Chapter Twenty-One
Ash’s attention was split in too many directions right now, and this disaster of a dinner couldn’t end soon enough.
Beside him, Hazel’s knee bounced anxiously, his blazer pulled tightly across her chest. When she’d emerged from the bathroom, cheeks splotchy and clothes still damp, he’d draped the jacket around her shoulders, and she’d threaded her arms through the long sleeves, pausing to breathe in the collar. It had seemed to fortify her enough to return to their table, her head held high, smile back in place, if a little stiff.
But neither of them had expected, as salads were cleared and entrées were placed before them, that the evening’s agenda would turn to speeches. No one tried to keep up the ruse of this being a holiday party anymore, offering their best to Hazel’s father and Val like the toast portion of a wedding, only the worst kind, where the mic wasn’t wisely limited to the immediate wedding party.
The woman currently holding the floor reminisced about Val and her kids touring the station early in their relationship, how everyone knew it was serious by the multiple emails Dan sent out beforehand, reminding people they were coming and suggesting interesting features of their various departments to show them. This, though, was better than the woman before her, who had claimed to have seen literal heart eyes the first time Val and Dan met, which had made Hazel stop eating.
And who could forget Justin lurking on the other side of the room by the bar? Ash had counted three times that he’d risen for another beer. His moody gaze had hardly left Hazel as he took long pulls. She was sure Justin thought she’d invited him here through her father. “You grew up nice. Let me give you a workout,” she mocked under her breath. “Seriously?”
Ash wasn’t sure what Justin had expected, but he knew that look—Justin’s flared nostrils, his tongue periodically running over his lower lip and probing into his cheek. Ash, who had spent years across fields and down dugout benches from Justin, could recognize when the guy was sulking.
“Doesn’t he look mad?” Hazel grumbled. “That’s rich. He really thought I’d invite him? He thought I’d want to see him?”
“I don’t know,” Ash said. He’d suspected she had unresolved baggage with Justin, considering she’d never actually dealt with it, but he wasn’t sure what to do with just how worked up she was. It felt familiar, her keeping her eye on Justin across the room, not really noticing Ash right next to her. He adjusted his tie, but it didn’t relieve the tightness in his throat.
“Sorry.” Her hand found his under the table. “It’s not Justin I’m mad at,” she admitted with a little shrug. Her gaze cut to her father then back. “It’s just easier.”
Someone new took the microphone, and Hazel perked up. “Oh, I know him. He used to come over sometimes to watch football with my dad.”
The man introduced himself as Tom, a longtime friend and producer of Dan’s. Hazel seemed more relaxed, and Ash rolled the tension out of his shoulders, hopeful that at least one person in this whole room might remember she existed as he waxed romantic about the happy family.
“I’ve known Dan a long time,” Tom said. “He’s always been an even-keeled guy. Not the life of a party, but easy to get along with. You’d never know if he was having a bad day, or a great day, for that matter. But in the last couple of years, I’ve seen him come alive. And I credit you, Val. You and Lucy and Rafael. I don’t think he even knew what was missing all those years, but when he found you, you all just lit him up. You’ve made him a different, better man, truly. So”—he raised his glass—“to Val and the kids.”
Hazel stopped chewing. Everyone was looking at the family and he could feel the effort it took to not let her smile slip, just in case someone’s eyes should drift over to her, the forgotten daughter, the one who apparently wasn’t enough all those years to light up her father.
Fuck. He hated this. He should have insisted they leave. He should have set her father straight at the start of this, before she’d begged Ash to let her overlooked spot at their table go. He palmed her knee under the table, aching to offer more. He half expected her to pull away, to fortify herself by retreating inward. But then her hand covered his. He turned his palm and threaded their fingers together.
Finally, the toasts ended. Desserts were passed around, and Hazel’s father and Val were urged to dance on the parquet floor. They swayed to half of an instrumental version of “All You Need Is Love” before others joined them, and finally, finally, everyone’s attention was occupied enough that Hazel let herself slump back against her chair.
He waited until her father left the dance floor to mingle before tugging Hazel up by the hand and leading her to it. He didn’t have any words that would fix this, but he could hold her. In fact, he needed her close as much for his own benefit as for hers. Two steps onto the floor, she stopped. Patiently, he squeezed her hand, questioning, and she sighed, looped her arms around his neck, and shuffled closer.
“Hey,” Ash whispered as the first song ended. “You okay?”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine.”
