Chapter 8 #2
It was like the last decade had never happened.
She was the wildfire, and I was already burning, and when she rocked against me, her hands slipping under my shirt and heading south, it took everything I had to catch her fingers in mine and pull back.
“Hazel.” I wanted her like oxygen. But the last time I’d let myself need her, I’d nearly drowned.
Eyes still closed, she let out a sound of disgruntled disagreement and tugged on my lower lip with her teeth, wrenching a rough groan from me.
It took everything I had to pull back. “Haze.”
She sighed, eyes still closed, like she didn’t want to come back to reality yet. “I don’t even know what that was.”
I knew what it wasn’t: a declaration.
“I don’t want to want you,” she whispered.
How well I knew, so I quipped, “Good luck with that.” I cupped her face, stroking her jaw with my fingers. “Look at me.”
She opened her eyes, and my stomach dropped out. Never in all my life had I seen emotion like that aimed at me. So vulnerable. So hungry. So heated. So…raw.
And real.
Naked desire danced in those eyes—desire for me, so potent that everything else stopped: my breath, my heart, maybe even time itself.
I drew in a deep breath for a calm I did not find and leaned back.
She stared at me. “What are you doing?”
“Walking away,” I said, and it nearly killed me.
“Before we do something we’ll regret.” Even saying it out loud felt like ripping something vital out of my chest. I wanted her.
I’d always wanted her. But I also remembered what came after the last time I’d let myself believe we could have more.
The silence. The empty days. The feeling of helplessness I couldn’t fix.
If I lost her again, I wasn’t sure I’d come back from it. I knew now how fast hope could turn to wreckage. And I wasn’t sure either of us could survive another fallout.
“Regret,” she repeated quietly. “Right.”
“Haze—”
“No, I get it.”
I tried to smile. “Then can you explain it to me?”
She snorted, then went quiet again.
The silence stretched between us, but this time, it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was just…heavy. Real. Like we were both trying to figure out if we were even capable of fixing what had been shattered so long ago.
“I don’t know what we’re doing,” I admitted, the words tasting bitter in my mouth. “But I don’t want to pretend that this.…whatever this is…doesn’t matter.”
Her gaze softened, and for a moment, I thought I saw something break behind her eyes. Maybe it was the same thing I was feeling: this crack in the foundation of everything we used to be, something that both scared and excited me all at once.
“You’re not pretending,” she said quietly, the words almost a whisper. “Neither of us is.”
I nodded, unsure of what to say next but knowing that there was no easy way forward. No quick fixes. And maybe that was okay.
“Hazel?” Bill called out from the other side of the fence. “Where are you?”
I went rigid, like we were fifteen again.
Hazel scrambled behind the table like she’d been caught robbing a bank. “Here!”
Bill rounded the fence and eyed us suspiciously, and I got it. Bill and I had a solid working relationship. But what the two of us did not have was a solid relationship as it pertained to his daughter. Especially the kissing of said daughter…
Long ago, when we’d been teens and had spent a lot of time searching for—and finding—trouble, Bill had put the fear of God in us Colburn brothers, making it clear that if anyone with our last name so much as touched Hazel, he would personally take them out like yesterday’s trash.
Had I believed him as a hormone-riddled fourteen-year-old?
Oh, 100 percent.
Had it stopped me? Nope.
But it stopped me now. Because even though that kiss we’d just shared had been the best thing to happen to me in a damn long time, I tried really hard not to repeat my mistakes.
Bill took in Hazel. “Why do you look like you’ve just gotten yourself in trouble again?”
She laughed, a little forced. “Haven’t you heard? I’m always in trouble. How are you? Did you eat your veggies today?”
“I’m not a child, you know.”
“Uh-huh.” She held out her hand. “Let me see your food-journal entries for today in your Notes app.”
The guy squirmed. Tough, hard-ass, unbendable, obstinate Bill squirmed. “I don’t have it on me.”
Hazel gave him a hard look. “If you’re cheating on your diet and putting your health in jeopardy, I will find out.”
I was…confused. There was tension there, something off.
Bill had suffered a heart attack, but he’d told us it’d been so minor, it had barely registered.
Mother Hen Ryder had insisted on talking to Bill’s doctor before he came back to work and had been assured Bill was doing well, that he was remarkably strong and healthy.
Had something changed? Was that why Hazel seemed so worried? I handed him a burger. “Turkey,” I said. “Hot dogs too.”
“Which means they’re not real,” Bill grumbled but started eating. “Huh.”
I snorted. “Good, right?”
“Not bad.” He took another bite. His phone rang, and he stepped away to answer it.
“It’s Sybil,” Hazel said. “Our old math teacher. They’re dating.” She shuddered.
I laughed. “How do you know?”
“The goofy look on his face.”
Indeed, Bill was…smiling. With teeth.
Hazel wore a little furrow between her brows, the one she got when she was stressed or feeling something particularly difficult for her.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “This isn’t about Sybil.”
“No.” She paused. “He says he’s fine,” she murmured. “But he’s not. I can feel it.”
I didn’t know if she was right. But I recognized that look. Hazel wasn’t suspicious, she was scared.
My question was this: Had Bill exaggerated his health problems to her? Or played them down for me and my brothers? Bill didn’t lie. In fact, his usual MO was brutal honesty.
Bill finished his call and slid his phone away, coming back to us. “So how did the new job go today?” he asked his daughter.
“Good.”
Bill nodded. It wasn’t always easy to tell since the guy had resting cranky face, but he was most definitely feeling pride as he went on. “This Sonoma project will garner you even more attention than the Henderson job. I emailed you some suggestions for the—”
“Dad.”
I looked from one to the other, ending on Hazel. Because if there was one thing I knew about the Pierce family, it was that Hazel was stubborn as hell, but Bill could out-stubborn the devil.
Hazel held my gaze. “It’s fine,” she said, then looked at her dad. “We are not going to fight. Because my dad is going to respect my job and not try to micromanage every choice I make.”
Bill took another bite of his burger.
“Dad.”
“Kidding. Absolutely going to let you do your job.” He looked through the living room window and saw Hank watching TV. “Jeopardy! Nice.” He got up and vanished inside my house.
Hazel watched him go before her eyes flicked back to me. “How about you? Think we can manage without doing something ill-advised?”
“It’s not you two I’m worried about.”
She eyed me for a long moment, and when she caught my meaning, it was like her lungs forgot how to work. “You think that you and I…we’re going to do something ill-advised.”
“It wouldn’t be our first time.”
Her eyes hardened. “I gave up doing anything regrettable the night I left Star Falls.”
“Same,” I said.
And maybe we were both lying through our teeth.
Somewhere behind us, Her Fluffiness let out a long, judgmental yowl, like even she knew we were screwed.