He doesn’t realize the blond woman in black leather has been watching their every move.
It was supposed to be a simple picnic.
It’d been two months since Hazel, on her stepfather’s orders, broke things off with Gray. And she’d been honest with him about the reason: her mother’s wretched fiancé had convinced her mother that Gray had poor intentions. And despite Hazel’s obvious disagreement, she didn’t want to make waves.
Gray said he understood.
Breakup achieved.
The Monster became Hazel’s stepfather a week after her breakup: Hazel was the sole witness at her mother and the Monster’s courthouse wedding. Then he’d moved in. Hazel’s mother had shot up to one of the highest highs Hazel had seen in years. Which would’ve been a nice reprieve if Mother hadn’t started a new job—leaving Hazel constantly alone with the Monster, who seemed to leave the apartment only a couple of times per week.
Hazel often wondered where the guy’s money came from, but she never dared to ask. Her life was hard enough without stirring the Monster’s ire. And Hazel had no doubt that’s what her questions would do.
So she stayed in her room. She saw no point in going out when she had such an early curfew. And there was really no one to go out with; Gray had been the sole person Hazel spent time with, outside of school. Saturdays, she was given errands to run, and Sundays, the Monster and Mama made her accompany them to church and then spend the day together “as a family.”
The main problem was that whenever they were alone, the Monster would eye Hazel in a way that made her feel like her flesh was peeling from her bones. In his slickly complimentary way, he would request her assistance reaching an item on a high shelf, or retrieving something from beneath a counter, and when Hazel would comply—because she couldn’t seem to resist compliance—she would feel his eyes on her in a way that was distinctly not fatherly. Even though he insisted that she call him “Daddy.”
The day that Hazel, naked in the shower, heard the locked doorknob rattling, she willed herself to accept what she hadn’t wanted to: the Monster intended her harm.
It was enough to make her reach out to Gray.
A few hours. That’s how long they were to be gone. Hazel’s mother and the Monster were on some overnight trip and weren’t scheduled to return until late on a Saturday evening. So Hazel and Gray decided to take a chance. They’d enjoy a short picnic at one of his favorite places in the world, and would return long before Hazel’s “parents” did.
Gray said he’d take care of everything, so Hazel pulled out her combat boots and put on dark tights with a cute pleated skirt and fitted top. In the pockets of her cardigan, she carried nothing more than her house key, lip balm, and cell phone.
And off they went, Hazel and her beloved Gray. Who held her hand and carried his backpack on the opposite shoulder. They hopped on a bus and rode forty minutes to the other end of town, then walked through a small complex of old townhomes and straight into some woods.
A short distance in, something fell from his hand. “Gray, wait. You los—”
“I know,” he said. “It was on purpose.”
She let it go.
But then it happened again.
And again.
And again.
“What are you dropping?” she finally asked.
And he turned to her and smiled. “Legos,” he said.
“Legos?”
“Legos. You ain’t never heard the story about that brother and sister who got lost in the woods and almost ate up by a witch? I’m leaving us a trail. Just in case.”
In that moment, Hazel’s heart flipped over in her chest. This, she thought, was what it meant to be cared for.
She stopped walking. So Gray stopped too. And the moment he turned to her, and Hazel could see the concern in his muddy-brown eyes, the words “I want to get back together” tumbled off her tongue. Once they’d landed among the leaves around their feet, Gray did something he’d never done before: he hooked an arm around Hazel’s waist, pulled her close, and kissed her.
Thus, their journey into the woods, on borrowed time, became . . . more.
With new fire between their joined palms, Gray told Hazel his history with the place where he was taking her: he’d lived in one of the townhomes they’d passed, and he’d played in these woods and the river nearby, with a twin brother who’d passed away.
They reached the clearing. It was one of the most peaceful places Hazel had ever seen.
And as Gray pulled a blanket from his backpack and laid it out so they could sit, Hazel could feel the sadness he was trying to hide. It filled their surroundings: the birds stopped chirping; the wind ceased; it even seemed as though the river flowed with less verve.
So the moment Gray sat down beside her, Hazel asked him what had happened.
And Gray unspooled the story. Not quite two years prior. A shady stepfather who Gray knows killed his brother. The man and Gray’s mother had been married for seven years, and she was too afraid of him to even request an investigation into her own son’s death, so she did the “next best thing”: changed her name, and Gray’s, and relocated them.
Hazel stared at this boy who was so much more than he seemed, and her heart expanded until it almost shattered. He’d worked at making himself invisible. “The better you fit in, the less you stand out,” Gray said. And Hazel understood: she did the same thing during her mother’s drops. Gray cared because he hadn’t been cared for. He was attentive because he’d wanted someone to pay attention. “I just wish somebody had been lookin’ out for us. You know?”
Hazel did know. So when Gray started to cry, Hazel wrapped an arm around him, and he turned in to her.
Neither of them would be able to say how Gray’s crying against Hazel’s shoulder morphed into his kissing her neck.
The kissing turned more urgent. Turned to some trick of his tongue along her collarbone that made her head spin. Turned to “Hazel, I need you,” whispered in her ear. And Hazel didn’t resist.
The opposite, in fact.
When Gray’s fingers crept up the back of Hazel’s shirt to unhook her bra, she arched to make it easier. When Gray lifted both bra and shirt up in the front to get at Hazel’s breasts, she grabbed the back of his head and pushed into him. When Gray’s hand slipped up Hazel’s skirt and tugged at her tights, she lifted her hips so he could pull them off. And when Gray’s fingers brushed over a place only Hazel herself had ever touched, she rocked back on her tailbone to give him better access.
Gray removed his shirt and dumped the remaining contents from the backpack, then rolled the two together to tuck beneath Hazel’s head. And she lay down. Then Gray pushed Hazel’s underwear to the side and—bare from shoulders to where he’d pushed his own pants and boxer briefs down to his thighs—positioned his body above hers.
And then he stopped.
“Is this okay?”
Instead of answering, Hazel grabbed ahold of Gray’s waist, lifted her hips, and pulled him in. And as he moved against her, ever so gently, Hazel knew she wouldn’t go back to not seeing him.
When they returned home, things would have to be different.
Hazel wakes to the smell of vanilla and clove. Her entire face is tingling.