“It can’t be anything else.” She ran a hand down his shoulder, finally looking at him as the quartet played what he belatedly recognized was “Matilda” by Harry Styles, which he only knew because the twins spent hours watching concert clips from his tour. “You’re tense,” she said.
“I hate everyone here.”
Hazel laughed. It was soft but genuine. “I would have thought Justin being here was the worst thing that could happen tonight.”
“I hate that he hit on you.”
She studied him. “That bothered you? You played it so cool.”
“Yeah, well. Just because I want to throw you over my shoulder and get you out of here doesn’t mean it’s right. I know that’s some deeply problematic caveman shit.”
“You were jealous,” she mused, like it pleased her. And he was glad for anything that made her smile right now.
A visceral longing seized him, though—all those times he’d watched her in his back seat, all those times he’d wanted her to notice him, wanted her to choose him instead of Justin, even if loyalty to his friend stood in the way. He spoke before he could think better of it. “I always have been jealous, Hazel. Not just now. Always.”
She tilted her head in confusion, but then her lips parted in a silent Oh. He fought the urge to take it back. He wanted it all, finally, out on the table.
“When I was with him…” she said.
“Yeah.”
“So, at that party freshman year…”
“Yeah.”
“And when I started coming to the café…”
“Even after four years of only seeing you as you rounded a corner,” he confirmed. “I didn’t want to want you again. I tried not to.”
She slid her palms over his heart hammering in his neck, up to his jaw, into his hair.
“I know you didn’t want things to change between us,” he went on, mouth dry and stomach somewhere near the floor, “but technically, nothing’s changed. I’ve wanted you this whole time.”
With wonder in her eyes and a bewildered little shake of her head, she toed up and kissed him, and he guessed that was an answer of sorts to the question he hadn’t asked. Was this still okay? Was she going to bolt? She nestled her cheek to his shoulder, dropped one hand to his chest.
Holding Hazel like this felt like a sudden melt into calm, everything rigid going soft and loose. His heart rate slowed, shoulders eased. He had her in his arms, and everything was going to be okay.
A few songs later, Hazel’s father found them on the dance floor. “Sorry to interrupt. I’m told we’re taking a photo. The whole family.” Hazel looked down at her still-damp clothes. “You can keep the jacket on, of course.”
“No, that’s okay. I’m not dressed up enough anyway.”
“No one cares about that, kiddo. You look nice.”
She shook her head adamantly. “We’ll have the wedding pictures in a couple days. I’ve got my dress for that. It’s fine.”
Her father glanced back across the room to Val, who was redraping her shawl around her shoulders and reaching for her son’s crooked tie. He faced Hazel again, gave a little laugh like her refusal made no sense. “You’re here. It would be strange not to include you.”
Hazel exhaled sharply. “Now it would be strange not to include me?” Her voice was suddenly tight and high.
Her father frowned. “Is…something wrong?”
“Is something wrong?” She directed this to Ash, and that melon baller came for another scoop of his insides.
He didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t wanted to make a scene, to tell her father how she really felt. Was he supposed to back her up, finally help her say exactly what she’d been holding in for years, or calm her back down, prevent her from doing something she’d regret?
“I’m here,” Hazel said, clenching her fists at her sides. “Isn’t that enough?”
“I didn’t know— I didn’t realize you were upset,” her father said, surprised.
“Of course I’m upset!” Her cheeks flushed, and a vein strained under her eye. She shook her head, struggling for words, and the longer she floundered, the more Ash itched to steer her away. He was supposed to be her buffer.
“I don’t belong here,” she told her father, tears brimming in her eyes. “Not at this stupid party. Not in your precious pictures. I don’t even belong in this town. And it was fine. It was all fine until you made me come back.”
She turned to leave, but her father reached for her arm. It all happened so fast. In her haste to get away from the growing attention around the room, from the confused but pained expression on her father’s face, Hazel jerked from his grasp, stumbled to the side, and knocked into a table so hard it tipped. She went down with it. Silverware clattered. Glasses broke. Red wine splattered across the white tablecloth.
Ash and her father reached to help her up, but she refused them both, clutching her hand to her chest and wobbling to her feet like a baby deer. Then, she ran.
Ash turned to follow her winding path back out to the front entry, but her father barked, “Wait.” At first, Dan was speechless under all the gawking stares. The instruments had whined to a staggered stop, and now dead silence hung over the room. Instead of addressing Ash, he directed a sheepish smile at everyone, a nervous laugh, and said, “Well, it’s not a party until someone flips a table, no? Sorry for the disruption. Carry on, folks.” To the musicians, he asked, “Can we get something upbeat?” as catering staff rushed in to clean up the mess.
