Chapter 6
CAL
Aweek.
That's how long it's been since Hazel's answered anything more than a one-word text.
I get "busy with the shop!" and "sorry, slammed today" and once, three days ago, just a thumbs up emoji that made me want to throw my phone across the fucking room.
I've tried calling twice. Both times it went to voicemail after two rings, like she saw my name and hit decline on purpose.
Except that's not what this feels like, and I know it.
I'm sitting in the break room at the station, choking down a protein bar before my shift starts, when my friend and sometimes ride along partner, Deacon, slides into the chair across from me, phone already in his hand.
Deacon's been on the force two years longer than me, and he's got about as much tact as a bull in a china shop, which is exactly why he doesn't hesitate before turning the screen toward my face.
"You seen this?"
I already know before I look. It’s fucking Spotted in Whispering Pines. Of course.
Brenda Yancey: Anybody know what happened with Cal Sutton and Hazel Monroe? They were all over each other a week ago and now nothing. Did he mess it up already?
Allison McGregor: I hope not!! They were so cute together.
Lucille Wagner: Knowing him, probably got scared and backed off. Men do that.
There's forty-some comments, most of them speculating, a few of them outright asking Hazel in the comments if everything's okay, which she hasn't answered. I hand the phone back to Deacon without a word.
"You gonna say anything?" he asks.
"Nope." I shake my head, and take another bite of the protein bar.
"Didn't figure." He shrugs, tucks his phone away, and doesn't bring it up again, which is the only reason I don't tell him to fuck off. But it sits in my chest the rest of my shift, low and heavy, the same way it's been sitting there for days.
I keep running through it in my head, trying to figure out where I went wrong.
The date was good. The kiss was good, better than good, if I'm honest with myself. Lunch the next day was good too, right up until those women started filming us at the diner. I remember the way her face changed after that. Not mad, exactly. It just turned quiet, and guarded in a way she hadn’t been the night before.
I should've caught it then, but I didn't.
By the time my shift ends, I've made up my mind.
I'm not doing this anymore, not the guessing, not the one-word texts, not scrolling through a Facebook group that seems to know more about my personal life than I do most days.
Instead of going home to shower, I climb into my truck, and drive to Butter My Biscuit.
It's mid-afternoon when I walk in, the bell over the door announcing me the same way it did that first night I hauled Hazel out of Earl's grocery store. Tiffany's behind the counter, wiping down the display case, and her eyes go wide when she sees me.
"Oh," she says. "Hey, Cal."
"She in the back?"
"Yeah, but—"
I don't wait for the rest of whatever she's about to say. I walk past the counter and through the swinging door into the kitchen, and that's where I find her.
Hazel's standing at the big steel table, piping something onto a sheet of cookies, her hands steady even though the rest of her looks like she's barely holding together.
There are dark circles under her eyes that weren't there a week ago.
Her hair's pulled back in a messy bun, flour smudged along her jaw, and she's got that look people get when they haven't slept right in days, that hollowed-out, running-on-empty look I recognize because I've worn it plenty of times myself. Fuck I’m wearing it now.
She glances up, sees me, and her hands still on the piping bag.
"Cal. I'm working."
"I know." I stand there in the doorway, feeling like I take up too much space in her kitchen. "I need to talk to you."
"I really don't have time right now, there's an order—"
"Hazel." I say her name soft, but I don't move. "There’s always going to be an order, please, talk to me. Please."
Something in my voice must get through, because she sets the piping bag down, presses her palms flat against the steel table, and finally looks at me straight on.
Up close, it's worse than I thought. She looks exhausted, wrung out, like she's been running herself into the ground on purpose so she doesn't have time to think about anything else.
"You look like hell," I say, before I can stop myself.
She snorts, rolling her eyes. "Thanks, that's exactly what a girl wants to hear."
"You know what I mean." I close the distance between us, and she doesn't step back, which I take as a good sign. I reach up and brush my thumb along the smudge of flour on her jaw, just to have a reason to touch her. "Talk to me. What's going on? You've been ignoring me for a week."
"I haven't been ignoring you. I've been busy." She shrugs, crossing her arms over her chest in a protective gesture.
"Hazel." I’m losing my patience, but I keep my voice steady, because I really fucking like her.
She closes her eyes for a second, like she's bracing herself. "Fine. I've been avoiding you a little. Happy?"
"Not even close." I slide my hand from her jaw down to her shoulder, and I feel her exhale, like she's been waiting for somebody to touch her like this for days and didn't want to admit it. "Why?"
