“Cut it out.”
“Why?” she teases, her amber eyes sparking as mischief dances in them.This woman is going to be the death of me.“You’re the one sitting like you’ve got a secret.”
I adjust subtly. Or at least, I think it’s subtle. I can’t let this minx of a woman know what she does to me. She’s off limits. I can’t do this, no matter how much these moments we’ve had together make me want her even more.
Her eyes drop to my lap and stay there, her eyes burning themselves as she stares at me unabashedly. I can feel the heat climb up my neck, and I shift again, trying to angle myself away like it’ll help this situation that no one prepared me for. I didn’t think looking into my best friend’s death would lead to this girl trying to ruin my life.
“You’re blushing,” she says, voice sing-songy now. “Grandpa Zack’s got a tell.”
“You’re acting like a child.” Petulance paints my voice as I give her an unforgiving once over.
She leans in, grinning a Cheshire grin as her head tilts toward my ear. “You’re the one pitching a tent over a little leg contact.”
“Jesus, Hazel,” I mutter, heat creeping up my cheeks
She laughs, soft and breathy. And then she does something she absolutely should not do. She traces the inside seam of my jeans with her finger. One slow drag of her nail. Just an inch.
She leans back like nothing happened, like she didn’t just set off a landmine under my self-control. “You okay, Grandpa?”
I don’t say a word.
The heat is unbearable now, and the ache is worse. I’m trying to breathe through it—focus on anything else—but my body has other plans. It’s like it’s wanted her for years—hidden under grief, guilt, and every reason I told myself I shouldn’t. But now it’s just the two of us. Her leg brushing mine. Her voice like honey and smoke, melting over me. Her gaze reads me like a book I never meant to open.
And then it happens.
It hits fast—humiliating and sharp. My thighs go rigid. My breath shudders. My stomach pulls tight.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
No. No.No.
Not like this. I’m thirty-eight-years-old, and I don’t let what just occurred process in my mind.
Hazel freezes. She feels it, the shift in the air. She doesn’t even have to look down—I know she knows.
Her gaze finally drops, slowly, to the front of my jeans.
And then she looks back up at me. Her expression is unreadable, her blank features sending a shiver down my spine, her gentle face full of emotions I don’t think I’m ready to understand.
“Zack…” she murmurs, tilting her head. “Did you just…come in your pants?”
I still say nothing.
I sit there, still as stone. My cheeks burn, feeling absolutely mortified. And still, somehow, I throb with a want that doesn’t care how embarrassed I am. She barely did anything, and I blew a load after just a mere touch from Hazel.
And then she smiles at me, and it’s not cruel. Not mocking. Just…knowing. Her amber eyes burrow a hole into my messed up little soul, and I just know things are not going to end well for me this time. She touches my knee again, gentler this time. Her teasing edges blur into something softer.
“You know,” she says, her voice low, a single ringlet of her coiled brown hair falling in front of her face before she pushes it gently behind an ear, “you don’t have to fight everything all the time.”
I meet her eyes. And for the first time in years, I let the armor slip, but I immediately know that I can’t let that happen again.
“I have to go.”
CHAPTER NINE
SPECTER
ZACK
