Page 9 of The Friends and Rivals Collection

A HORROR VALENTINE

Axel

I. Freeze.

There’s no way my editor just said Hazel’s name.

I’m holding my cup of coffee at Doctor Insomnia’s Tea and Coffee Emporium, midair, imitating a statue. Am I fucking living in an alternate reality?

I stare at Linus like he’s not making any sense. Because he’s not. “Hazel…Valentine, as in the romance author?” I choke out, like there could be any other Hazel Valentine. Like there’s a sci-fi Hazel. A horror Valentine.

My editor nods in that serious way he always has. “The tacos. The subway ride. Readers dig it, Axel.”

That was a survival game so we wouldn’t spew vitriol onstage. But instead, we won a prize of hosting a VIP reader trip together?

Talk about being careful what you wish for. “Are you sure?” I ask, hoping he can read between the lines of my question.

As in…

Hello? We abandoned our last book like a patient left on the operating table, so why would you pair the two of us ?

But they don’t entirely know what went wrong.

Hell, she doesn’t entirely know what went wrong.

We played nice then too. We didn’t let on. We didn’t tell anyone.

“You don’t want someone from Dunbar and Loraine instead? Like Saanvi,” I offer, thinking on my feet as if I’m in court. “Wouldn’t that make more sense to send me with someone from the same imprint?”

That’s a damn good argument. Linus has to be swayed by my logic.

“Dunbar and Loraine and Lancaster Abel are all owned by the same parent company,” he says, and that’s publishing for you. Hazel and I might be with different houses, but we have the same corporate big media parent, so we’re riding the choo-choo together in Europe.

Fun. Just fucking fun.

But I’ve never met an argument I won’t turn inside out as I hunt for holes. “I’m not that great with public appearances,” I say, but it sounds like a feeble protest even to my ears.

Linus shakes his head in a firm, clear you’ve got that wrong style.

“I beg to differ. You’re actually quite good at them, Axel.

You’re smooth, sharp, and just the right kind of sarcastic.

It works great in front of a crowd,” he says, and damn him for the compliment.

Damn him too for catching me in my attempt to slither away from the tour.

Damn him most of all for saying something nice.

“Thanks,” I say, though it’s more like a grumble. I’m busy searching for another tactic. “It’s just I worry readers are going to ask about our unfinished book.”

I offer that nugget like I’m trying to be helpful when I’m really trying to save my own ass.

I can not travel with Hazel Valentine and play nice for a week. I just can’t. Besides, she can’t stand me, and neither one of us is an actor, last time I checked.

No, we’re over -actors, since that performance at the expo got us into this stupid predicament.

“You handled it so well at the expo,” Linus points out. “And it makes good business sense to send you and Kennedy and Hazel. All of your recent books are set in Europe. And as for you and Hazel, you two get along so well. Tacos. Am I right?”

“Yeah, tacos,” I say, leadenly.

Fucking tacos.

At least there’s Kennedy as a buffer.

I cling to that as he tells me the rest of the details about how I’m supposed to spend a week with Hazel. The woman is still too hard for me to be around.

I’ve got a long list of regrets that I update regularly.

I don’t want to forget all the shit I need to fix in my life, so I write each misdemeanor on a digital Post-it note tucked away in a folder on my laptop labeled Naked Photos of Mom . Just another alligator in the security moat, after my ninety-five-character password.

The list includes but is not limited to: Taking mock trial in high school, asking out the sexy brunette in tight black pants at the bar that night a few years ago even though tight black pants are my weakness and wow, did Sarah ever turn out to be a heartbreaker or what, and helping my dad with any of his cons, not that I had much of a choice at age seven .

Now, at T-minus-three days before the Trip to the Bottomless Pit of Torment begins, I click open the file on a Monday afternoon. I’m in my apartment, my brother’s newest playlist blasting in my earbuds, draining an afternoon coffee as I add another regret.

Taking Spanish in college.

I close the laptop, turn off the music from my phone, and finish the last dregs of fuel.

Here I go again.

Four weeks of twice-weekly language lessons end today.

I’ve learned how to say in Danish and Italian: please , thank you , nice to meet you, plus why yes, that’s where my hero Jett raced against the clock to solve the crime like the rock star he is, and no, you can’t run through the Trevi Fountain, unless you’re vanquishing the worst kind of bad guys and then it’s totally okay .

