by Dean, Ali
Chapter 24
Hazel
I think I lost my mind somewhere between the Harvard frat party and the ride from the Malones’ cabin to the Spot. I’d hit baseballs at two guys secured to trees, aiming for their crotches. Then I’d asked my dad and boyfriend to force pills down their throats. And I’d felt zero remorse. Nope, it had exhilarated me. I went from stone cold to horny as hell in seconds and by the time Spike dropped us off at the Spot, it was all I could do to walk normally inside. I couldn’t believe I’d let Cruz touch me while we were in the car with two other guys, one my cousin. I mean, it was over my shorts, but still.
Cruz was on me the second the door closed behind us. He grabbed my bottom as his lips met mine. When I felt him bend to lift me, I jumped up, wrapping my legs around his waist. He was walking, but the man could multi-task. His tongue plunged purposefully inside my mouth, showing me exactly what he planned to do to me. I sucked it as he groaned and then he had me on the kitchen counter, furiously snapping open my shorts and tugging them down my legs. His hands were everywhere, like they couldn’t decide where to touch first. My breasts, my stomach, my hips, thighs. Finally, he went down on his knees and used his mouth on my most sensitive spot. It wasn’t long before I was begging him to just give me what we both wanted.
His clothes were off a moment later and he seemed to have this condom thing down already because he slid it on in no time. Cruz’s eyes met mine right before he pushed inside. The frenzy of getting to this point stilled, and we breathed. Slowly, he worked his way to the root and we both heaved out long sighs. It felt right, so right, being connected this way. His hair fell over his face and I moved it to the side to see him better. My legs wrapped around his hips and he slid me to the edge before pulling back and driving deep.
I watched him move inside of me, thrusting with smooth athleticism. His arms held the counter and I could see his muscles rippling even in the dark warehouse. Cruz didn’t move like a guy who was new to this, inside a woman for only the third time in his life. His brow furrowed and maybe he was fighting finishing too soon, but that little sign of concentration was his only tell that he wasn’t in complete control. I was overwhelmed by a rush of emotions. It suddenly didn’t matter that it had taken years of alienation and hurt to get here. What mattered was that we were together now, and we had the future together.
Cruz’s hands reached for my breasts as his movements quickened. He leaned over and tugged my lip into his mouth as I felt him grow impossibly harder. With the feel of him pulsing inside me, I exploded, and he captured my cries with his mouth. It was quick and intense. Perfect.
Cruz trailed kisses over my collarbone before pulling out and when he returned from tossing the condom, I was already half asleep. My legs dangled over the kitchen counter and my eyelids were heavy.
“Come on.” Cruz’s voice was gentle as he lifted me in his arms. I wasn’t exactly a feather, but he managed to carry me upstairs and tuck me into bed. I didn’t protest. My exhaustion was bone deep. Anything left to deal with would have to wait.
* * *
The next morning it hit me. All of it. What we’d done. What it meant. The Malones knew all of us were involved. They might not know how long the alliance had been going on, but we’d shown our cards.
Then I took a deep breath. A weight was lifted.
The onslaught of panic left just as quickly as it came. Because it didn’t really matter what the Malones knew about our roles or who held what information. In their eyes, all of us had been fair game all along. I’d been a target whether I fought back or not. Now it was all out in the open. I sat up in bed and looked around. I was in the upstairs bunk room at the Spot, but it was empty. Throwing off the covers, I looked down and realized I was naked. Butt naked. I wrapped a bed sheet around me and headed downstairs, listening in case any of the other guys were here. It was silent so I pushed open the door to the downstairs. Cruz looked up from his phone. We both paused, and I felt his eyes drinking me in as I did the same to him. Cruz had on nothing but athletic shorts resting low on his hips.
He took a few steps and wrapped his arms around me, kissing the top of my head.
“Morning, Hazel.”
“Morning, Cruz.”
This was nice. So nice, I nearly forgot why I’d woken up in a panic.
