Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
IN MY HEAD
ZACK
Of course, she chose the most bougie place known to mankind.
The Airbnb was too clean, too curated. Like someone tried to bottle up charm, slap a distressed wood sign on it, and call it healing.
This was a random place that Hazel found.
She was so excited she squealed when she found it, said it had ‘old-school rustic charm.’ Whatever the hell that means.
I hate it all. I hate the exposed beams, the Edison bulbs, the smell of vanilla and citrus baked into the fucking throw pillows. But mostly, I hate that I am here with her.
Hazel.
She’s barefoot in the kitchen, singing off-key to a Fleetwood Mac song, stirring something on the stove like we aren’t standing on the graves of the people we both loved most in the world.
We had a moment the other day—we almost had something in Cameron’s place—but I can’t go there.
She’s off limits, and she’s also just too damn young for me.
I’m too old to be dealing with this shit.
I won’t let myself get distracted when we finally have a sort of direction.
Lincoln sent me information from the guys, and he thinks we should lay low for a few days and just hang out at home.
Hazel jumped on the chance to come to Nashville—something about finding her a hot cowboy.
I stopped listening and let my mind wander for a few minutes until Hazel’s voice breaks me out of whatever moment I was slipping into.
“You’re offbeat, sweetheart,” I say, not looking up from my beer. My voice isn’t malicious, but still taunting.
“And you’re so grumpy,” she says, shooting me a grin over her shoulder. Her ponytail bobs when she moves, casual and effortless, like joy lives in her bones. “We all have our cross to bear.”
We aren’t supposed to be here, but that damn letter in the journal said they were going to come here. Even though I know they’re not going to come in, part of me just thinks they’ll call me and say this was one big joke.
Now it’s just Hazel and me.
“You know you’re allowed to laugh, right?” she asks with a smirk. “Even…now.”
I look at her—really look at her. Hazel isn’t Leyla—she doesn’t try to be. But they have that same light—a kind of relentless hope that refuses to dim no matter how dark it gets. It pisses me off and pulls me in all at once. Hazel is a mystery on top of everything else.
“You’re handling this awfully well,” I muttered.
She turns the stove off and crosses the room, barefoot in shorts that show way too much leg for my emotional stability. She flops onto the couch beside me, bumping her knee against mine. A subtle silence falls between us, a moment where I can tell our brains are quiet.
“I’m not handling it well,” she admits, softly. “I just refuse to drown in it.”
I turn toward her, ready to push back—but she’s already watching me. Her kind eyes look at me, a sudden darkness filling them and eliciting a pull toward her that I can’t act on.
“Zack, please.” Hazel’s voice is raspy, as if she’s asking permission for something I won’t allow myself to feel. But I feel it then—a slow heat crawling up from my chest, settling in my throat. I look away, emotions warring with themselves that I’m not ready to face.
“I’m too old for you.”
“You’re thirty-eight. Not eighty,” Hazel quips, her face indignant.
“I’m your dead best friend’s—”
She cuts me off before I can finish, “So am I. That doesn’t mean we stop being alive.”
Hazel leans in just a little. I could smell her shampoo—jasmine and something citrusy.
She’s too close. Her thigh just barely presses against mine, her breath warm near my cheek.
I can feel her looking at me like she sees something worth the trouble.
I’m not used to that. Not anymore. My heart died years ago—it’s been living in my chest for decades, shriveled up and broken.
“You should stop,” I said, my voice lower than I mean it to be—rough.
“Do you want me to stop?” she whispers.
I don’t answer—I can’t.
Because her hand is resting on my leg now, light at first, but not tentative. She knows exactly what she’s doing. And God help me, I let her.
She leans in closer, and I hold my breath. The moment feels like standing on a tightrope with no net—every muscle in my body is taut with resistance that isn’t entirely honest.
“We can be sad and still want things,” she says, her voice like liquid honey.
I close my eyes, a lump forming in my throat that I fight back. It isn’t supposed to be like this.