Ash saw his opportunity and took it. He pushed through the doors, scanned both lengths of the empty foyer, then marched out into the cold night. “Hazel?” he called.
She’d been pleased earlier that her clutch with her phone and keys could fit stuffed into one of his jacket pockets, and he half expected her to have peeled out of the parking lot already, but her car was still there, and she wasn’t in it. He retreated back inside and ran right into her father.
“Do you know what that was all about?”
Ash swallowed. “You should talk to her about it.”
Dan threw his arms out helplessly. “I’m trying here. I really am.”
Ash did not want to do this. He didn’t want to hold her father’s hand through processing her outburst. He also knew, despite what she’d just told him herself, Hazel wouldn’t want Ash to expose any more of her feelings. After everything with his parents, he was mindful to help only in the exact way she wanted. But, God, if she and her dad would just talk, they could clear everything up. Once again, no matter which path Ash took here, he would hit a brick wall.
“It’s not my place,” he hedged, but Dan blocked his path.
“No, none of that. I’m making it your place. I’m asking for your help.”
That wasn’t how it worked. His loyalty was to Hazel. But an intense pressure rushed up from his chest into his throat, and he couldn’t hold it back anymore. “Justin wasn’t good to her.”
“To Hazel? She never told me that.”
“I know,” Ash said, pitching his voice low. He spotted a side door and stalked to it. “Because you don’t visit her. You don’t call her.” He yanked open the door. An empty alley. He marched back in the other direction, remembering the restroom where she’d dried off earlier.
“Now, hold on,” Dan said, jogging to keep up. “Just hold on a minute. I visit. I call every few—well, at least every month or so. I know she’s busy. I don’t want to smother her.”
Ash clenched his fists. “Don’t you get it? You need to smother her. I’ve practically forced myself into her company all week, and I think some part of her still doesn’t believe that I want to be with her. And it’s because nobody in her life has made her feel unquestionably, unconditionally wanted. I don’t get how that’s even possible. She’s fucking inc—” He cleared his throat, shook his head. “With respect, sir, she’s incredible.”
Dan slumped as though Ash’s words had physically hurt him. He opened his mouth to speak, face stricken, but nothing came out.
The noise of the party spilled through the doors as Val entered the foyer. “What happened? Is Hazel okay?”
Ash slipped into the bathroom as Dan turned to answer Val.
Hazel was at the sink, tears streaming down her cheeks, a wad of toilet paper clutched in her fist. He locked the door. “Are you bleeding?”
“It’s just a little cut.” Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. “What is wrong with me?”
“Nothing.”
“I knocked over a table. I ruined the party. My dad—” She grabbed the side of the sink and breathed shallowly over it. “Oh God. I ruined everything.”
“You didn’t ruin anything. The music is already playing again. People are dancing. Listen. They’re half-drunk. No one cares.”
She was shaking her head, spinning out.
He needed to get her out of here. He crossed to a frosted window, felt for a latch.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Time for a Hazel getaway.”
She drove too fast, knuckles white on the wheel, swerving instead of braking for slow cars. She practically threw her cans at the security officer when they reached the neighborhood gate. And then they were inside the house, in her bedroom, and she began stuffing clothes into a bag.
“What are we taking?”
“Everything.” She shoved an empty box at him and steered him toward the massive Christmas tree in the corner. “Get your ornaments.”
“Hazel—”
“Just, please.” She yanked her phone and laptop chargers from the wall. “And can I…” Only now did she stop, fidgeting with the cords. “Shit. Would your parents mind if I…?”
He set the box down and stopped her in her tracks, held her face so she’d look at him. “Of course you can stay at my house.”
She drew in a shaky breath, the first full one he’d seen since they’d left the party. Then, she pulled away to cram the chargers into her bag. “Get those ornaments now, or you’ll never see them again.”
They were in and out in five minutes.
She let him drive to his house. She leaned her head against the window, even closed her eyes at one point. He wasn’t sure what she was thinking, but she was no longer crying or vibrating with anger when they pulled into his empty driveway.
“Where’s your family?”
He scratched his eyebrow. “We probably passed them coming out of your dad’s place. They took the kids to see the lights.”
