A Smile as Sweet as Poison (2 page)

The ropes held. She was ashamed for expecting any less.

* * * *

“Give you a ride?” Ward offered, his dirty blond hair damp and tousled from the shower.

Hazel couldn’t resist reaching up and finger-combing it into some semblance of order. The scent of his body wash and the fresh coffee he religiously insisted on brewing after each session filled her with warmth. “I’m good. Gotta swing by Sadie’s, anyway.”

“Oh.” Ward didn’t quite deflate, but it was a close thing.

“You can come with,” Hazel suggested. “It’s mahjong night at her mom’s.”

He groaned. “My favorite.”

She elbowed him in the ribs before pulling away. Her clothes had been scattered all over the floor once, when her visits to the loft were infrequent and furtive. Now, Dylan took it upon himself to fold everything neatly and align her flats. It was a pleasure to come down from a scene on their watch. If anything, they were almost
too
scrupulous about making sure her comfort was seen to.

“Not to be presumptuous,” Ward added after a beat, “but you know you don’t have to leave as soon as we’re done, right?”

Hazel turned to face him, the buttons on her print shirt halfway done. She’d been trying to dress better since this thing with Dylan and Ward had become somewhat official. She didn’t want to stand out when she was with them. There was nothing she could do about her stubborn Midwest accent or the proportion of her hips, but in every other way she wanted to be their equal. Or at least
pass
as such.

“I know that. I’ve stayed the night,” Hazel recalled, hating that she was already on the defensive.

Ward held his ground. “Not in a while,” he pointed out gently. He had inherited the chairmanship of a rickety multinational. Arguing a difficult case against people far shrewder than Hazel was his bread and butter. Sighing, he crossed to the dresser and slid two fingers around a small silver knob. The drawer slid open, empty. “In case you ever want to leave stuff here…”

Hazel finished buttoning her shirt. “Is this you worrying about my mental health again? I told you, I’m fine.” Coddling had never worked for her. Even in her more vanilla relationships, pre-Ward and Dylan, she had always preferred to be in and out, to sleep in her own bed when it was all said and done.

Through the open bathroom door, they both heard the shower cut off.

Hazel thinned her lips. It was a matter of time before Dylan joined the fray, his vote of confidence always going to Ward, first, before he admitted Hazel’s point of view. “I have to go,” she insisted, preempting another shot at persuasion.

Ward sighed, but to his credit, he didn’t press the point. “I’ll walk you.”

“Leaving already?” Dylan pouted from the bathroom door.

The sight of him bare-chested and dripping shower water onto the white carpet nearly made Hazel reconsider. She firmed her resolve as she crossed the room and clasped a hand behind his nape. The humid ends of his short black hair tickled her fingers.

“I don’t trust you two not to rope me into another scene.”

“Oh, the puns…” Dylan’s smile was warm against her lips. It faded quickly into a slow, passionate kiss that all but melted Hazel’s knees.

She pulled away with a sigh. “You got me all wet—shut up, Ward.”

“I didn’t say anything!”

Dylan chuckled, but he let her go when she made to disentangle herself from his arms. She felt his eyes on her as she made her way to Ward and rose up on tiptoes.

“Thank you,” Hazel whispered.

A flash of confusion edged its way onto his pale, angular features—there and gone in a heartbeat. “You know me. Always looking out for Dylan’s best interest.”

“Uh-huh.”

It wasn’t Dylan he plied with coffee and tea—occasionally sweetened with a splash of something harder. It wasn’t Dylan he surrounded with blankets when they were done messing around. Yet not for the first time since they’d fallen into bed together, Hazel wondered if there wasn’t some truth to that. She kissed Ward lightly on the lips before stepping back and scooping up her shoes. “See you later, boys.”

The teeming bookshelves that lined the hallway echoed with their answers, but Hazel didn’t let herself turn back at the sound. She had to keep moving forward. She needed to negotiate the time she spent at the loft carefully. The more attached she became, the more it would hurt when Dylan and Ward finally decided they wanted nothing to do with her.

