“Hazel,” I said, my tone dropping low. “What are you doing here?”
She blinked up at me, and the half-glazed expression came over her, the one that I recognized too well. It meant one thing only: throbbing, wet, wanting. It cleared as quickly as it had come, and her perfect lips parted. “I thought that was pretty clear, given the uniform and the rapidly cooling pizza on your coffee table.”
“You know what I mean, Hazel. Why aren’t you working at McCutcheon’s?” Her family’s café.
“That’s really none of your damn business,” she said, shaking all over again. What was it like to be her in this moment? She was filled with anger and desire. That mix had to be nearly overwhelming.
Almost as bad as the pure need pulsing through my veins and the nostalgia driving it. I lifted a hand and traced circles, stars, and lines on her cheek. “You look amazing.”
She let out the tiniest of sighs.
“Fuck, Hazel, you staying close by?”
“No,” she said and grabbed my hand. She tugged on it, and I moved it away. She didn’t let go, her fingers wrapped around me, nails biting into my palm. “Why are you in Chicago?”
The conversation was stilted, probably because our blood had diverted from the brain to other nasty places.
“Business,” I iterated.
“You’re not here for long?” Hazel stepped closer, releasing my hand, tilting her head back and meeting my gaze with defiance.
“Couple weeks, tops.”
“Good,” she replied, spitting the word out so hard it should’ve pierced me. “A twenty.”
“Huh?”
“Twenty dollars,” she said. “You know what? Forget it. I’ll pay for the pizza. On the house. Call it a parting gift.”
“Not as good as the one I gave you.”
Hazel growled and side-stepped me, but I caught her arm.
“Take the hundred, Hazel.”
“No.”
“Hazel.”
“Let go of my arm.”
I did. The warmth of her skin was driving me crazy anyway.
“Hazel.”
“You always get what you want, don’t you?” She shook her head. “I remember that about you, Damien Woods. You always get what you want. That was the first thing you ever said to me.”
“Right. That was my line back in the day.” When I’d been a player and a complete douche. I’d course-corrected since then, stopped treating women like their emotions didn’t matter—a steep learning curve. Shit, it wasn’t like I’d had the best example of a father growing up.
The thought of him reminded me of that ‘business’ I had to attend to in Chicago. The whole reason I was standing in front of Hazel, wishing to be anywhere else in the fucking world. If that wasn’t a boner killer, shit, I didn’t know what was.
“Your line. Right, of course. Well, your lines and your vibe and your sexy, deep stares don’t do anything for me anymore, Damien, and they never will. You’re nothing but a faded, bad memory. I’d like to keep it that way.”
“You think my stares are sexy?” I leveled her with a shit-eating grin.
“Eat a dick.” She walked off.
I chased after her—first time I’d done that, usually it was the women chasing me. “Hazel, take the fucking money. It’s not a favor. It’s not anything but paying for the food. I don’t have god damn change. I have hundreds in my wallet, and that’s fuckin’ it.”
She spun toward me. “Of course you only have hundreds in your wallet.”
I gave her a quizzical look. “Yeah, so?”
“Nothing. You wouldn’t get it. Just give me the money.”
I held out the now-clammy bill, and she took it and stuck it in the cute fanny pack she wore on her hip. “Thanks. Have a nice evening. Try not to choke on the pepperoni.” She walked off, swaying her hips, and I had to pull my tongue off the floor.
There was something about a woman who could leverage a good insult at a man…
No, there was just something about Hazel.
But it didn’t matter. She was just a ‘blast from the past,’ as she’d put it. And I had other more unpleasant things to focus on. Like how I was going to stop my father from cutting me off and kicking me out the business. What a great start to one monster of a week.
Still, a part of me wanted to see her again. Just one last time. For nostalgia’s sake. I shut the hotel room door, shaking my head.
2 Hazel
Stick a fork in me, I’m done. Make that several forks. Or knives. I wasn’t picky at this point.
I dropped off my pizza delivery bag, not meeting the gaze of the woman behind the counter—one of the bitchiest employees of the Pieslice and probably one of the only people I got along with at work. If Jessa caught a glimpse of my face, she’d know something was up, and she’d pry and poke until she found out what it was.
Thankfully, my shift was over.
Trust the last delivery of the night to be the one that brought back old memories and compounded all the negativity I’d experienced over the past couple months.
Damien Woods.
Damien fucking, drop your panties, hate your life, seriously re-examine your choices Woods.
He should’ve had his name legally changed to that. Kind of like Khaleesi in Game of Thrones except with less fire and tits and more dick and bedroom eyes.
I grabbed my stuff, waved to Jessa from the door—she was too busy with a customer to cross-question me—and slipped out into the night, mentally cussing at myself for how close I’d come to throwing myself at Damien.
He was nobody now.
Just a guy who’d once embarrassed the crap out of me. As I’d expected him to. Sleeping with him had been a dumb teenaged move, nothing more and nothing less.
But he was so much further ahead