“Okay, that’s all you get,” he told me, smacking my butt before pulling away. “Check your phone, deal with that, and then we gotta get dressed and get to work.”
“Work?”
Cruz rubbed his hands together. “Yeah, baby, everyone’s coming over in ten minutes.”
I blinked at him before taking my phone that he was holding out.
It was filled with text messages. I’d put Jada’s number in there yesterday at her suggestion, but totally spaced on telling her I’d left campus. She was freaking out. Everyone had heard what happened, or some version of it. She was apologizing profusely, along with a half dozen other messages and voicemails from team members and even the coach.
I couldn’t deal with this right now. Just thinking about handling the soccer situation and navigating college recruitment made me want to crawl back under the covers. What was once the biggest dilemma in my life seemed like nothing but a pain in my ass right now. I texted Jada:
Hey sorry I didn’t call last night. I ended up coming home. I’m okay though. Can you tell the coach and everyone I’ll get in touch soon? Just not today.
It was evasive, but so what? They shouldn’t have brought a group of high school seniors to a sketchy party where we’d get split up. I didn’t need to soothe their anxiety right now. Jada texted back immediately but I didn’t respond. I threw on some clothes, not wanting Dad or Mitch or hell, any of the guys to walk in on me wrapped in a bed sheet. Cruz came back from upstairs in new clothes. “We gotta get you some clothes here,” he said, not for the first time.
Along with college decisions, clean clothing didn’t seem important. Food, however... “Do we have anything to eat here?” I wondered as I walked over to check out the fridge.
“We haven’t been great about stocking it lately,” Cruz admitted. “But Moody’s stopping at the bakery to get your coffee cake.”
“Yes!” I did a little happy dance.
I stopped when I felt Cruz looking at me. He wasn’t only checking me out like he did all the time; no, he was studying me, deep in thought.
“What?” I put a hand on my hip, ready to go on the defensive. I didn’t know why, maybe because I thought he was judging me for not being all doom and gloom given the situation. But come on, if a girl couldn’t be happy about Button Bottom Bakery coffee cake, what was the point?
Instead, he said something kind of out of the blue. “I’m so damn glad you showed up at the Lake on my birthday, Hazel.”
My hand dropped from my hip.
He kept going. “I was trying to do all this without you. Maybe it was the right thing. Maybe your dad never would have had the freedom to get all the evidence if we’d been a couple all this time. The Malones might have been on edge with that connection, watching him closely, threatening. Who knows? Or maybe it was a mistake and I never should have walked away in the first place.”
Cruz took three long strides and put a hand on my cheek, the other on my lower back. He lowered his voice and it came out scratchy.
“And when the Malones hurt you? I wondered if I never should have pulled you to me that night by the bonfire. If I should have let you leave with them, so they kept thinking you were on their side.”
I swallowed down a growing lump in my throat. My head immediately started shaking back and forth, rejecting that idea.
“No,” I whispered. “Don’t think that. We wouldn’t have had this.” I gestured a hand between the small space between our hearts. “We wouldn’t have had last night on that counter.” I flicked my eyes to the kitchen counter. “Or any of it. Isn’t that why we’re doing all this in the first place?”
Cruz’s hand tightened and he pulled me close
r. “Exactly. I’m done wondering about my past decisions, whether they were right or wrong. Let’s be in the now. Otherwise, what’s the point of any of this?”
I grinned, realizing he was reflecting my earlier thoughts about happy dances and coffee cake.
“Don’t ever regret pulling me to you that night at your party. I don’t regret ignoring your order to stay by the dock.”
“No regrets.”
“None.”
We were grinning at each other when the door opened and the guys flooded in. The twins, Spike, and Moody, who was carrying two large paper bags. I almost did another happy dance.
It had only been ten hours or so since we’d seen them last, but given the night we’d had, there were hugs all around. Mitch and Dad came in a minute later, and the hugs continued. There was still so much to decide. So much ahead of us no matter what we resolved. But we’d made it clear we weren’t letting any of their personal attacks on us, on me, slide, without retribution. And that needed to be celebrated.