But grief is a strange bedfellow. It strips you down, leaves you raw. And sometimes, when someone touches you in the dark, it feels less like sin and survival. Her hand is still on my thigh. It’s not high—not indecent—but it’s to a point that’s dangerously close.
I force a breath through my nose, like that’s going to help. Like I didn’t already lose control the second she sat down and started looking at me like that—like I’m some challenge she’s going to enjoy winning.
“I think you like it when I make you uncomfortable,” she says, her voice light. Too light.
“Hazel…”
She tilts her head, pretending to be innocent. “What? I’m just sitting here.”
She’s not.
Her fingers start drumming these lazy little taps right above my knee. Innocent in the most technical sense. But every beat of her fingertip sends a jolt up my leg, tightening muscles I’m trying hard to keep relaxed.
My jaw locks, and a muscle tics.
“Cut it out.”
“Why?” she teases, her amber eyes sparking as mischief dances in them. This woman is going to be the death of me. “You’re the one sitting like you’ve got a secret.”
I adjust subtly. Or at least, I think it’s subtle. I can’t let this minx of a woman know what she does to me. She’s off limits. I can’t do this, no matter how much these moments we’ve had together make me want her even more.
Her eyes drop to my lap and stay there, her eyes burning themselves as she stares at me unabashedly.
I can feel the heat climb up my neck, and I shift again, trying to angle myself away like it’ll help this situation that no one prepared me for.
I didn’t think looking into my best friend’s death would lead to this girl trying to ruin my life.
“You’re blushing,” she says, voice sing-songy now. “Grandpa Zack’s got a tell.”
“You’re acting like a child.” Petulance paints my voice as I give her an unforgiving once over.
She leans in, grinning a Cheshire grin as her head tilts toward my ear. “You’re the one pitching a tent over a little leg contact.”
“Jesus, Hazel,” I mutter, heat creeping up my cheeks
She laughs, soft and breathy. And then she does something she absolutely should not do. She traces the inside seam of my jeans with her finger. One slow drag of her nail. Just an inch.
She leans back like nothing happened, like she didn’t just set off a landmine under my self-control. “You okay, Grandpa?”
I don’t say a word.
The heat is unbearable now, and the ache is worse.
I’m trying to breathe through it—focus on anything else—but my body has other plans.
It’s like it’s wanted her for years—hidden under grief, guilt, and every reason I told myself I shouldn’t.
But now it’s just the two of us. Her leg brushing mine.
Her voice like honey and smoke, melting over me.
Her gaze reads me like a book I never meant to open.
And then it happens.
It hits fast—humiliating and sharp. My thighs go rigid. My breath shudders. My stomach pulls tight.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
No. No. No.
Not like this. I’m thirty-eight-years-old, and I don’t let what just occurred process in my mind.
Hazel freezes. She feels it, the shift in the air. She doesn’t even have to look down—I know she knows.
Her gaze finally drops, slowly, to the front of my jeans.
And then she looks back up at me. Her expression is unreadable, her blank features sending a shiver down my spine, her gentle face full of emotions I don’t think I’m ready to understand.
“Zack…” she murmurs, tilting her head. “Did you just…come in your pants?”
I still say nothing.
I sit there, still as stone. My cheeks burn, feeling absolutely mortified. And still, somehow, I throb with a want that doesn’t care how embarrassed I am. She barely did anything, and I blew a load after just a mere touch from Hazel.
And then she smiles at me, and it’s not cruel. Not mocking. Just…knowing. Her amber eyes burrow a hole into my messed up little soul, and I just know things are not going to end well for me this time. She touches my knee again, gentler this time. Her teasing edges blur into something softer.
“You know,” she says, her voice low, a single ringlet of her coiled brown hair falling in front of her face before she pushes it gently behind an ear, “you don’t have to fight everything all the time.”
I meet her eyes. And for the first time in years, I let the armor slip, but I immediately know that I can’t let that happen again.
“I have to go.”