently, always with Malcolm’s invisible hand to steer her, always knowing that she had to get the exchange rate just right or risk losing his favor. He was the little cartoon devil perched on her shoulder. Excising his tattoo with lasers hadn’t broken off his hold on her. Perhaps this would.
“Allan needs a refill,” Hazel shot over her shoulder. “I’ll take the kitchen.”
It was her least favorite part of the job, but if getting the first service out could keep her away from Sadie, she could learn to love it. Or maybe not love it. Maybe just accept that this was the hand she’d been dealt.
Maybe not even that.
She waited until Marco breezed into the diner an hour later to make a decision. It took far less than that to break the shackles she hadn’t realized she wore.
“Hey,” Travis greeted, still bleary-eyed with sleep as he stepped inside. “Marco said I had to come in?”
Hazel nodded and pushed away from the bar. She had already changed out of her uniform and snatched her things out of her locker. Sticking around until Travis showed up was a service to Marco and his patrons. “I got the sack.” She hadn’t told Sadie, though she doubted that the shouting from the kitchen hadn’t reached the front of house.
Travis’ face fell. “But… I didn’t say anything.”
“About?” Hazel’s puzzlement was short-lived. The punch. Their long standing push-pull in the backroom. Travis implying she was a camwhore and Hazel accusing him of being a rapist. She waved a hand. “Oh, I know. I did.”
Travis narrowed his eyes. “Trying to get me fired?”
A week ago, she would’ve bristled at his tone. “I told Marco I lost my temper and clocked you, and that you didn’t want to make trouble so you didn’t bring it up. I didn’t say
why
I hit you.”
“Still not clear on that myself.”
Hazel slid her purse over her shoulder. “Something to do with lashing out against people who lash out against my family… That, or I’m just crazy. You pick. Nice knowing you, T.” She rose up on tiptoes when she was close enough and pressed a light kiss to his cheek.
She darted away before he could react.
Coffeepot in hand, Sadie had just started toward her when Hazel seized hold of the door handle and pushed through to the sunbaked sidewalk outside. She didn’t indulge in any long, tearful goodbyes. The diner bell chimed one last time as the door swung shut. There was nothing left to say.
Chapter Fourteen
Without a job to keep her on her feet until six o’clock, Hazel found she could squeeze in whole hours at the community college library before her class, catching up on the readings she’d missed and writing down the many concepts she didn’t understand. Picking Dylan’s brain had struck her as an admission of stupidity before, but succeeding at this night school thing was all she had going anymore. She figured she might as well do it right.
She was the first inside the classroom that night and the last to rise when they were finally released from the fetters of Management 101.
“Um, class is over,” the professor said, once he noticed her still at her desk, paging through the textbook.
“I know, I know. I’ll just be a second.”
He hesitated. “Anything you need help with?”
“Oh, try everything,” Hazel replied without looking up.
Her professor huffed out what might have been termed a laugh.
From the corner of her eye, Hazel noticed him watching her. It was a long beat before he gestured with his distressed leather briefcase. “You’re Hazel Whitley, right?”
She did glance up at that, instantly wary. “Yeah… Am I famous or something?”
“No, I—uh, your friend called the other night? He said you’d had to miss class and wanted to know the reading for today’s session…”
“Ah.”
Her friend
. Hazel bit the inside of her cheek to conceal a smile. “That’s me.”
“I don’t think I’ve had anyone care that much since I started teaching here…” The corner of his lips twitched beneath the faint suggestion of a goatee.
Hazel let herself consider him fully. Somewhere in his twenties, he wore a pair of khakis that had seen better days and a checkered shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The result was a suggestion of middle-America on an all-Californian tan. She wondered if this was where he saw himself after college—teaching a bunch of waitresses and shop keepers trying to claw their way up the rungs of the ever-shrinking middle class.
Not exactly Ivy League…
“Where did you go?” she wondered. “To school, I mean.”
“Berkeley.” The half-smile became a self-deprecating half-shrug. “Student loans…”
“Mizzou.” Hazel tapped her pen against the crease of the open textbook.
“Really?” Mention of a reputable university was enough to spark a flash of interest. He settled the briefcase on a desk two rows down from Hazel’s. “So this should all be child’s play. Most of my other students barely have a GED.”
Flattered but aware that the praise was undeserved, Hazel shook her head. “Not really. I’m an English major dropout. And I was never great at math or econ, so…I’ll admit I’m struggling a little.”
“We’re only a couple of weeks in,” the professor said, encouragingly, “you can catch up.”
“Let’s hope so.”
Otherwise I’m jobless and without a plan.
“Do you tutor as well or—”
“A little. Math, mostly. Anything to make ends meet, you know?”
She did. She knew that better than most. Her next moves already formulating in her mind, Hazel used the blunt end of her pen to fold the textbook shut and leaned back in her seat. “So…how much would you charge?”
* * * *
For a day that had involved her sitting around more than any other, Hazel couldn’t wait to get off the bus and get home. She spurred her feet over the last block and a half or so to the loft.
A small, restless part of her fretted that Dylan and Ward wouldn’t take well to yet another surprise. But this was good news, for a change, so Hazel jettisoned the sentiment into the far distant corners of her mind and ascended the steps two by two. She fumbled her keys before she managed to get them into the door, arms laden with textbooks both old and new. It was a relief to finally draw the loft door open.
Dimmed lights gleamed discreetly on the walls, splicing her shadow in three fuzzy oblongs on the hardwood floors. “Hey, it’s me,” Hazel beckoned, wrestling with the lock.
“Hi,” Ward greeted. “Let me help you with that.”
Hazel jumped at the sound of his voice. She hadn’t seen him when she stepped through the door, but given his trajectory, he could only have come from one place—Dylan’s bedroom.
