Page 36 of The Friends and Rivals Collection

NO MORE WORDS

Hazel

Dinner is finished. Drinks are flowing. The train rumbles across the rolling hills of Germany as we travel deeper into the night on our way to Denmark. I finish the last of my chardonnay, but it’s my only glass this evening.

I don’t want to be tipsy or drunk on my final night on the train. I do want to be alone with Axel, but I also feel a little guilty for ditching our guests.

So we stay a little longer at the table in the dining car—now the liquor car.

The conversation with the group bends like the tracks, and eventually it turns once more to us.

“Have you thought about Noah and Lacey?” Jackie asks, bolder than she’s been before, determined.

I put on my best polite, happy face—this is a secret we need to keep. “We’ll see who catches Lacey’s eye.”

“When do you start writing?” Steven asks.

“After we return to New York,” Axel answers, and that makes me happy and sad at the same time.

“Are you looking forward to working together again?” Jackie asks, but before we can answer, she tilts her face. “You know, I don’t think I know this. How did you two even meet in the first place?”

It’s been so long. Axel’s been a part of my life since I became the person I always wanted to be.

Alecia jumps in with her own answer: “I bet you have a meet-cute like in a romance novel.”

I glance at Axel with a smirk. “Too bad we didn’t meet in an elevator,” I joke.

“That got stuck,” he adds.

“And then there would have been a power outage,” I say.

“And I’d have had to single-handedly climb out the top of the elevator shaft to save the building.”

Nice finish , I mouth, then I start a new made-up meet-cute. “Or at an ice-skating rink, where you bumped into me skating.”

“Naturally, you were wearing a cute hat,” he says in a too-charming tone.

“You caught me before I fell,” I say the same way.

“But then you sliced my shin open with the blade,” he says, his voice growing darker, matching the shift in our fable.

“You stifled a groan, but when you spotted a man with dead eyes in the back of the rink slinking off, you quickly scooped me up and got me out of harm’s way.”

He shakes his head, sighing all over-the-top. “Too bad we didn’t meet in an art gallery when you were trying to steal a painting that I was trying to retrieve.”

My eyes brighten. My whole soul does too. “And then we spent the entire four hundred pages in a cat-and-mouse game, falling for each other but working toward opposing goals.”

Wow, that hits close to reality.

Too close?

I don’t even know anymore, but soon, it’s like no one else is here as we write our mash-up meet-cutes, marrying our two genres and making up a whole new starting point for us.

After a final scenario involving a picnic then a chase on a motorcycle, Jackie claps, and Maria bows, and Steven lifts a glass.

“But what’s the real story?” Uma the Redheaded College Girl asks pointedly.

The truth? It’s simple and not exciting.

“We met in a coffee shop,” I admit. “I was there with TJ, writing with him, but when he stepped out to take a call, I looked around and saw Axel a few tables over, tapping away on his laptop. His leather jacket was on the back of the seat, he ran a hand through his hair, and he concentrated so fiercely on the screen that I knew. I just knew. Still, I asked him if he was a writer and said I was one too.”

“What did you think when she talked to you?” Alecia asks.

“I thought… what a nosy writer ,” he deadpans.

I slug his shoulder.

He straightens. “Fine, fine. I thought…” His mouth is soft, his eyes warm, as he finishes, “she was interesting.”

Uma snorts. “Bullshit. You had a crush on her.”

For a second, Axel goes still next to me. Uncomfortably still.

She can’t be right? Axel didn’t have a crush on me then, nor has he ever. He set me up with Max, for all intents and purposes. He was only ever attracted to me. That’s not the same as a crush. Not the same. Not at all.

But the car remains silent. The only sound is the chug of the train, the rattle of the wheels.

“Of course he didn’t,” I say lightly. Someone has to break the heavy silence. “We became friends then.”

“We did,” Axel says quickly, but his voice is strained.

Does this conversation touch a sore spot? Maybe because of the attraction he felt then—an attraction he still feels.

One I feel, too, growing stronger and bigger every day. Every hour.

So much I don’t want to stay in this car another minute.

We make it to the sleeper compartments thirty minutes later, next to each other.

“Don’t take long,” he rumbles, and it’s an order.

No, it’s a command, and it sends a shiver down my spine.

I turn the handle for my compartment—appearances and all, but as I unlock it, these appearances seem pointless. It’s one more night. I’m not sure I care if someone sees us.

I turn around, catch his gaze, hold it for a long, heady beat. My stomach flips. What is happening to me?

From several feet away, doors open and shut, voices carry, but I ignore them as I close the distance between us and follow him to his sleeper car.

The second the door shuts, we kiss. It’s chaotic and consuming, a hot, wet kiss that’s somehow both poignant and sexy.

When he breaks it, he’s breathing out hard, holding my face. “Uma was right.” He swallows roughly, like it hurts to say that.

I smile, a little shocked, and curious too. “You had a…?” I can’t quite finish the question— had a crush on me —it’s too unexpectedly wonderful to say out loud.

“I did,” he admits plainly.

“You never let on,” I whisper. This moment feels fragile, like in it we could break whatever this is between us.

He gives a rueful shrug. So unlike the cocky, sarcastic smart-aleck man I’ve known. But I’ve been learning new things about Axel on this trip. He’s been revealing his other side. His hurts, his heartaches, maybe even the things he doesn’t like about himself, the parts he’s trying to change.

We all have those parts. But it takes a real man, or woman, to see them, more so to admit them, then to change them.

He’s that guy, flawed and so damn real it makes my chest ache. I shake my head, a little amazed. “You’re a good secret keeper,” I say.

“It was easier,” he says quietly, then he lowers his face, wincing. But he lifts it again quickly, his gaze resolute. “I wanted you to meet Max because I knew you’d like him. I knew he was your type. But it made it easier too. For me. ”

I nearly reel from the admission. His crush was so consuming he engineered another romance for me. That’s so huge I don’t know what to say or to think.

“I thought it would help me get over my crush on you,” he adds, apologetically. “I didn’t want to ruin our partnership by telling you about this stupid fucking crush.” He’s so frustrated with himself, but then he sighs, a worried sound. “Now you hate me for real, don’t you? But I had to tell you.”

My heart squeezes even harder. It’s beating so fast. “I don’t hate you,” I whisper, emotion already knotting my throat, and like that, I do know what to say. “I really, really don’t hate you.”

Then, before I tell him how I truly feel, how much I don’t hate him at all, I cover his lips with mine.

I kiss him again.

It’s messy and needy as we tug at clothes and jerk at zippers, then fall into bed together.

I ache, and I can’t wait a second longer. When he takes off his glasses, I grab his face. “I need you,” I say.

“Need” is only the start of how I feel. But I don’t want to say more and ruin this fragile new us.

Axel grabs a condom, rolls it on, then pushes the back of my thigh, bending my knee toward my shoulder. He settles between my legs and sinks into me with one deep, delicious thrust that has me moaning.

In no time, I’m panting and gasping.

He’s groaning and grunting.

Neither one of us talks. We don’t demand dirty deeds, or ask for it harder, rougher, deeper.

I’m too afraid to talk.

Too worried I’ll say the wrong words or say the right words at the wrong time.

Like I’m falling for you.

I have so much more than a crush on you .

Instead, for two incessant talkers we’re remarkably, disturbingly quiet.

But we’re loud in the only way we can be now. Speaking with our bodies, our sounds, our touches.

And with the way we come together in a desperate tangle this last night on a luxury train speeding across Europe toward its final destination.