Chapter 25
Cruz
Following Gramps’s unspoken warning, we waited until we’d eaten coffee cake before getting down to business.
We pulled the bar stools over to the couches and made a circle. Jeremy was the first to speak. “I got an email from Seamus an hour ago.” That had all of our attentions. It’d been radio silence since their meeting last Sunday, with the exception of a short exchange about Flynn’s murder charges getting dropped entirely, not just against me. “He wanted to confirm we’re meeting again tomorrow, same place, same time.”
“Uh, yeah, no.” Bodhi slid to the edge of his seat, hands on knees. “I think they made their position pretty damn clear when they set the Harvard hockey team on Hazel and tried to bring us into a fight.”
I put my arm around Hazel and pulled her closer to my side of the couch. There was going to be a fight about the next move. I could feel the tension rolling off everyone, making waves in the warehouse.
Hazel seemed content to let everyone voice their opinions first, and I was right there with her.
“We should hear what Seamus has to say before we let loose our evidence,” Jeremy said. “It’s only one more day.”
Bodhi let out a puff of air that almost sounded like a growl.
“Bodhi,” Jeremy continued, “I’m as sick about it as you are. I don’t want Hazel on that campus with the Malones either. But we got back at two of them last night. We can handle Neil and Keegan too, if we want to negotiate for that with Seamus. Maybe he’ll be down. We don’t know yet what his position is. You know if we unleash all we’ve got on them, it will be much worse than twisted frat boy games. They’ll throw everything they’ve got at us.”
Bodhi clenched his fists but Mitch spoke up next.
“I don’t know, Jeremy, I’m beginning to think a truce isn’t possible. The Bravens tried time and time again to come to an agreement, and it never worked. I know what we have on them now changes the dynamic. We’re the ones in power. But the Malones aren’t going to change. These boys, Neil, Keegan, Sean, Branden, they’re the ones coming into power next. They won’t sit back and let us hold this over them.”
Moody questioned, “Even if it means they get to continue with everything they’ve always done? We’re only asking them to steer clear of us, let Jeremy out, and stop the deal with Braven for their drug business.”
I kept my arm around Hazel when I asked the guys, “Think about this. Seamus asked for a meeting tomorrow. Who knows what he has in mind? The best possible scenario is he accepts what we’re offering. What then? We go to Harvard with all those assholes for four years? Stick around Defiance Falls watching them do their thing for the rest of our lives, knowing we have the power to get rid of them? In the meantime, we know they’re plotting how to take us down, and we’re just sitting around waiting to see if they’ll try it. I’m for going all in. They’ll try to hurt us, but we can handle it. We’ll deal. It’s better than the alternative.”
Hazel put a hand on my thigh and turned to me. “Hey, I know I wanted to unleash on them after the little bet Neil set in motion, but Cruz, what about Braven? Exposing everything means bad news for your family’s business. Your mom’s business. The legacy your dad wants to preserve for you. Braven will suffer when it comes out they were involved with the Malones’ dirty business.”
I shook my head. “The evidence shows it was all Flynn’s doing. When he worked there he set it in motion and the execs at Braven didn’t know about it. Yeah, it will hurt us, stock will go down, but we’ll pull through.”
Jeremy wasn’t done though. “Look, Seamus said something last Sunday that made me think he wants this truce.”
We all focused on Jeremy, waiting.
“He said that he’d always admired Laura Braven. He started to say more about the idea that preserving her legacy with Braven Pharma meant something to him, but he stopped. I think Seamus might have a different position on the Braven situation than his father did. His sons might have a different position on how to handle the truce than he does. They might be in disagreement about all of it, just like us.”
“But it doesn’t matter,” Emmett said. “He doesn’t get to make the decision on his own.”
“And anyway,” Spike said, “he could have been playing you. That dude is not sentimental. He’s a cold bastard.”
