Page 23 of The Friends and Rivals Collection

BLINDSIDED

Hazel

That morning, more than a year ago

I settled in at our favorite writing table at Big Cup in Chelsea, ready to tackle the next scene in our co-written novel.

This was going to be a good one. After I flipped open my laptop, I took a sip of the writing fuel, then tapped away for the next hour, eagerly waiting for Axel to arrive so I could show him all these words.

Lacey had just marched down the Park Avenue high-rise hall toward the hero’s penthouse when my writing partner walked into the coffee shop.

At last!

I’d been stealing glances at the door that morning. I was bursting. I had so much to tell him about what I’d planned for our hero and heroine. I wanted to see if he liked the idea as much as I did.

I loved these characters so much—Lacey was the strong and feisty doctor, and Nate was a rich, broody business mogul. Plus, the misunderstanding between these two in the scene Axel and I worked on together yesterday was deliciously brutal.

The makeup sex today had to be passionate, and I’d finally found the perfect lead-in for a guaranteed reader favorite moment—when the hero answers the door wearing only a towel, droplets of water sliding down his pecs, and a towel slung low on his hips.

Yum .

The second I saw Axel round the corner toward me, I vaulted from the table. “I have to show you what I’ve been up to,” I said.

We’d pulled off this kind of hate-sex scene before. Our Ten Park Avenue readers loved a good, hard, hot hate-bang.

I grabbed the sleeve of Axel’s battered leather jacket and tugged him over to the table before I even realized he hadn’t said a word in greeting. It wasn’t till I sat down, spun the computer around, and showed him what I’d been working on, that his silence hit me as ominous.

The quiet before everything changes.

In the silence, I quickly studied his face. Those blue eyes were darker, harder than usual. Like they were covering up something.

“What is it?” I asked, concerned about him. Was he okay?

My friend dragged a hand through his messy hair, then shrugged helplessly. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“Do what?” My pulse sped. What was he talking about? Except, my skin crawled and I knew. I just knew.

He was talking about our work.

After a painfully long sigh, he said, “I can’t work with you anymore.”

With me .

That phrase cut. It felt so personal. “W-why?”

“I just can’t do any of this. Lacey, Nate, the story,” he said, barely elaborating.

“You don’t like the story?” I pressed, hurt for the characters, but embarrassed too, for me. Had I written my scenes badly? Was this his way of telling me I wasn’t good enough to write with him? Had he hated my work all along and only now worked up the nerve to tell me?

The corner of his lips twitched, a little derisively. That wasn’t like him. Axel was sarcastic, sharp, and a little acerbic, but in all the good ways.

He’d never seemed mean.

But when he flapped a hand at the screen and muttered, “This hero is such a douche,” he was thoroughly cruel.

And I was desperate. I couldn’t let our work crumble. We’d written four books and were halfway through our fifth.

“But we can change anything, anything at all,” I said, scrambling. “We can make him nicer. We can tone him down. We ca?—”

“Hazel,” he said, cutting me off, and I’d never heard that I’m not interested at all tone before. “I’m just over this romantic bullshit.” He flapped his hand at the screen.

The tears welled in my chest. He was insulting my work. Our work. His work. “So you’re just…what? Not writing the book?”

He pushed back in the chair, glanced toward the door. “I’m going to Europe. I need to research my next thriller.” He looked at his watch. “I should go.”

I blinked, unable to move from the shock, as he walked out.

This was not happening.

There was no way this was real.

But then I stared at the empty chair across from me, and the unfinished book on my screen.

This was real and terribly painful.

I slammed my laptop closed, stuffed it into my backpack, and marched out, rushing after him down the street. “Don’t you fucking walk away from me, Axel Huxley,” I shouted.

He stopped, spun around, crossed his arms, then breathed out through his nostrils. “Hazel, I am walking away. I don’t want to do this. It’s over.”

Think fast. Remind him of the practical. “And what do you want to tell our publisher?”

He waved at me like it was my problem. “Tell them we’re stuck. We have writer’s block. I don’t know,” he said, and his voice hardened more, an icy shell covering the man I’d known. “They haven’t paid the advance yet. Maybe it was meant to be.”

I wasn’t getting through to him. He was dead set on leaving. So I took another swing. “Oh, so you believe in fate now?” I countered, like an argument could keep him by my writing side.

His eyes were slits. “I believe it’s time for me to go so I’m going,” he said, then he snapped his gaze away, like he couldn’t stand looking at my face any longer.

That was it. We were over.

I didn’t understand it at all. “Why?” I asked again, soft this time, imploring, hoping.

“I’m going,” he said softly, his voice threatening to break. “I have to.”

“But why?” I asked again, my stupid voice trembling.

“I just do,” he said, firmer, like he was pulling up the drawbridge over the moat. Then he gritted his teeth and turned around.

I lunged at him, grabbing his sleeve. “Please.”

I was begging, and I didn’t care.

His gaze swung in slow motion to my hand on his arm. Then his lips parted. He breathed out hard. With fire and finality in his eyes, he said, “It’s done. It has to be done.”

That was it.

There was nothing left to be said.

I swallowed my hurt, and I let it fuel me, since I wanted to inflict some hurt on him. “So you’re over romance. I guess that explains why you can’t keep a girlfriend,” I said.

It was a low blow.

Sarah had devastated him when she took off.

But he’d hurt me. It was his turn to feel some pain. He simply shook his head, said nothing, and left the country.

Leaving me to clean up the mess.