by Helena Maeve
“Nice, isn’t it?” Dylan said, voice soft but wary.
Worried I’ll make a scene? Hazel banished the uncharitable thought. “Yeah… Maybe later you and Ward can hit the floor.”
“Hey, I’m game if he is…”
Seated on Hazel’s left, Ward scowled at the pair of them. “I thought we were going to talk business,” he protested, fiddling with his napkin. “What are we drinking? Champagne?”
Hazel narrowed her eyes. “Funny.”
“You started it.” Ward could make a prayer sound dirty, but in that moment, the heat in his gaze carried a different meaning. ‘You don’t want us treating you like you’re a victim, then we won’t.’
It didn’t take a dictionary to crack that code.
“You had your lawyers look into the DMCA claim,” Hazel supplied.
That was the deal. After she confessed to him and Dylan that Malcolm was in town and trying hard to insinuate himself into her life, she had asked for their help. Ward often talked about his legal team—mostly with the sardonic slant of ‘how is this my life’ irony. Meanwhile Dylan had the know-how to dig up all the information Hazel could want about Malcolm’s business interests.
She’d thought that leveraging cold, hard cash against Malcolm’s fixation would be enough to induce him to consign the video to obscurity once and for all.
“If we can persuade him,” Ward said, “it’s a simple matter of drafting a letter and threatening legal action. Essentially what you’ve been doing, but with actual consequences.”
“He would have to want to litigate a copyright breach,” Dylan put in.
Hazel shook her head. “He’d have to want to issue the DMCA in the first place.” It went without saying that persuading Malcolm of either was impossible. She cut herself off at the sommelier’s arrival, refusing when she was offered wine.
To her astonishment, Dylan and Ward followed suit.
“You don’t have to do that,” Hazel started.
“I’m driving,” Ward replied off-handedly, passing the buck to Dylan.
“Right,” he echoed. “You’re driving.”
Affection snagged on the barbs in Hazel’s chest. She only barely curbed the urge to slide her fingers through Dylan’s—or worse, bodily throw herself into his arms and weep like a little kid. “I’ll hazard a guess and say we can’t lean on him financially,” she said, clearing her throat.
“The way it’s set up, his firm has a dozen different subsidiaries working everything from construction to maintenance and industrial development. It might just be the first instance of vertical integration I’ve seen work in real life.”
“Look at you” Ward grinned. “Putting that MBA to good use.”
“Point is,” Dylan went on, “he doesn’t appear to be strapped for funds.”
Too tired to be disappointed, Hazel let out a sigh. “Great.”
“Hold on, I’m not finished. We may not have any levers we can push on the cash flow side, but there’s something to be said for his business practices.”
“He buys land and builds houses,” Hazel recalled. “What’s there to say?”
“That he doesn’t always perform due diligence on the lots?” Dylan’s smile was tepid, but his eyes gleamed with satisfaction. He’d dug for this. He thought it was something they could use. “Two years ago, he settled with tribes in New Mexico after they proved that the land he’d built a private golf course on was part of the reservation. I’m still digging, but so far it seems like that’s not the only corner he’s ever cut.”
“And where there’s a pattern…” Ward swirled the sparkling water in his glass. “It’s something.”
“Yeah.” Something, but not enough.
Far too attuned to her shifting moods not to notice the catch in her voice, Dylan took Hazel’s hand in his. “Let me worry about this? You should focus on your defense.”
“My—oh.” Hazel laughed mirthlessly. “Of course. Forgot about that. I’m a criminal now.”
Thanks to Malcolm’s latest curveball, she now had to wait for her court date and the inevitable expense it would incur. Merely being arrested had set her back hundreds of dollars, to say nothing of the ER trip.
“Not until you’re convicted,” Ward put in.
“Which won’t happen,” said Dylan. “It’s Malcolm’s word against yours.”
“And Sadie? Look, I appreciate it, but there’s no way to spin this—”
“Might be.” Ward tapped a knuckle against the table. “You were drugged, right?”
“Yes.”
“So there would be traces of GHB on the broken glass?”
