Secret Exposure_a bad boy new adult romance novel Page 8

Was she in trouble? Was she hiding that trouble?

  I turned back around and put my back to the wall. Slowly, I bent my knees and sank down.

  My ass hit the floor. I bent my knees and put my hands to them. I just stared forward.

  That’s when I thought about her.

  The secrets she never told me. The secrets I never got a chance to save her from.

  The anger was real. The pain was real.

  I took a breath and looked up and back at the apartment door.

  I slowly nodded.

  I made a promise to myself.

  I would not let the same thing happen with Hazel.

  15

  HAZEL

  PRESENT DAY

  I walked through the doors of the hotel and put a big smile on my face. I had my main bag on one shoulder and my laptop case and camera bag on my other shoulder. I walked to the front counter and the man behind the counter recognized me and greeted me with an extra big smile.

  “Traveling late tonight?” he asked.

  “A little,” I said.

  “Lots of work?”

  “Always,” I said.

  “Let’s see what we have for you, Miss…White.”

  His name was Robert, and he winked at me.

  I was able to get the room under a fake name, but I used real cash to pay for it. He knew that my name was Hazel. But he thought I was Miss Hazel.

  This was what my life had become. My ability to run and hide.

  The hotel was just outside of Hundred Falls Valley.

  I told Robert that I was a traveling photographer. And I would sometimes need a room at weird hours, usually only for a day or two. To him, my life was fascinating. I got to travel the country—the world—taking pictures. But it was all a lie. I hated myself for lying, too. Robert was such a nice guy. But he didn’t need to know why I was at the hotel. He didn’t need to know that I was running, hiding, scared for my life.

  Robert got me a room, I paid in cash, and he gave me the keycard.

  Then he looked at his watch. “Well, sweetie, here’s the deal. The kitchen is closed. If you’ve been traveling, I’m sure you’re starving. There’s a pizza place…”

  “No pizza,” I said. It made my stomach turn. Pizza. Mitch. Him at my door. “Maybe just a sandwich or something.”

  “You’re in luck,” Robert said. “Stan is in the kitchen tonight. I’m sure I could wrangle something up for you.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said. “I can find a way…”

  “No. You go rest. I’m sure you have plenty of pictures to sort through. What were you shooting today? Some landscapes? The mountains? I heard they still get snow all the way up at the peaks, even though it’s so warm down here. Amazing.”

  “Yeah, it is amazing,” I said. I patted my camera bag. “I have a lot to sort through.”

  “How exciting. Can I carry your bags, Miss Hazel.” Robert winked.

  “I can carry these,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “I’ll be right up with something to eat.”

  I walked away, and my head hanging as I went to the elevators.

  The first time the idea had come to me was after a really bad night. I’d fled to the hotel and slept there for two nights. When Mitch came back a few weeks later, I didn’t mess around. I went to the hotel. It became something of a sad routine for me. If I got away from Mitch long enough he seemed to just disappear. He’d get mad, threaten me, and he’d go away. Things would get quiet for a while, and I’d have the faintest glimmer of hope that he would be gone for good only to have him return. And when he returned…

  I shut my eyes and stuck the keycard into the slot. When I heard the lock disengage, it was a comforting sound. The sound of safety. It was like going from one prison to another, though. My apartment was home. The hotel room was a hideout.

  The heavy door shut behind me.

  I dropped my bags.

  Then I dropped down.

  To my knees.

  And I cried.

  I put the plate on the bathroom counter. I looked at myself in the big mirror.

  I was on my third glass of wine and finally feeling a little relaxed. My laptop was open on the bed, my camera next to it. I had gone through a crap ton of pictures from St. Skin and sorted them out. The picture I took of the front of St. Skin was perfect. I had already started working on cropping out just the building, then started looking for images to put on each side of the tattoo shop.

  It was time-consuming, but it kept my mind busy.

  That was key.

  When my mind got tired and my eyes grew weary, I looked at the clock.

  It was now after midnight.

  Mitch had long since come and gone from my apartment. I had no idea what he had done to the place, though. I doubted he would have broken into it. Mitch was only a tough guy in certain situations, but when it came to the police, he was a big wimp. So, knowing him, he would have stood there and pounded on the door a few times. If he actually did get a pizza, he probably smeared a slice on the door. Eventually, he’d just go away. Slip into oblivion until he decided to torture me again at a different point in time.

  Was it a way to live? No. But the other options weren’t much better. There had been one time when my mother decided to live a different way. And it was very different. It was very dark. Scarier than being home and enduring what I called foot thunder.

  I went back to the bed and filled what would be my last glass of wine for one night. That last glass was just enough to put me over the edge so that I slept comfortably but wouldn’t wake up with a hangover.

  I sat on the bed, legs cross, and opened the file labeled MADDOX.

  Every picture of him told me a story. I felt a little creepy, sitting there and staring at pictures of him. At least the pictures he knew I took. Nothing secret. A bunch he wished I didn’t take, though. But the man was made for pictures. The honesty in his eyes. The stone-cut jawline and facial features. The hair on his face, messy yet somehow in order. His black hair was messy too, but in its own way, a way that worked with him. He was the kind of man that could roll out of bed, grab a dirty pair of jeans, a shirt from a two week old hamper, run his hand through his hair, and just like that—poof!—he was sexy as anything.