She found her handbag by the door and pulled it over a shoulder. Then, as she did every time she left the loft, Hazel turned and took one long, final look at the sprawl of concrete and exposed red brick, the cattle skin rugs and clear glass side tables. She committed the details to memory as best she could.

The heavy door slammed in her wake, same as always.

* * * *

The battered Volvo creaked as Hazel eased to a halt. She didn’t relish the thought of taking it for an oil change. Money was tight since she’d stopped taking extra shifts. The shopping sprees she’d gone on with Sadie weren’t helping her wallet, either. Determined not to let worry snare her just yet, Hazel slammed the car door shut and locked it.

A cool breeze rolled over her, seeping under the thin fabric of her silk shirt. She shivered.

Four-seven-one Aulden Way might have warranted dressing up, but coming home always made her feel as though she was prancing around in costume. The projects rose up on either side of the street in all their concrete glory, flanking her. Somewhere in the deserted parking lot, a cat meowed and darted out of the light. Hazel hugged her sides.

She’d lived in sketchy neighborhoods since she first moved to LA. But even here, the rent climbed every year and basic utilities were becoming prohibitive. She entered the building with a brisk step, knowing that she was an easier target if she flinched and jumped at shadows than the reverse. Hoping, anyway.

The elevator wasn’t out of order for a change. She hummed to herself as the cabin juddered and groaned on ascent. Her keys were already out when the doors opened. She clutched the chain in the palm of her hand, the silver points peeking through the gaps between her fingers.

It made her feel better to imagine that she had a weapon she could use, should she need it. She’d never had to. Catcalls were best ignored. Purse snatching was preferable to mugging at gunpoint. Tonight wasn’t the night she transformed into urban
GI Jane
.

Barricaded behind a heavy oak door with three separate chains and two latches only moments later, Hazel let out a sigh of relief. Her apartment was no one’s idea of a safe haven, but it was the only place she could go to be alone. It wasn’t so long ago that she would have greeted the thought with a sinking heart.

What a difference two weeks makes…

As far as she knew, there
was
a mahjong game at Sadie’s place tonight. Her mother’s social life had blossomed since they’d left the rumor-rich hypocrisy of quaint, small-town life and relocated to a city with a non-WASP population of more than two. Sadie was the closest thing Hazel had to a friend these days—her only friend, really—but not even the strength of their bond could drag Hazel out of her apartment tonight.

There would be other Sunday nights to field questions about when she was getting married and had she met someone. And was he handsome, rich,
respectable?

Hazel kicked off shoes and purse, and settled on the couch with her laptop balanced on her knees. She locked down any guilt about lying to Ward.

The browser tabs were still open. She waited for the Internet connection to catch before refreshing the pages. As a matter of course, the Wi-Fi was slower in the evenings.
Can’t complain. I’m not the one paying for it.

It took everything she had not to bite her filed nails in anticipation. She would have spent the whole day in front of the computer if prior engagements allowed it. Luckily, she’d had the morning shift at Marco’s and the horror of having to explain herself to Dylan and Ward had prevented her from web surfing all through the afternoon.

But the night ahead was free of distraction. Hazel ignored the rumbling of her stomach as the first browser tab loaded. Her email inbox was empty. Nothing new since last night’s exchange.

Her heart became a block of cement gradually sinking lower and lower, shoving aside all other internal organs to settle somewhere in the pit of her stomach. No new email meant no sign that her pleas and threats had yielded any result.

It meant that nothing would change.

Social media was quiet, too, little more than the usual status updates and tagged photos of pets or children. Her sister-in-law’s invitations to the reunion were nearly lost among the stream of messages about her pregnancy.

Hazel flinched as a saxophone shrilled through her speakers, accompanied by the grating sound of a woman’s moans. She hurried to switch off the audio, but it was already too late. Bile in the back of her throat, she switched tabs.

Ads promoting eager sex kittens in her area jostled for space in the sidebar. A long horizontal banner flashed with the promise of ‘lesbians gagging for cock’ just beneath the video player. She hadn’t been able to figure out how to disengage autoplay on all her many visits to the page over the past two weeks. By the time she reached the tab, the hair-raising scene was already well underway.