“I don’t know that the police bothered to preserve any evidence…”
Ward pushed away from the table. “Then let’s find out. Excuse me.” He was already pulling out his cell as he wove gracefully between the tables.
Hazel stared after him, bemused. “Where’s he going?”
“Calling the Chief of Police.” Dylan shrugged when she snapped her gaze back to his. “I don’t think they’re buddies, but Ward can be—persuasive.”
“Just not enough to get out of speeding tickets?”
“Not enough of a challenge,” Dylan replied. “Besides, you know how he gets about guilt.” He squeezed Hazel’s hand, over the table, in full view of everyone in the restaurant. “Promise me you won’t follow his example? It’s pretty terrible.”
Hazel frowned. “Plain English, please.” She was too hungry to puzzle out his meaning.
“We want to do this. Don’t turn it into something you’ve forced us into, or—”
“I can’t help how I feel.” Which was to say, guilty, stupid. Cheated. She had stumbled headfirst into Malcolm’s clutches, precisely the way he’d intended.
The thought lit a hot flare in Hazel’s gut, the timid spark enough to threaten a blaze.
“No one’s asking you to,” Dylan assured her.
“Then…what?”
Dylan glanced down at their joined hands. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“I’m still here. I don’t know much about the legal system, but I doubt they’ll throw me in prison for breaking glasses… You’re probably stuck with me.”
“Sounds awful when you put it like that.”
“It kind of is.” I kind of am.
Hazel made to extricate her fingers, but Dylan tightened his grip. “Not true. Not even a little bit. I’ve dated a lot. I’ve even—it never felt like this.” He met her gaze, some intense, nameless emotion hovering in his eyes. “I don’t know why it works. With you. It just does. It—”
“Clicks?” Hazel suggested, thinking of the butterflies that constantly fluttered their wings in the pit of her stomach when she was with him, with Ward.
“Yeah.” Dylan sighed, as though relieved that she understood. “Doesn’t hurt that you’re hot as hell, but… I don’t know how to explain it. You don’t take Ward’s shit. You don’t give up. I like that.”
Hazel huffed. “So your ideal woman is the resilient, pushy, good-looking type?” She affected a laugh, more for show than to persuade Dylan of her nonchalance. She had no doubt he could feel the spike in her pulse. “Well, that’s me out, then.”
“Don’t sell yourself short.”
“I’m not very tall, either.” Quips only got her so far, but they were a better shield than the flat-out denials she was tempted to offer.
“Hazel.” Dylan tilted toward her, draping his other hand over the back of her chair. Suddenly, it was impossible to tear her gaze away from his inky black eyes. “I’m trying to say I’m in love with you and you’re kind of spoiling it.”
A shadow landed over them before Hazel could speak.
“Good news,” Ward reported, “the boys and girls in blue did one thing right… Am I interrupting something?”
“No,” Hazel said.
She caught a glimpse of the hurt on Dylan’s face even as she turned to Ward. The fine balance between giving one of them her full attention without neglecting t
he other had never seemed more complicated. But when Dylan made to pull his hand free, Hazel firmed her grip. No, stay. It wasn’t as simple as saying ‘me, too’, but her silence didn’t have to mean, ‘well, I don’t’.
Dylan sat back in his chair, one hand still clasped in Hazel’s. His ‘Love you’ echoed in her burning ears. It hadn’t been a slip of the tongue after all.
* * * *
Four-seven-one Aulden Way was blanketed in shadow by the time Ward parked outside the building. Hazel squeezed his shoulder in thanks before smothering a yawn behind her hand. After so much teasing, Ward had kept well below the speed limit on the way home. The gentle rumble of the BMW, interrupted only by the faint murmur of conversation from the front seat, only served to lull Hazel into a pleasant somnolence.
She found herself anticipating the chance to peel off her clothes and dive into Dylan’s bed. She knew she didn’t have the energy to muster another flight of stairs to Ward’s bedroom. The couple of floors to the loft door were bad enough. Hazel leaned against the banister, ascending sluggishly behind her boys.
