
Hazel and Elijah Find Out: First They F*cked Around (Grand Ridge Book 1)
Chapter 1
Hazel
Ihad the feeling I should be upset. Dennis seemed to think I would be. With his apology sketched in every line of his handsomely boyish face at the tail end of his, It’s Not You Breakup Speech.
“I think you’re great, and if things were different…” Atop the table between us, he rubbed the calloused pad of his thumb across the back of my hand.
Blinking, I glanced through the window into the dining area. Bettie’s Pour House was one of the more popular places to eat in town—which had more to do with the lack of options than the quality of the food—and it was beginning to fill up. Dennis and I were the only people seated on the patio. The temperature had dropped overnight, and apparently, no one else wanted to weather the cold.
So, while everyone inside was likely just eating their meal and spending time with their friends and family, I felt like I was in a fishbowl—being watched.
The white receipt from our meal flapped in the breeze.
I glanced down at Dennis’ beagle, Banjo, who tilted his head at me. He didn’t seem to understand any more than I did.
My hands slipped easily from between Dennis’ fingers and I folded them in my lap. I leaned forward with my mouth slightly open, trying to decide exactly how to say what needed to be said.
He waited. His face was trapped somewhere between hope and apprehension.
“Are we,” I began, then started again, “I think, maybe, we’re on two different pages.”
“How so?”
“I thought we were casual.”
Wrinkles folded into his forehead.
I drummed a nervous beat on my thighs. “That we weren’t dating exclusively. That we could have dated other people the whole time.”
His dark eyebrows shot up, and his blue eyes widened. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah.”
The feet of his metal chair scraped against the concrete as he leaned back. “Huh, I’ve never done that before.”
“I’m sorry.” My cheeks warmed, a blush rising up my neck. “I haven’t been dating anyone else, but I just…I thought we weren’t serious.”
He picked up his beer, then set it back down.
Gesturing between us, I said, “But we’re good, this is good. You thought you had to breakup with me, and now you don’t.”
“Okay.”
A sliver of relief seeped through the less comfortable feelings I was dealing with. “I just thought, we’re both busy, and this is convenient”—I held my hands out—“not that you’re a convenience, or a hardship for that matter, it’s just like…”
I’m making a mess of this.
My hands continued in their random movements. “I thought we weren’t… I just didn’t think that we were like a thing.”
“We see each other a couple of times a week.”
Pointing at his dog attached to the leash draped over his thigh, I said, “I’m Banjo’s vet.”
The beagle was a special pup, and between his diabetes and the random things he ate constantly, I saw him almost weekly. Dennis also brought wounded wild animals from Sleepy Pines State Park to my vet clinic for treatment and rehabilitation. Our paths crossed regularly. It was mutually beneficial that we were of similar age, single, and I found him attractive. But a serious relationship with him hadn’t crossed my mind, and especially not when I was still in the first year of owning the clinic. My available free time was almost impossible to come by. And I definitely didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to date anyone seriously, not with the demand to pay off my business loans and numerous daily choices taxing my brain.
Dennis was a nice man, but I wasn’t interested in him for anything long-term.
“Yeah.” Dennis nodded, his mouth still hanging open slightly. He looked shocked, but not angry, and I decided that was a good thing.
I hadn’t planned on having this conversation, but as he started explaining that he’d gotten a remote research opportunity to evaluate the migration patterns of salmon for the next six months, it became clear where the conversation was going. I’d been internally processing the email I’d read from the Grand Ridge Greater Area Humane Society, and brainstorming ways to correct the bind I was in. But now my mental energy was going in a completely different direction.
“We can still be friends.” I leaned over the table, lowering my voice. “We can keep sleeping together until you leave.”
“Uh…I don’t know.” His shoulders hunched as he scratched his pant leg. “Now it feels like I like you more than you like me.”
The role reversal was startling. I sat back in my chair, blinking. “Dennis, you were just breaking up with me.”
“I know.”
“So clearly, you don’t like me that much.”
“I kinda do… I didn’t want to break up with you.”
“I am so confused right now.”
“Yeah.”
“If you didn’t want to break up with me, then why were you?”
He sighed, puffing his cheeks out. “It seemed like the right thing to do. I’m gonna be gone for six months with a heavy workload.”
“Don’t you think asking me what I wanted would have been the right thing?”
“That’s a good point. I guess I should have. What would you like?”
There was the root of my issue with Dennis. He was kind, handsome, and the second best lay I’d ever had, but he was not a deep thinker. There wasn’t anything wrong with him, and if I wasn’t pining for someone who wasn’t even around—and whose number had gone unused in my phone for over a year, I might be more interested in the possibilities of Dennis.