  Even the smoking thing. Which I hated. I grew up in a world where cigarettes were always blamed as the ‘gateway’ to trying other things. I never touched one or the other things. And I hated those who did.

  But not Maddox.

  He made me contradict everything I knew and wanted to believe in.

  The last picture I took of him.

  Standing against the building, one foot up, taking a drag of his cigarette. The sunset to his left, burning against the horizon, throwing shade across his body and to the other side of the picture. It was so powerful. His tattoos may have told stories, but my pictures did the same thing too. They told stories. Stories that could jump off the screen at you. Stories that followed you as you walked by the pictures.

  Maddox knew that. And he didn’t want his story told.

  Neither did I.

  And that was the basis of our connection. Whatever connection that was.

  A connection that I wanted to explore…no matter what road it took me down.

  16

  MADDOX

  PRESENT DAY

  I had a hard time sleeping, which meant I was grumpy as I strolled into St. Skin. The music blared through the shop, and it seemed like it was louder than normal. I tossed my bag into my room and went to the front to check in with Danielle. I was working on a half-sleeve for a little while and that was it. A break was welcome. I really needed to go back to the old hometown for a visit to my great aunt Ada. She was pushing eighty and still kicking serious ass in life. Living in the same house in the same neighborhood just weathering any and all storms that blew through.

  Without her, I would have been dead.

  So I owed her quite a lot.

  Not to mention the talks she gave me. The informa
tion and wisdom she passed to me was perhaps the greatest gift anyone had ever given me.

  A break from the shop. A break from the noise. A break from Hazel.

  I sat outside her apartment for almost an hour before leaving. Then I went home and tossed and turned all night.

  Danielle wasn’t at the counter, so I went to Tate’s office.

  The door opened, and out came a suit and tie.

  A short guy with a pudgy face, cheeks and red, bald head, a leather folder in his hand. Tate stood there, a shit-eating grin on his face.

  “I’ll be in touch,” the man said.

  “Thanks, Jimmy.” Tate patted the man on the back. “You’re the best.”

  I raised an eyebrow as the suit and tie—Jimmy—left the shop.

  “Lawyer?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Doesn’t look like he was here for ink.”

  “You know, funny thing about Jimmy,” Tate said. “He looks a certain way now…but he’s covered in ink. Purposely got all his tattoos so they don’t show when he’s wearing a suit. Amazing, right?”

  “Why was he here?”

  Tate grinned. “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “So in other words, it’s none of my fucking business,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  “You know, Tate, if you’re going to sell your soul and this place out, at least give us all a heads up to figure out what to do next.”

  “Now you’re just thinking crazy, Maddox,” Tate said. “Is there a reason you were coming to my office?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m going to go do my fucking job. Wait for the paparazzi to show up. Then I’ll wait for the camera crew to show up and give me my fucking lines to say so people sitting on their couches think I’m a badass and will want to buy a fucking t-shirt with my picture on it.”

  “Wow,” Tate said. “You’ve really thought this through, huh?”

  “I won’t do it, for the record. You bring in anything fake, and I’m out of here.”

  “And when I brought in something real, you got pissed, too. So what is it, Maddox? Real or fake?”

  I curled my lip.

  Tate was such an asshole sometimes. But he had the right to be. It was his name on the line. He carried the weight of the shop, and he had to deal with guys like me. Every one of us in St. Skin were a different bag of tricks to handle, and Tate did it day in and day out. Never complaining once. Always taking good care of us.

  But this camera thing with Hazel? Now a suit and tie showing up?

  It just didn’t feel right.

  I left the conversation to die right there and started to walk away.

  “Oh, Maddox. Just a heads up.”

  I glanced back at Tate. “What?”

  “Today should be a great day for you. Hazel’s not coming in.”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t know. She left me a voicemail. Said she was taking the day off.”

  Tate winked and went back into his office.

  He knew what he was doing to me, and I knew what I was going to do.

  I was going to visit Hazel.

  I knocked at her door, holding a coffee cup.

  She came to the door and yelled, who is it? telling me right away that whatever suspicions I had, they were real and getting realer by the second.

  “It’s Maddox, sugar,” I said.

  “Maddox?”

  I hear one of the locks pop. The door opened a little, the chain still engaged.

  I saw one of her beautiful green eyes show.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “I’m not taking pictures today,” she said.

  “Yeah. Tate told me.”

  “Thought you would be celebrating,” she said.

  I showed the coffee cup. “I am. Well, this one is yours.”

  “Maddox…”

  “You’re not going to open the door? You hiding something?”

  “Is that your business?”

  “Well, when your neighbor told me someone—some guy—was over here yelling and punching the door last night…”

  I saw Hazel’s face go white. Then she shook her head.

  “Fuck you, Maddox,” she said.

  She slammed the door.

  I looked at the lock.

  She hadn’t locked it.