But we’ve spent the last two weeks on French, since we’ll be in France half the time.

If only I’d taken that language in school, I wouldn’t have had to spend these extra days with Hazel.

Kennedy, too, but Kennedy doesn’t shoot death rays from her eyeballs into the center of my heart.

Or at my dick.

Though honestly, I’m not sure Hazel even looks my way anymore, but still I’ve got my emotional Kevlar on whenever I see her, so I fasten it tighter before I go.

I take off to meet the French tutor, dropping on my shades once I leave my building.

I still don’t have a survival plan for this train trip, and I need one badly.

I really should ask Carter how he handles cornerbacks barreling at him on the field every Sunday when he plays football before millions.

Surely that’s similar to the kind of hard defense I’m up against now.

As I walk, I fire off a text to that effect. He answers immediately.

Carter: Fleet feet. Nerves of steel. Also, pads. Those football pads fucking work!

I laugh as I reply.

Axel: Noted. I’ll invest in shoulder pads for the trip.

Carter: Consider a cup too.

I wince in sympathy, then text goodbye as I bound down the steps to the subway, hopping on.

As the train slaloms through the tunnels, I survey the passengers.

A college-age dude with huge headphones and a goatee is bopping his head.

Bet he likes craft beer and playing guitar with his buds.

The harried mom with one kid in her lap, and two hermetically sealed to her death grip hands, probably needs a stiff drink, but not a stiff anything else.

I write some more character bios in my head, feeding possible supporting characters in my current book. When I reach West Seventy-Second, I’ve got a headful of backstories for the museum guards, Interpol agents, and crooks that Brooks Dean will face.

Damn, I admire that guy. That steely-eyed bounty hunter of stolen goods who’s got a sharp sense of humor, a chip on his shoulder, all the moves with the ladies, and a dead-set determination to right the wrongs in the world. He uses his law degree for good. To help him solve puzzles.

Maybe he’ll be my shoulder pads. Maybe I’ll pretend I’m one of my heroes on the trip and that’s how I’ll handle Hazel.

Then I laugh at that ridiculous idea.

I suck at pretending.

Although, maybe I want to relocate Brooks’s upcoming story to Antarctica. Just in case. Pretty sure Hazel, even though she’s a helluva word wizard, couldn’t pull off a sexy romantic comedy in the tundra.

Eh, who am I kidding? She’d write hot igloo sex and then melt all the penguins’ hearts and cocks.

With no game plan in hand, I head into Big Cup where Angeline, the French tutor our publishers hired, likes to meet.

These twice-weekly sessions have helped me learn some basics.

I do understand the value of knowing some key phrases since I write stories mostly set in Europe.

It’s just fucking polite to try to speak the language when you’re abroad, at least when you order a meal or buy a train ticket.

I speak Spanish and that knowledge came in handy when I researched and wrote my last book hunkered down in Barcelona, stuffing myself with Gaudí and paella.

I survey the shop for the stern, silver-haired, no-nonsense French woman at the sea of tables.

Angeline’s not here, but my pulse shoots higher when I spot a woman with waves of red hair piled high on her head, her supple neck exposed.

Hazel’s tucked into a corner booth, tapping away on her laptop, lost in the world in her mind.

Her gaze is fixed on the screen, her fingers flying, nothing else happening but her imagination.

It’s just how she looked when we’d work together, and I’d find her in the back of a coffee shop, having started early. She’d apologize, saying, “I just had this idea…”

Then she’d share it with me, and invariably, it was a good idea. I’d build on it, and together we’d make something…electric.

A persistent part of me wishes I could go back in time to that day in Chelsea when we blew up and find her like this again. I could say something different. Say a lot of things different.

But you can’t go back. You can only go forward and learn to live with your regrets.

I gird myself for the knives she’ll deservedly throw at me as I grab the chair across from her. She doesn’t look up for a few seconds, then she startles when she does. “Oh. Shit. I didn’t see you.”

I hide a smile as best I can. That’s familiar too. Her reaction. Then I wipe the grin all the fucking way off. “That’s clear,” I say.

With an eye roll, she looks at her screen. “I guess this is a good stopping point anyway. And Angeline should be here in a few minutes.”

“But she’s always late,” I say.

“True. She is,” Hazel says, sighing, then tapping on her keyboard. She’s emailing her work to herself, making sure it’s stored in Dropbox too. She shuts the silver laptop.