I brushed the loose strands of my French braid from my face and stared at the pinks and golds reflecting on the surface of Grand Ridge Lake across the street. Behind me, two car doors opened and closed. I’d set myself up to be asked a question that I didn’t have an answer to. The longer the silence stretched, the more uncomfortable it grew.
“Dennis,” I began, but Banjo growled and barked, surprising me quiet. I had just enough time to glance down and see him dart through the fenced area.
Dennis snatched at the leash dragging on the cement, but missed it by less than an inch. His chair clashed to the ground as he jumped the fence to chase after his dog. I took a beat to roll my eyes before chasing after them.
If he won’t take obedience classes, could he at least hang on to Banjo’s leash better?
“Mom,” a man’s voice warned from a few feet behind me.
Banjo barked.
The man moved to place himself between a woman with reddish brown hair until the beagle charged past her, and directly for the man.
I exited through the gate. The woman pressed her hand to her mouth, Dennis raced after an incensed Banjo.
Realizing the dog’s path was headed right for him, the man turned on his heel. He was strong, and lean, and took hold of the top of the eight-foot retaining wall and pulled his entire body up it. The sweatshirt he wore concealed the flex of lithe muscles, but his jeans were more transparent about what was inside—his thighs strained against the denim and fabric clung to his ass. It only took seconds for him to place his tennis shoe on the grass and leverage the rest of his weight to stand safely above us.
Banjo barked and clawed at the wall.
The man’s chest heaved as he took a few deep breaths, his hands resting on his hips. And I was transported to the middle of the night in a cabin on Lake Michigan’s shore. His naked body above mine, his chestnut curls plastered to his sweat-slicked forehead. His whispered words as he sank inside me again, “I can’t get enough of you.”
The memory was so vivid, I could practically smell him on my skin.
My heart drummed in my ears, drowning out the chaotic noises around me, a persistent beat. Elijah.
My unattainable high school crush, and the estranged son of my former mentor, and the most beautiful man on earth. The one I had an incredible one-night stand with the summer before. The one whose phone number I’d had for the past fifteen months. The one I hadn’t called or texted because of my deep-seated anxiety about just how him he was, while I was just nerdy ol’ me.
“Eli,” the woman called, “are you okay?”
Holding out a grass- and dirt-covered palm, he answered, “I’m fine, Mom.”
Dennis had Banjo’s leash and commanded the dog to sit. “I’m so sorry. He gets protective around men.”
The beagle had stopped barking, but still wasn’t sitting.
“You need to get that dog more training,” Elijah’s mom insisted.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m fine,” Elijah said again.
Her hands went to her hips, her shoulders set. “You just escaped up a retaining wall.”
“Dogs can be weird.”
“You could have gotten hurt.” She turned her green eyes on Dennis. “If your dog bites someone—”
“He knows, Mom. It was a mistake. Nobody is hurt and everything is fine.”
She pressed her lips together as if it was the only way to keep words from continuing to tumble out.
“I really am so sorry. Is there anything I can do?” Dennis asked.
“No, man, I’m good. You and your girlfriend”—there was the slightest hesitation as Elijah’s eyes finally landed on me, and all the air pressed out of my body—“go enjoy your night.”
I didn’t know if I should say “Hi” or scream “He’s not my boyfriend.” But nothing came out of my mouth, I didn’t even wave. I was too busy noticing all the changes to Elijah’s appearance since I’d last seen him. There was a couple days’ old dark beard on his once cleanly shaven jaw, and his hair was trimmed above his ears. I was too busy being shocked to see him at all. I was too busy just seeing him. The way he stood, perfectly balanced, with his feet shoulder-width apart. His hands fisted in his pockets in a way I hadn’t known would be so familiar. Thinking about him, wondering about him, had become such a frequent activity that it was more like a song that was stuck in my head.
I didn’t know what it meant now that he was here.
I didn’t know if it meant things could be different between us. If he’d want things to be different between us. I knew that I did.
The semblance of a greeting formed at the back of my mind, but then he was looking away as a muscle flexed in his jaw.
“If you change your mind, I’m Dennis Rickman, I’m a DNR officer. You can just call the office and tell them you need to talk to me.”
“Sure thing.” Elijah’s gaze landed somewhere near his feet.
Dennis turned and tugged the leash. “Hazel, do you mind if I take you home?”
“Yeah, sure.” I started walking next to him, his hand settled on the small of my back. Glancing over my shoulder, I found Elijah watching. But I couldn’t make out his expression through the distance growing between us.