Page 24 of The Friends and Rivals Collection

STOP TALKING

Hazel

This evening, as we return to the train after the signing, I keep replaying our split. I couldn’t figure out what went wrong back then. I still can’t figure it out now.

I should shut off this loop, but when I open the door to the suite, I’m still stuck on it.

Just like we’re stuck in this room, it seems.

Amy said earlier she was still waiting on word of an open suite. “There might be an empty one in another car at the other end of the train,” she’d said on the way back to the station.

“That’d work for me,” I’d told her.

“Same,” Axel had said.

And so, we wait.

And as we wait, I revisit.

Maybe this late dinner will help me stop remembering that day at the coffee shop. How much it hurt. How much I regret my parting words. How much I still wish I understood him.

But as we dine while rolling across the French countryside hurtling toward Barcelona, I can’t stop the loop from playing in my head.

I can’t stop it after dinner either, even when Amy pulls us aside after the meal, a sad smile on her face, one that says she has bad news. “I don’t have another suite. This route is popular and since the train line launched, JHB has been selling out. Is there anything I can do?”

“Thanks, but it’s fine,” I say, defeated, then I head to the compartment. But as I unlock the suite door, the words I can’t work with you play louder in my head.

I have to know. Once he shuts the door to the suite, I wheel around, wasting no time. “Axel, what happened? ”

He frowns, clearly confused. “Like Amy said, they sold out.”

I huff. “That’s not what I mean.”

That mask I saw cover his eyes the day he took off? It returns, like blinds shuttering. “Then what do you mean?”

“Don’t play dumb with me.”

“I’m not playing dumb. I legit don’t know,” he says, but his voice…it’s like he’s trying too hard to be cool, to be blank.

“You said this afternoon let’s just have a nice day together , and we did. And let’s be honest, we’ve been having a nice trip, right?” I say, standing in the tiny anteroom, arms crossed, like I’m caging him into this small space. I am not letting him wriggle away again.

He’s quiet for a beat too long.

My hackles rise. What the hell? Is this all in my head? “Are you not having a good time? I am. Why aren’t you?”

“I am,” he says, evenly.

There it is again. That…veneer.

Like he won’t let me see how he really feels. Fine, if he’s going to play it that way, he can see how I truly feel too.

I strip off all the self-protective armor I’ve worn.

“Axel,” I say, fueled by outrageous hope that maybe, just maybe, we can try again to be friends, “I’m sorry.”

His eyes widen. “What?”

“I’m sorry for the shitty things I said on the street when we split.

I’m sorry I didn’t handle it better. I’m sorry I said you can’t keep a girlfriend.

I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t want you to go to Europe.

I felt terrible about what had happened to us.

Like you didn’t want to work with me, and I was an awful writer, and you had to get as far away from me as possible, and I’m just so sorry,” I say, my voice trembling as I lay out my own complicity.

He closes his eyes, but not before I see pain flash through them. A deep sigh comes next, almost forlorn as it falls from his lips. Shaking his head, he opens his eyes. “It’s not your fault. It’s all mine,” he says quietly. But full of emotion this time.

I don’t feel much lighter though, or exonerated. I still feel shaky, and sad, and so far away from him. But I feel some of this new longing for him too. This want. All these opposite feelings are stirring inside me, jockeying for position. “Why is it yours?” I press.

“Hazel,” he says, and it’s a warning, like he’s borderline begging for me to stop asking. “Can’t you just accept it’s not your fault? It’s entirely mine. And it had nothing to do with your writing.”

“But how can I just accept that?” I ask, frustrated he won’t let me in. I take a step back from him to get some space.

“Because I think you’re a great writer and you know it,” he says, pressing his back against the door like he’s gluing himself to it.

“How? How am I supposed to know that?”

He scrubs a hand across his scruffy jaw. “Because I’ve read all your books. Including your last one. Because I fucking love your work, including the fight that Lacey and Nate got into. Including the plans for them to hate-bang,” he says, spitting out that confession.

Holy shit. He liked our book. But I’m not any closer to an answer. “So why did you leave? Was it me? Did you just not like me?”

He scoffs, then takes off his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It was so not you.”

“What does that mean?”

“Oh my god,” he says, utterly exasperated. “You’re so fucking relentless.”

I sneer. “So you’re mad at me again? For wanting to know what went wrong in one of the most important relationships in my life?”

“No, I’m not fucking mad.”

“You sound mad,” I counter.

He shoves his glasses back on his face. “Hazel Valentine, can you just get a clue?”

I hold my hands up, letting him know I don’t have one, but I’m also not backing away. “How about giving me one?”

“Fine,” he spits out. “You want to know why I walked away?”

“Uh, yeah.”

He inhales sharply, on a growl. “Last night.”

That makes no sense. I furrow my brow. “What does that mean?”

“Last night. That kiss. That’s your clue,” he says, but then he mutters, “Fuck it.”

He steps closer. That forest rain scent tickles my nose. He showered before dinner and his aftershave is wreaking havoc with my plans to wade through the friendship mud.

“Because I’m so infuriatingly attracted to you and I have been for years,” he bites out. “And being around you was impossible, especially with…”

He doesn’t have to say the last part. I know what he’s referring to. Who he’s referring to.

But I’m also floored by the admission. I set my hand on my chest. “You’re attracted to me?”

He rolls his eyes. “I kissed you last night, baby.”

Baby. I’m not sweetheart any longer. “But I thought that was an experimental kiss. Like we were testing a scene?” I ask, but my skin’s prickling with newfound awareness. My body’s waking up again. I wasn’t testing anything but my own limits. My own interest in him.

“Maybe you were. But I wasn’t,” he says, and it’s an admission. Of desire. Of lust. Of wicked attraction.

I heat up. “Same,” I whisper. “It’s the same for me.”

His face turns stony in disbelief, then his lips part and he looks awestruck but wary too. “Yeah?”

Nodding, I breathe out hard, my skin tingling. “I’m kind of turned on right now,” I say, shocked I voiced it, but glad, too, to make room for this true desire.

His eyes flicker with heat. “Kind of?” he asks, cocky and challenging.

That tone makes me hot.

“More than kind of,” I admit. “ A lot turned on. ”

After he takes off his glasses, Axel closes the distance, stops talking, and starts touching.