Her eyes half-lidded, she almost missed Ward coming to an abrupt stop half a dozen steps from the landing.
“What are you doing here?” His voice was steel and sandpaper.
Hazel climbed another step, just in time to see Sadie push herself to her feet. She’d been sitting with her back to the loft door. Waiting. Their eyes met, Sadie’s rimmed in pink.
“I need to talk to you.”
“You’ve done enough damage,” Ward gritted out, interposing. “What you need to do is leave.”
Sadie’s gaze flew to him, a flash of surprise tilting up her eyebrows.
“It’s okay.”
“Hazel…” Dylan rested a hand against her spine, his warmth leaching through her blazer.
She turned to him. “I’m sure. Go inside.” And take Ward with you before he does something he’ll regret.
Dylan seemed to read her mind, because while he sighed, clearly uneasy, he started up the stairs and tugged Ward along by the elbow. “Come on. You can help me turn down the bed. We’ll leave the door open,” he added, for Hazel’s benefit.
It was a concession she could allow.
Left alone, Sadie shifted her weight, fumbling. She didn’t seem to know where to put her hands, first combing her long, blonde hair away from her face, then stuffing the tips of her fingers into the too-small pockets of her skinny jeans. “I’m sorry,” she blurted out at last. “I’m so sorry—”
“Save it. You have five minutes.”
The hallway lights washed out the color in Sadie’s face, leaving her pale and pitiful. “I didn’t have a choice! By the time I tried to get out, he’d done so much for me that I couldn’t just… I tried to tell you.”
“Is that how you remember it?” Hazel straightened as she reached the top of the landing. “Because I don’t recall you mentioning that you were screwing my ex.” It had the ring of a jealous objection from a woman who couldn’t let go. But Hazel had tried. It wasn’t jealousy that had brought her to the hotel suite. It was Sadie.
It was Malcolm, towing her along like a fish on a line.
“I’m not!”
“You were in his bed, Sadie.”
“He blackened half my face,” Sadie shot back. “Do you honestly think that made me hot for him?”
Hazel rested a shoulder against the bare brick wall. “You said that was Frank’s doing…” It didn’t matter that she’d reached the same conclusion. She had no benefit of doubt left to give.
Sadie threw up her hands. “I lied, all right? When he called to say he was in LA because you did something to mess up his plans, I panicked. I told him I was gonna come clean, tell you everything.” Her voice shook. “Son of a bitch showed up at my mom’s house, left her a message saying that I was to meet him on Mulholland. You know where.”
Hazel flashed back to the hairpin turn, the dust and gravel path on the side of the road, where brambles and sunburned shrubs gave way to the jagged terracotta cliffs below. Yes, she knew.
“He was waiting for me! I honestly thought he’d kill me this time.”
“This time?” Hazel frowned.
Sadie wet her lips. “Remember my car crash?”
“That was Malcolm, too?”
“I can’t prove it—”
“No, of course not.” He’s too smart for that. It should’ve been a mind-bending discovery, but Hazel wouldn’t put it past him to lean on every available lever to make Sadie dance to his tune.
“You get now why I’m afraid of him?”
“Yeah…”
It was a fear that Malcolm had used to his advantage. Hazel recognized the modus operandi. How many beatings had she gratefully taken, relieved to avoid sterner punishment? It hadn’t occurred to her until much later that she had never talked Malcolm down from an idea but always gave him precisely what he wanted.
Sadie pinned both hands onto the banister, shifting her weight forward as if to peer into the gap between the two flights of stairs. “He terrifies me.”
“Good.” Hazel couldn’t muster sympathy. Sadie had brought this on them both. “When did it start? Not that it matters, but I’m curious.”
“The night you left Mizzou.”
Hazel snorted. “So all that shit about helping me—that was him. You let me believe you gave a damn, when really Malcolm was the one who sent you. Why? What did he have to gain?”
“My guess?” Sadie sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, the flesh going white as she bit down. “He thought you’d do something more drastic if you stayed.”