She opened her mouth to dredge up a taunt, then thought better of it and kissed his warm, rosy cheek.
In a split second, she decided that Dylan and Ward were welcome to play behind her back all they wished. Maybe someday they’d consider involving her in their games.
“Late shift?” Ward wondered, clearing his throat.
“Not quite. Dylan around?”
Ward shammed a nonchalant shrug. “Everything all right? You didn’t have another visit from—”
“Oh, no. No chance.”
Hazel toed off her sneakers and unloaded her books onto the coffee table. She had forgotten how exhausting it could be to spend just a few hours trying to make sense of glossy print. It wasn’t the same as the fatigue of long shifts at the diner. Her feet didn’t ache nearly as much. Her shoulders didn’t itch for strong hands to work out the knots.
She stretched out on the couch, yawning. “I quit.”
“You—what?” Bewilderment hoisted Ward’s eyebrows and creased his forehead.
“I’m going to focus on school for a while. Take some time to figure out my next move.” And this time, she fully intended to be the one to make it, not Malcolm. “I’ll find something part-time, don’t worry.”
Ward scoffed, as she knew he would. “That’s not…”
“He always wanted to be someone’s sugar-daddy,” Dylan said, emerging from the corridor that led to his bedroom. He was buttoning up his shirt.
“You heard?”
He nodded as he brushed past Ward en route to the couch. He kissed Hazel lightly, a twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Take it this means no more graveyard shifts?”
His complexion disguised a blush slightly better than Ward’s, but Hazel recognized Ward’s cologne on his skin and knew she’d interrupted something more risqué than a friendly chat. Heat raced through her at the thought.
Maybe someday soon?
“You’ll be seeing a lot more of me,” she confirmed, recovering her voice once Dylan had pulled away. “I have to cancel my lease. Can’t afford it,” she added with a sigh.
“That’s not true. We can lend you the money.”
Ward judiciously clamped his lips tightly together when Hazel shot him a glare. “You want me out of the house?”
“No, I just—”
“We’re happy to have you,” Dylan said, deftly coming to his rescue. “Now, who wants dinner?”
* * * *
Over the next handful of days, Hazel fumbled her way to some semblance of routine. She still woke up at early o’clock, her body unused to the luxury of lazing in bed, and she still came home after dark some nights. But to old, bad habits had been added new privileges—like having the time to do the shopping before she hit the books, or fix her hair properly before she left for class.
She split her time between courses and packing up her apartment, with most of the furniture and knickknacks going straight to Goodwill. Dylan made room for her clothes in his wardrobe and Ward cleared away shelf space for her textbooks. At night, they rearranged themselves around her in bed, their hands under her shirt, palming bare skin, always greedy but never possessive.
It was a week before Hazel suggested they go out again. She’d spent the day in the loft and she didn’t relish the thought of doing the same of her evening. Ward agreed, but seemed surprised when Dylan tossed him the keys to the Tesla.
“What happened to ‘Parrish, you’re a public menace’? You hate my driving.”
Dylan smirked. “Are you saying you don’t
want
to drive?”
“No.” Ward pitched the keys from hand to hand. “Just a disclaimer.”
Hazel squeezed his hip. “We’ll live.”
She wasn’t wrong. They left Ward’s BMW and her Volvo—newly retrieved from the impound lot to the tune of several hundred dollars—parked by the curb. The drive to the restaurant involved no pulped skulls or crushed metal. If anything, Ward was more cautious than usual, easing off the accelerator just as the speedometer brushed the limit.
They arrived quickly and parked without so much as a scratch. Dylan said nothing, though Hazel thought a little praise might’ve been just what Ward needed. She took his arm as they were led to their table in the dimly lit interior of the Asian-French fusion bistro.
The venue was once again of Ward’s devising. It came with soft, sultry jazz music rather than a live string quartet, and low seating separated by lattice screens for added privacy. Glimpses of patrons in their little fenced-in areas only added to the illusion of concealment and seclusion.
“Interesting choice,” she murmured as she tucked her legs under the sleek round table. The seats were plush and comfortable despite riding close to the floor. It took her a moment to figure out how to arrange her knees.
“Yeah,” Dylan echoed, “not so good for reading menus, but it’s got potential for entertainment.”
Feigning innocence had never worked in Hazel’s favor, yet she couldn’t resist arching her eyebrows and fluttering her lashes at Dylan as though bemused. “What do you mean?”
“Only that Ward may have brought us here for some other reason than dinner.”
“Sitting right here, guys,” Ward muttered without glancing up from the leather-bound menu.
“Very quietly,” Dylan noted. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
In the low light beaming down on them from discreet wall sconces, Hazel thought she saw Ward swallow dryly.
“We don’t all have your filthy mind,” he rasped.
Whatever was going on between them, it seemed just as likely to turn Ward back into his prickly old self as it was to thaw the walls he’d built between himself and Dylan. Hazel knew which she’d prefer, but this was uncertain territory. The last thing she wanted was to meddle and make things worse.
She was relieved for the return of their waitress and pleased when their drinks were brought out. Dylan had expressly opted to avoid hard liquor, so Hazel had followed his lead. Ward alone ordered himself a whiskey on the rocks, only to leave it untouched once it was served.
“How’s the tutoring going?” Dylan asked, turning to her.
“Pretty well. I’m catching up.” The swift change of focus surprised her, but if Dylan meant to draw Ward’s ire to the surface, he seemed to be succeeding. From the corner of her eye, Hazel observed him level a glare at Dylan, lips thin.
“And the job hunt?”
“What is this,” Ward interjected, “Twenty Questions? She’ll tell us when she’s ready.”
A spike of tenderness shot through Hazel, briefly overwhelming her unease. As much as she had found herself slotting easily into a life with the two of them, she knew that Ward and Dylan had their own thorny issues to work out.