She huffed a laugh, which grew into a full fit, hovering right on the edge of something else. Tears leaked down her face, but through manic giggles, she assured him, “I’m not crying. It’s just so ridiculous.” She stepped out of the car and tried to sling her bag over her shoulder, but she dropped it with a hiss and sucked her palm.
Ash picked up her bag then ushered her into the house, straight up to his room, where she sat on the bed, holding her injured hand in her lap.
He turned on the bedside lamp. “Let me look.”
The cut wasn’t very deep and had stopped bleeding. Still, he rose to fetch supplies from the bathroom.
She caught his shirt. “I’ll live.”
“There could be glass in it.”
“There isn’t.”
She pulled him down beside her on the bed. And then she was kissing him with the same urgency and desperation as her getaway from the disastrous party, her uninjured hand delving into his hair, tongue probing into his mouth. For a moment, it was all he could do to keep up. He braced a hand at her hip, but she took it as an invitation to scoot into his lap, her stretchy skirt riding up her thighs. When he tried to kiss her more gently, she deepened it.
“Hold on,” he breathed. At her father’s house, she’d told him to get his ornaments, or he’d never see them again, and only now did he realize what she’d meant. She didn’t intend to go back. She was running.
But she wasn’t running from him.
He wanted to fix everything, patch up every injury, seen and unseen. He wanted to kiss every hurt. And then he wanted to put his mouth on all the places that might make her feel better, feel good. He couldn’t parse the parts of him that wanted to soothe her from the parts that wanted to do these far less tender, far less noble things.
With an impatient huff, she grasped his jaw to kiss him again. “Be with me.”
“I am.”
He shifted her off his lap, and she stood in front of him, brows furrowed as if to say, Then why’d you just dump me out of your lap?
Standing, he asked, “What do you want, Haze?” He peeled his blazer down off her shoulders, ducking to kiss her neck.
She exhaled a relieved sigh. “That’s good.”
“Yeah?” He gathered her hair back and gently tipped her jaw to the side for better access. “Do you want gentle?” He brushed his lips featherlight across her throat to the other side. “Or something with a little more…” He gave her a bite that made her squirm, then quickly soothed the spot with his tongue.
“Do I have to pick one?” she breathed, tugging his hips closer.
He smiled against her neck, fingers finding her shirt buttons. “No. You can have everything you want.”
“What do you want?” she countered.
He didn’t miss the evasion or the blush coloring her cheeks. She wasn’t there yet. So, he didn’t press. He started undoing her buttons. “Want me to tell you?”
“Yes.”
“I want to touch more of you than I did in the barn.”
She yanked her blouse from the waistband of her skirt, then reached for the zipper at the side.
“Wait.” He stilled her hips, slid his palms down over the sleek, stretchy material. He smoothed them down the outsides of her thighs until he reached the hem above her knees, flirted with the skin there, swiping his fingertips just under the fabric. “I’ve thought about this. A lot.”
He lowered to his knees, and her eyes went inky black. “Thought about what?”
This wasn’t the way he’d intended this to go, with him confessing his own fantasies to her instead of discovering hers, but now that he was here, he wanted to say it, and he was starting to think, from her labored, shallow breaths, that maybe hearing what he wanted worked for her, too. Slowly, he pushed her skirt up a few inches, pausing to look up at her. “Can I—”
She nodded emphatically.
“Every Friday, you come in wearing these hot teacher skirts.” He pushed the skirt up another inch, drawing his thumbs up the insides of her thighs. Her eyelids fluttered, and she swayed, had to steady herself on his shoulder.
“And your hair all twisted up off your neck. And those fucking glasses.”
“They’re fake,” she confessed, a wolfish gleam in her eyes as she peered down at him, watching to see what he would do next.
He pushed her skirt up to her waist and traced the lower hemline of her underwear with his knuckle. Not breaking eye contact, he swept one thumb across the damp center of the cotton. Hazel sucked in a sharp breath. Her nails dug into his shoulder, sending the hairs at the back of his neck to attention. When he withdrew the contact to skate his palms back down her thighs, her hips stuttered forward.
“Doesn’t matter.” He barely even knew what he was talking about anymore, mesmerized by the feel of her. How was her skin this soft and warm? “They’re hot. Everything about you is so fucking hot.”
He pressed a kiss to one inner thigh, then the other, nudging gently for her to step her feet further apart. Then he hooked one finger inside her underwear, tugging it to the side just as his other hand squeezed the smooth, full swell of her ass and drew her forward to his mouth.