As insulting as it was to hear it stated so bluntly, Hazel couldn’t deny the possibility. She’d been at her wits’ end, pride in tatters, her grades suffering. She had taken to self-medicating with Xanax purchased from another of her fellow kinksters. It was the only way she could put aside the constant self-flagellation and get any sleep.
How long before that habit became the final nail in her coffin?
Under the halo of neon lights, Sadie sank into a crouch, grasping the banister like the bars of a prison cell. “I didn’t know what he’d done. I didn’t have all the… I figured he was acting out of love, you know? Letting you go for your own good, making sure you were safe… Then one day he calls to say you’ve moved to LA.”
Hazel inhaled sharply, but Sadie either didn’t hear her or didn’t care to stop speaking.
“Mom was struggling. We were going to lose the house ’cause we couldn’t afford the mortgage. So when Malcolm said he’d help me out for a favor, I took the bait. Seemed harmless enough, right? Getting you a job, giving you a place to stay until you found your feet…”
“That’s not where it ended, though, is it?”
Hair so blonde it was almost white drooped into Sadie’s eyes as she shook her head.
“He told you to show me the video,” Hazel surmised. The first time it had come out, she’d been in Dunby, still, trying to learn how to function on her own again. Just when she’d thought she could make it, the whole town had discovered her burgeoning porn career. Years later, the shame and humiliation still simmered in her belly like poison.
“I hadn’t seen it until then,” Sadie said, her eyes wet. “You have to believe me.”
Do I? Hazel cocked an eyebrow. “Your five minutes are almost up.”
“That’s when I knew what he was. That video—it was awful. I could tell you didn’t want to be there. You kept looking at the camera like you were frightened or something. And when you fell—”
“Yeah, totally hilarious,” Hazel deadpanned. “So all those times I told you about Malcolm…you didn’t believe me? You needed proof?” That stung worse than knowing Sadie had only befriended her at his behest. “I guess all those waterworks could have been crocodile tears.”
Her shallow laugh triggered a flinch in Sadie. “I tried to end it, I swear. But he—he wouldn’t let me. You know what he’s like.”
“I wish people would stop telling m
e that,” Hazel muttered, crouching by Sadie’s side. “Look, I’m sorry he’s got you under his boot. It’s a shitty, shitty place to be.” Slowly, she reached up and brushed a curl behind Sadie’s ear. “But I can’t say I give a fuck if you get crushed at this point.”
Joints creaking, Hazel pushed herself to her full height and stalked into the loft. The door clanged as she slid it shut.
“Everything okay?” Ward asked, standing with hands tucked into his pockets in the doorway of Dylan’s bedroom.
“No,” said Hazel, “but it will be.”
Chapter Thirteen
Ward mumbled in his sleep, squirming in thousand thread count sheets as though suddenly uncomfortable.
The rocking of the mattress didn’t still for his garbled, groggy objections. A soft sigh ricocheted against the rain-spattered window pane, joined by a deeper moan. Both preceded the sound of rustling sheets.
Finally, Ward blinked his eyes open.
“Took you long enough,” Hazel panted. Clever quips were slightly beyond her reach as Dylan rutted inside her, one arm clasped tightly around her waist. His thrusts were gentle, stroking her inner walls almost sluggishly, as if he had all the time in the world. Hazel shot Ward a shaky smile. “You—ah, you sleep like the dead.”
“You couldn’t wake me?”
Hazel shrugged the shoulder that wasn’t pinned into the mattress in feigned apology. “Dylan was randy.”
A huff of disbelief echoed from behind her. “Yeah, that’s totally what happened…”
Dylan punctuated the retort with a deeper thrust, holding Hazel against him when she made to drop to her front.
“Fuck, that feels good,” she moaned, squeezing her eyes shut on Ward’s sullen expression. Dylan’s cock throbbed against her core, the position squeezing her body around his length on every methodical, inward press. The air in her lungs evaporated as he eased back no more than half an inch, staying deep and close, kissing her shoulder between strokes. His breath was fever-hot on her skin and Hazel half wanted to ask him to bite down to take the edge off.