She's quiet for a long moment, long enough that I start to wonder if she's going to answer at all. Then she pulls back, just enough to put a little space between us, and wraps her arms around herself.
"I saw the posts," she says. "In the group.
Everybody's got an opinion about us. Everybody's watching, waiting to see what happens next, like we're some kind of show they get to weigh in on.
And I keep thinking about how this whole thing started because your boss told you to take me to dinner to fix your image.
And I don't want—" Her voice cracks a little, and she stops, presses her lips together, tries again.
"I don't want you to keep being nice to me because the whole town's decided we're supposed to be together.
I don't want to be your redemption story, Cal.
I want to be wanted because you actually want me, not because Facebook does. "
There it is. The thing she's been sitting with for a week, finally out in the open. I didn’t know for sure that she knew my boss asked me to apologize, but it makes sense.
People gossip, and there are dozens of people that come through here every day.
Hell, knowing my boss, he probably stopped in to make sure I did a good job.
But I really fucking like her.
I could tell her that's ridiculous. I could argue it away, tell her she's wrong, but that's not what she needs right now, and it's not really what I need either. So instead I close the distance again, cup her face in both hands, and make her look at me.
"Hazel Monroe. Look at me."
She does, eyes glassy, and it about kills me.
"I do not care," I say, slow, so she hears every word, "what that Facebook group thinks.
Not about me arresting you, not about me apologizing, not about us.
I have spent my whole life worrying about what people in this town think of me.
Since I was a kid getting bussed in from the wrong side of the tracks.
Since high school, when everybody decided who I was before I ever got the chance to prove different.
Since I put on this uniform and half of them decided I was too soft, and the other half decided I was too hard, and I couldn't win either way no matter what I did.
I am so damn tired of living my life for an audience I didn't ask for. "
"Cal—"
"I'm not done." I brush my thumb along her cheekbone, feel her lean into it despite herself.
"None of that is why I want to be with you.
I wanted to sit down next to you in that library back in high school and never had the guts to do it, because I figured somebody like you wouldn't want somebody like me. I've thought about you on and off for most of my life, Hazel. You’ve been with me through every school I went to, and then you’ve stayed with me after.
And then I ended up arresting you, of all the ridiculous things, and yeah, my boss told me to take you to dinner.
But I would've asked you eventually. That night just gave me the excuse I needed to finally do something I should've done a long time ago. "
She's quietly crying now, and I brush the tears away with my thumbs before they can even fall very far.
"I don't want you to feel sorry for me," she whispers.
"I don't feel sorry for you. I feel—" I stop, because there's a badge on my chest and a duty belt on my hips and I'm so tired I could fall over, and none of that matters even a little bit right now. "I feel like I finally got something right, is what I feel."
Then I kiss her, and it's not soft like the one on her doorstep or the one outside the diner.
This one's got everything in it, a week of frustration and worry, ten years of wondering what if, all of it poured into the way I kiss her right there in the middle of her kitchen with flour on the counter and cookies going cold on the sheet pan.
She makes a small sound against my mouth and grips the front of my uniform shirt like she's trying to pull me closer, and I let her.
When we finally break apart, we're both breathing hard, and there's flour on my uniform now too, and I don't care one bit.
"That," I say, resting my forehead against hers, "is the last thing I feel for you. Sorry isn't anywhere on the list."
She laughs, wet and a little broken, but real. "You're going to get in trouble. You're on duty."
"I’m clocked out, but it would still be worth it if I were."
"Cal Sutton, getting written up for kissing a baker in her own kitchen."
"Wouldn't be the worst thing they've ever said about me in that group." I pull back enough to look at her properly, tuck a loose piece of hair behind her ear. "I mean it, Hazel. I don't care what they say. I care what you and I do about this. That's it. That's the whole list."
She studies me for a long moment, like she's checking to see if I mean it, and whatever she finds must satisfy her, because some of the tension finally goes out of her shoulders.
"Okay," she says, quiet.
"Okay?"
"Okay." A small smile tugs at her mouth. "But you still owe me a real explanation for why you've been ignoring my texts about Biscuit's terrible behavior."
"That dog is a menace and I stand by everything I said."
She laughs again, and this time it sounds like her, like the woman who threw a napkin at me across a table at The Pizzeria, not the exhausted, hollowed-out version standing here twenty minutes ago.
I press one more kiss to her forehead before I make myself step back, mindful of the radio clipped to my shoulder that could crackle to life any second.
"I've got to go home and take a nap," I say. "But I'm coming back tonight when I wake up. And tomorrow. And the day after that."
"Is that a threat, Officer?"
"It's a promise, Ms. Monroe."