Page 157 of Story of My Life
“We’re not hooking up,” Hazel insisted. She looked back and forth between Levi and me as if hoping that one of us would help her out.
“We don’t owe you an explanation,” Levi said to me.
“Gotta hand it to you. You jump down my throat, say she’s off-limits. I didn’t see it coming. I bought the whole ‘for the good of the family’ bullshit,” I said, then drained the glass. I set it down on the table with a clunk.
“Is that like the opposite of calling dibs?” Hazel asked, shifting in her seat.
The eyes of everyone on the deck—and a few from the patrons and staff inside—were on us.
I looked at her, putting some extra chill in my gaze. “Thought we had an arrangement.”
“Wedo.This isn’t a date.” She looked at Levi again.
He gave her a subtle head shake. A secret guarded. It made my civility snap like a dry twig.
“Yeah.Had,” I said. “I was getting bored anyway. Kind of expected more out of a romance novelist, you know? Good time to call it quits.” One look at Hazel told me I’d gone too far. Waytoo far. The shock of hurt on her pretty face went straight to my chest, but it quickly burned off into the kind of feminine rage that had my DNA issuing fight-or-flight memos.
“That was uncalled for,” Levi said coolly.
“Yeah? Well, I think this was uncalled for,” I said, gesturing between the two conspirators.
“You owe the lady an apology,” my two-faced brother said.
Every occupied chair on the deck behind me scooted back as our audience braced for what was coming.
“Don’t think so, Leev. Maybeyouowe thefamilyan apology for ‘putting the business in danger.’” I got to my feet during my liberal use of air quotes.
Hazel got up from the table. “You are unbelievable, Campbell,” she hissed at me.
“Hey, it was fun while it lasted,” I shot back. It was liquid stupid running through my veins. Growing up, I’d always been the hotheaded one. Once my fuse lit, it burned fast and bright until I inflicted some kind of damage. Thanks to adulthood, that legendary temper had been dormant for a long while. But one look at the two of them together and I was a volcano about to erupt.
“Not cool, man,” Levi said, getting in my face.
“Fuck. You.”
“I’m gonna stop you right there.” Hazel held up a hand. “You’re one sentence away from really pissing me off.”
The temper in me wanted to say something smart-assed, but Hazel was grabbing me by the arm and dragging me off the deck. She didn’t stop until we were on the sidewalk. Then she turned and glared poisonous eye darts at me.
“First of all, we never discussed not seeing other people,” she said.
I opened my mouth, but she stopped me again with a sharp finger to the chest.
“Uh-uh. You’re listening right now. What’s happening here is you’re trying to provoke a misunderstanding that will force us to go our separate ways. Readers don’t like that in books, and women sure as hell don’t like it in real life. It’s a lazy conflict that’s too easily avoided by two adults communicating, which is what I am doing right now.”
I closed my mouth and crossed my arms. “Go on.”
“Even though we never discussed not seeing other people, I too was under the assumption that while we were getting naked together, we wouldn’t be getting naked with other people. That should have made it into our agreement, but it didn’t. Be that as it may, I was not here with your brother for romantic or naked reasons.”
“Then why were you here? And why the fuck didn’t you tell me about it? I had to find out from customers in my damn store. You could have texted.” I sounded petulant. It made me want to punch myself in the face.
“You’re absolutely right. I should have texted you.”
That took a bit of the edge off, not that I was ready to let her off the hook. “Yeah, you should have.”
“Right after you left, I got some…upsetting news.”
“What kind of upsetting news?”
