Page 50 of Hazel and Elijah Find Out: First They F*cked Around

Elijah was the source of attention everywhere he went, without his ever trying to be. Just being near him brought me under more scrutiny.

Elijah’s chest was firm and warm against my cold cheek. We were watching a TV show I wasn’t paying attention to, my mind wandering.

Wandermight not have been the correct word. It implied that my thoughts meandered, took multiple routes, contemplated many things, and that wasn’t true. I had one thing on my mind—would my reputation be so tarnished by the auction that the clinic would fail, and I’d be buried under a pile of business loan debt as well as school loans, and I’d ruin the lives of my employees because of it?

Elijah’s fingers paused in my hair. “Care to share your thoughts with the group?”

“I’m fine,” I lied. We’d already talked about Mrs. Nelson, and I just wanted to move past it. I didn’t want my anxiety ruining any more of our night.

“Baby,” he murmured against the top of my head, “you’re thinking too loudly for me to hear the show.”

My lips twitched on one side in something like a smile. “Sorry, I’ll think quieter.”

He lifted the remote and the TV screen went black with the click of a button. In just a few awkward shifts, I was seated half on his lap, half on the sofa cushion, and he was looking directly into my eyes. “Talk to me.”

“I’m just spiraling a little.”

“Where are you spiraling to?”

I opened my mouth, but then closed it, too humiliated to tell him. Wasn’t I supposed to be above anyone’s opinions of me? Especially someone as mean-spirited as Mrs. Nelson?

“The town feeling too small?” he offered.

I nodded.

“You can talk to me about it.”

Biting my lower lip, I shook my head. “I already have.”

He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “I told you about running into my dad earlier.”

“Yeah.”

“He insinuated something from when I was a teenager. It… You probably heard of it.”

I cringed, knowing exactly what he was talking about. It was the top moment mentioned whenever Elijah’s name was brought up in a group.Remember that time…But the way he was leading into it now, with his shoulders tight and his eyes looking anywhere but at me, I suspected it’d gotten warped in the retelling.

It fit well with the trail of broken hearts narrative that followed Elijah.

“Pastor Lou’s daughter and the church shed?” I asked.

“That’s the one.” His eyes didn’t hold any of their usual light as he looked down at the floor. “So, I was seventeen, and my parents were recently divorced. There was so much shit being said about my mom, and I was trying hard to be a good kid and not draw any bad attention. That summer, my dad volunteered me to mow at the church—it’s got that two acre-lawn.”

He waited long enough that I hummed a confirmation.

His chest rose before breathing out in one big puff. “Anyway, Hannah—Lou’s daughter—was doing flowerbeds and stuff. We’d been around each other a lot through church functions, but we never spent time together. It wasn’t until that summer that I got to know her, and I started to like her. It took a couple of weeks for me to work up the nerve to ask her out. She said she liked me too, but she couldn’t date someone like me.”

My mouth hung open. “Someone like you?”

His eyes flicked to mine and then away. “Yeah, at that point I’d dated a couple different girls, and been caught partying. Hannah said we could date in secret, and I thought that was fine.”

“Elijah.” I waited until he lifted his head. “You didn’t deserve that.”

Something cold whispered down my spine, remembering how he and I had a secret affair. Had it made him remember that time?

“I know. I thought I did at the time.”

“You didn’t.”

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