Moody and Jeremy seemed to be the only ones holding out for the truce. Though Hazel hadn’t made her position clear. She was protecting me when she played devil’s advocate. I could see she was torn. It wasn’t only our emotions or reason at play here, it was all the unknowns about how this would unfold in the future. Either way we went, it was a domino effect, but we were blind to where it led. We could only guess.
Jeremy’s phone rang then and he glanced at the screen. “I’ll call him back,” he muttered, silencing it. He looked up, saw we were all wondering who it was, since nearly everyone who called him was in this room already. “It’s my dad,” he offered. “Kinda weird, since he’s on duty right now, actually.” Jeremy frowned at the phone, picked it up to look at it. Then Hazel’s phone started ringing a second later.
“It’s Pops. I’ll answer.” She put the phone to her ear. “Hey Pops, what’s up? Everything okay?”
I could hear his muffled voice on the other end. The color drained from Hazel’s face and her eyes shifted to me before going to her lap. Her voice was shaking when she responded, “Okay. We’ll be there soon. Thanks.”
She put the phone down and took my hand in both of hers.
“Your house is on fire.”
I stared at her. “What?”
“Your house. It’s on fire.”
“My dad?” I choked out.
“He’s okay. His caretaker got them out and called 911. They’re on the way to the hospital.”
My eyes stayed on Hazel as my insides twisted. Dad was probably confused and scared. I needed to get there. The worry was circling on the periphery though as a dark certainty filled me. I turned to Jeremy. “There’s no truce happening,” I gritted out. “Pull the trigger. The Malones are going down.”
Jeremy stood. He nodded at me. Then he looked at everyone, one by one. “It will take me less than ten minutes. If you thought we were at war already, that was child’s play. Is everyone ready for this?”
“Yes,” came from Spike, Emmett, and Bodhi.
“It has to be done,” said Mitch.
Moody nodded. “Looks like they made their choice. Do it.”
Finally, Jeremy locked eyes with his daughter.
She gripped my hand tighter. “I’m ready.”
Jeremy walked over to his backpack. We watched him take out a laptop and set it on the kitchen counter. In a few clicks, decades’ worth of evidence against the largest criminal organization in the country would land in the laps of media and law enforcement. The Malones would retaliate. They wouldn’t all go behind bars at once. They’d unleash everything they had against us, and we would fight back.
&nbs
p; We were the underdogs, smaller and less connected. But we had more power, and we’d been waiting years for this battle.
I looked at the guys, who watched Jeremy work. Then I looked at Hazel. She nodded at me and squeezed my hand again. “I’m ready.”
Defiance Falls War
Defiance Falls Book 3
Chapter 1
Hazel
A trickle of unease shot down my spine as I walked down the hallway of the high school Monday morning. I was used to eyes on me, subtle curiosity and interest. It came with the territory of being the school’s top female athlete, the best soccer player in the state. The first couple days of senior year, the interest level had risen when I stepped back into the circle with my best friends, and became Cruz Donovan’s girlfriend again.
This morning, it wasn’t heightened intrigue in the stares that followed me. Normally, they came with hollers about a recent game, shouts of hello, greetings with high-fives. This morning, the stares were accompanied by silence. Once I passed, there were whispers. There might have been respect in their gazes too, but I sensed something else, and I didn’t like it. Was it fear? I’d been told I was intimidating to some, but I’d never had reason to invoke fear. Even when I slide-tackled on the field, I did it with a smile on my face. I wasn’t mean, only competitive.
When the news broke yesterday about the Malones’ criminal enterprises, my focus was on the legal war ahead, the dangers to myself, my friends, and my family, as the domino effect of our actions played out. My status at school? The way my peers regarded me? It hadn’t even been a blip on my radar. But maybe I was misunderstanding the attention. I knew something was off, but it could have been that Cruz Donovan hadn’t arrived yet. They thought he’d be at my side this morning. That I’d have answers. They didn’t know I had no clue where my boyfriend was at the moment.
When I got to my locker, I took a deep breath and put in my combination. I couldn’t ignore the weight of the eyes burning my skin though, and it took two tries before the locker snapped open.
