Sex is messy. But it’s still worth it.

  “And he doesn’t regret a damn thing about his broken toe the next day,” I add.

  “Of course not,” she says, then stops at a terracotta building at the corner of an even narrower alley. She tips her forehead down the shadowy passage. “Even when that stubbed toe makes it harder for him to commandeer a motorcycle to chase the bad guy down these alleys as he tries to outwit the…evil banker.”

  I laugh. “Did I tell you Nefarious Ned was a banker?”

  She smacks my shoulder playfully. But it’s friendly, like two former writing partners should be. It’s not romantic, like it could be between two people who got lost in a kiss on the train after dark.

  Or, really, one person.

  “Hey! You promised you’d make me a villain. I’m holding you to it,” she says, sternly, shaking a finger.

  “Be careful what you wish for, sweetheart,” I say as we wander deeper into the maze of alleys in Old Town.

  We’re still side by side, but it’s a tight squeeze as we walk. After a beat, she says, “Axel?”

  I brace myself. “Yes?”

  “Why do you call me sweetheart? You started it…after,” she says cautiously, as she busts me.

  I don’t want to tell her. I don’t want to admit that it helps keep her at a distance. That I can say it with a curl in my tongue. I started it months ago when I had to face her for the first time after. It had bite. I needed that bite.

  I sigh heavily, saying nothing.

  But when she shoots me a sad look, it’s clear my sigh said enough.

  “Does it bother you?” I ask, a little concerned now. I don’t want to backtrack with her now that I’ve gotten something right with her today—the plotting game.

  She shrugs.

  I wiggle my fingers. “C’mon. You’ve never been one to hold back. Just lay it on me, sweetheart,” I say before I realize what I’m doing—falling into old habits completely.

  Calling her that name again.

  She wheels around, fire in her green eyes as she stares sharply at me. “Fine. Yes, Axel. It bothers me because you say it like an insult. And I don’t want to be insulted.”

  Oh, shit. Oh, hell.

  I’ve been such a dick.

  She’s dead right. “I won’t call you that anymore,” I say, honestly, looking her square in the eyes. “I promise.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Thank you for telling me I was being a dick.”

  “You were a smidge of a dick,” she says.

  I laugh. “Better to be a smidge of a dick than…”

  But I trail off since sexual innuendo is a bad idea. But also because it hurts to be this close to her, this aware of how much I want to push her up against the wall and call her maddeningly beautiful, since she is. She fucking is. So I grab the tool of sarcasm to jimmy my way out of this situation. “Besides, I need to get used to calling you Hazel the Hungry.”

  “That’s my villain name?” she asks dubiously as we resume walking.

  “You don’t like it? But you like lunch,” I point out, so helpfully.

  She scoffs. “I would think something like Hazel the Horrible.”

  I shake my head. “Nah, too on the nose. How about Hazel the Harried?”

  “Because I’m too…busy to be a good villain?”

  “Hmm,” I say, tapping my chin as I consider other options. “What about Hazel the Hot-Blooded?”

  She nods a few times, digging it. “Works for me.”

  “Then I’m definitely not using it,” I say, as we reach the end of the alley. It lets us into the main drag.

  She draws a deep inhale as she looks around, smiling as her eyes travel across the view. “It’s good to be here again.”

  “So you and your mom had a nice trip to Nice?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she says. “She always wanted to travel here. My dad never did, so I finally took her to France when I graduated from college. I wasn’t sure I wanted to travel with her, but I’m glad I did.”

  “Why weren’t you sure?”

  She’s quiet for a few seconds before she answers. “I was frustrated with her when I was younger. Even though it wasn’t her fault, I was still annoyed with my parents' relationship. I didn’t like how she let my dad treat her, but then she went to a codependent anonymous type group when I was a teenager, and I did the same, and I think I understood her more. Why she let him control her but also how she wanted to change.”

  “That’s great,” I say, genuinely glad she sought the help she needed, and that her mom did too. While she’s told me before about her complicated relationship with her father, and how strict he was with everyone, I wasn’t aware of how that impacted her connection with her mother. “That you went, that she did, that it helped.”

  “I’m glad I went too. I think it made it possible for us to be close again. Know what I mean?” She holds my gaze for an important beat.

  She’s not talking about her mom. She’s talking about us, and us is terrifying. “Sure,” I say, sinking back into my protective shell.

  We walk in silence for a block, then she turns to me again at a street corner. “This is nice, Axel,” she says.

  Her remark sends a jolt of warmth through me. Maybe of wistfulness too. I know what she means. Talking. Sharing. And I can’t be entirely monosyllabic in my replies. “It is,” I say, admitting that much. “It’s nice to talk to you again.”

  Please let that be enough, Hazel.

  Please don’t ask me for more.

  I don’t want to tell her how deeply I’ve missed her, how hard the last year has been, how awful I felt when I left.

  “Axel,” she continues, her tone vulnerable. “I was so mad the day you left me. I still don’t think I understand it.”

  Nope. No way am I going down that path. I made myself a promise at a fountain. “Hazel. Let’s just have a nice day together,” I say, fixing on a smile, hoping it smooths over my blockade.

  She drops her face, frowning, resigned.

  And once again, I’ve said the wrong thing.

  20

  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.

  21

  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?”