  “I don’t do this shit, sugar,” I said. “I don’t show up unannounced with coffee. Okay? I really can’t figure out why I’m here, but I am here. You’re hiding something, and that’s your business. I just want to know if you’re okay and if I can help.”

  The response was just silence.

  But I wasn’t going to leave that easily.

  After a handful of seconds, Hazel said, “You still there?”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  “You’re not going to leave, are you?”

  “Unless you really want me to. But you need me not to.”

  That’s when I heard the chain lock come undone.

  The door opened.

  Hazel stood there looking so goddamn beautiful.

  A loose sweater that hung close to her left shoulder, showing skin.

  I stayed on my side of the entrance to the apartment.

  She just looked at me, on the verge of tears.

  I let that go, though. I wasn’t going to push at her too hard.

  “Maddox,” she said.

  “Hazel with the green eyes,” I said back.

  That at least got me a weak smile.

  “Coffee?” I asked and held my hand out.

  “Thanks,” she said. She took the cup and gave it a little shake. She ripped the lid off. “It’s empty.”

  “I know.”

  “You brought me an empty cup?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “So we could go fill it up,” I said. “Let me buy you a coffee. So we can talk.”

  “Maddox…whatever my neighbor said…she’s old…”

  “I know,” I said. “So, she was just seeing things? Hearing things? Losing her mind? You weren’t even home though, right? Gone out for a night on the town?”

  “Thanks for the coffee,” she said.

  “That’s it?” I asked.

  “What do you mean…”

  “Look, you stuck your nose into my personal shit. So it’s only fair I do the same to you. Something happened. I need to know you’re okay.”

  “Look at me,” she said. “I’m not hurt.”

  “Please. Not all wounds are on the outside.”

  Hazel hung her head.

  That’s when I lost my edge. Whatever she’d gone through wasn’t new. It was why she hid behind the camera. It was why she got so jumpy around me. It was why I’d scared her when I didn’t mean to.

  I walked right into her apartment. Taking a step further in whatever the thing was between us. I grabbed her by the waist and she looked up at me, her eyes glossy.

  She was shocked, but she wasn’t scared. My presence gave her comfort.

  I thought about the promise I’d made to myself last night, sitting outside her apartment.

  I would not let the same thing happen with Hazel.

  “Maddox…you don’t know what…”

  Excuses were for those without direction. I had direction. And my arrow was pointing straight at Hazel.

  So I took my chances again.

  I moved my right hand from her hip to her face. My thumb stroked her cheek as I lowered my mouth to hers. There was probably a million different and better ways to have a first kiss with Hazel. But this just seemed to fit us. My lips against hers, the world fading in the background. My touch to her hip got tighter, gently pulling her in, wanting to feel her body tight against mine. The second I felt her breasts press against me, my mind had thoughts of the bedroom. Lift her up. Find the bedroom. Show her what her true beauty was. Get rid of the fear, the danger, the…

  “No,” she whispered as she broke the kiss, her lips flirting against mine. “No, Maddox. You have to go.”

&nbs
p; I slid my fingers down her cheek. I ran my middle finger across her bottom lip. I could still taste a gentle sweetness on my lips from kissing her.

  “That’s what you want?”

  “No,” she said. “But it’s what you want.”

  “Don’t ever tell me what I want, sugar,” I said. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

  “Except exposure,” she whispered. “You don’t want anyone to see you, either. Your secret.”

  I curled my lip. “There you go again. Afraid of the world, yet challenging me.”

  Hazel touched my shirt. Her hand slowly went flat against my stomach. She was shaking. She was hesitating. Battling want versus need. I could have stood there all fucking day, waiting for her.

  She then threw the empty coffee cup to the floor and put her hand behind my head.

  Then she jumped up into my arms…just like I wanted her to do.

  17

  HAZEL

  PRESENT DAY

  It’s crazy. It’s crazy. It’s crazy. It’s crazy.

  The words flew through my mind over and over as I felt Maddox’s grip tighten on me. His tongue explored my mouth without a care. It was sexy that he was so boldly commanding, leaving me feeling vulnerable and protected at the same time.

  He walked me to the dining room table.

  Finally, for the first time ever, the table had a purpose.

  He sat me right on it and grabbed my face with both hands.

  The kisses then got wet, sloppy, and ungodly sexy. Kissing, sucking face, whatever you wanted to call it, the sounds filled the apartment, and each one was hotter than the last, laced with intention for something more.

  His hands stayed on my face way too long. But that was part of it all. That made me want him more. That made him hotter. I fully expected him to rip every piece of clothing off my body, but he just wanted to kiss me for a little while.

  And with each kiss…our tongues would flirt, lips would close, and he’d pull away. That left the echoing sound of the kiss, the real audio proof that this was happening. I could taste him, everything wrong about him, but everything I wanted. Everything I needed in that moment. To chase away the bad. To chase away the darkness. To chase away the fact that I woke up this morning in a hotel with an empty glass of wine next to me. To chase away the fact that I ate a free, lonely breakfast, packed up my stuff, and left the hotel, feeling disgusting for what I let happen again.