Hazel struck the pause button with enough force that the space bar on her ancient laptop nearly came loose. She barely noticed. Her ears were ringing, blood
whooshing
like a churning sea. She felt it in her face, too, the warm, numbing blush of humiliation. She should have been familiar with the sensation by now.

Idly, she clicked through to the last tab in the browser. No surprise there.

Shoulda thought of privacy before you took off your clothes, slut.

She sounds like a squealing pig. LOL.

Bitch you got some nerve putting this on your man. You took your clothes off on camera. Fucking deal with it.

Social media could be cruel, Hazel knew, and finding the forums where webmasters of submission-based Internet pornography roamed hadn’t been a pleasant task. All the same, weathering the vitriolic backlash wasn’t easy.

With shaking hands, Hazel tipped the laptop lid down and closed it. The fan whirred for a few stubborn seconds longer before grudgingly shutting off. Silence returned to the room, thick and suffocating. Hazel pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes and gulped down a couple of deep breaths. It didn’t matter. The slurs, the judgment—none of it counted for anything. As long as she found a way to get that video down, the rest was just fog. Prickly to the eyes, sure, but in no way harmful.

This shouldn’t be happening. They’re right.
If she hadn’t allowed herself to be put in that position, there would be no sex tape. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known he was filming them.

Hazel choked down the ball of guilty rage that threatened to spill out in a sob and fired up the laptop again.

Before she could lash out against the trolls, her phone shrilled to life with a new text message. She fished it out of her purse. Trepidation lingered, although only a handful of people knew this number. Her old one had popped up online and had to be changed.

Sadie’s heads up had saved Hazel a lot of heartache in that regard.

Surprise slackened the cold grip of panic that seized her heart when she recognized Ward’s caller ID. He wanted to come to the mahjong game after all.

I should meet your friends sooner or later
.

Were this any other night, the emojis tacked to the end of the text would have earned him a smile.

Hazel flexed her fingers. The last thing she wanted was to spend her evening making nice with strangers, or skirting Sadie’s questions. But Ward had only met her best friend briefly, at the diner. As far as Hazel remembered, their introduction had been frosty at best. For all that she was a notorious party girl—and had been so since long before they left Dunby—Sadie didn’t think much of Hazel’s decision to hook up with two men at the same time. She seemed certain that Hazel would get hurt.

She’s not wrong.

Hazel peered at the laptop. She must have switched tabs without looking, because the lurid sight of naked women flashed into view. At the heart of all the banners and ‘click here’ imperatives, the video player revealed her own stark naked body, hands fettered above her head with black leather cuffs in a grotesque parody of what she’d been up to less than an hour earlier, at Dylan’s loft.

Her hair was shorter, bangs drooping low and sweaty over her brow, but there could be no confusion. It was well and truly Hazel dangling there like a piece of meat. It was Hazel, her nipples clamped with silver butterfly clips, a red ball gag stuffed in her mouth to muffle her moans.

The image was frozen on a shot of the paddle striking her hip. Cellulite rippled under the spotlights overhead, adding one more level of degradation to what was already a mortifying memory.

Hazel tapped her cell phone screen to wake the display.

Sure. I’ll pick you up.

With a deep breath, she sent the text message. She might as well enjoy being in a relationship while it lasted. Six years ago, in another life, she hadn’t known the end was coming until it had ripped out her heart.

Chapter Two

“No Dylan?”

“We’re not attached at the hip,” Ward scoffed, sliding into the front seat. “Vintage. Nice.”

It took Hazel a moment to realize that this was the first time Ward had seen the inside of her car.

“Watch it,” she muttered under her breath. “This baby saw me through college.” Or the two and a half years Hazel had seen of it. When she made the decision to leave—impromptu, in the middle of the night—she’d simply packed everything she had into the Volvo and set a course for Dunby, Missouri.

Returning to her hometown should’ve been a relief. It wasn’t.