Page 80 of The Prospect

The ambient sound of chatter that surrounds us is the only thing I hear for the next few seconds as Hart appears to ponder what to say.

“Listen, Hazel.” He drops his fork to the side of the plate, interlacing his hands as one as he scoots his chair in closer. “Trust me when I say I know Green can be a pain. I’ve played with him for years, I can confirm, but I’m sure deep down he had good intentions for acting the way he did, even if he didn’t execute it properly.”

I’m having a hard time believing what I’m hearing right now. “Are you seriously defending him?” I debate. “Really, Hart?”

“Hazel…” He sighs, brushing his hand through his hair. “Sometimes love makes you do stupid things that don’t make sense.”

I just about choke. Now was not the time to take a sip of water.

Did he just saylove?

“I know, I know, sorry to drop the ‘L’ word, but it’s true Hazel. Both you and Green have been friends forever, of course you love each other—in a platonic way, of course.”

Oh, Hart, you have no idea just how thin the ice that you’re treading on is right now.

“I’ve spent the last few days thinking about it and if I had someone I was that close with then I’d only want what’s best for them as well. Obviously, Green and I have had our ups and downs over the years, that’s a given, but with that aside, I can't blame him for not being particularly fond of us being together...”

I cock a brow. “What are you on about, Hart? You do realize that you’re quite literally perfect, right?”

Somehow, amidst all of this chaos, I’ve grown more comfortable expressing outward compliments toward Hart. I suppose there's been more stressful things I’ve been dealing with than fussing over that.

“You flatter me.” He smiles. “But maybe you’re not seeing the whole picture.”

“I’m an artist,” I retort with a laugh. “What on Earth could I be missing?”

Hart allows his once hovering body to sink back in defeat. “What uh—did Green tell you about me exactly? You know, before he set us up?”

I shrug, unsure of how to respond to this quite simplistic question. “I don’t know,” I say. “He mentioned a bit about your family, your position, how long you’ve been playing with Crawfield. Things like that.”

“So nothing reputationally, then?”

I chew on the inside of my cheek. I know what he’s trying to get out of me, but I refuse to say it.

“Go on, Hazel.” He can see what I’m doing. “You’re not going to hurt my feelings. Whatever you say, let’s just say I’ve heard it hundreds of times before. Go on, tell me.”

I toy with my hands nervously beneath the tablecloth before I part my lips to speak. “Well, it’s not really what Green said. It’s kind of what everyone has said about you over the years…”

“Which is?”

I cave. “That you’re a player. That you go through more women than days in a year. But those are all just rumors. I refuse to believe that was true. People were probably just jealous of?—”

“It was true,” Hart cuts me off as I attempt to give him the benefit of the doubt, and not only am I silenced instantly, but his remark leaves me at a loss for words. “Wait…what?”

“It’s true, Hazel.” I watch as Hart runs a nervous hand along his forehead. “Before you and I were kind of thrown together, I had this vengeance for love. A terrible outlook on it, really. It’s gotten better over the years, but there was a point in time where I was trying so hard to distance myself from the feeling that I filled the ache with one-night stands and situationships that I knew would never amount to anything, but it did absolutely nothing. If anything, it made things even worse...”

“Worse?” I repeat. “Hart…I—” I’m so lost right now. “What are you talking about?”

Hart runs his tongue along his bottom lip as he looks down in thought, but before he can seemingly contemplate what he’s about to say next, his mouth moves faster than his mind as he speaks. “Did Green ever tell you that I lived in Spain for a while?”

I run the fact through my mind and almost instantly it starts to ring a bell. Green did mention something about that, but when I pried for more details on the subject matter his guess was as good as mine. He had told me that Hart had always kept tight-lipped about it and that wasn’t just with him. No one on the teamknew what happened when Hart went to Spain, nor the reason why he came back.

Is he about to tell me?

“I’ll assume that from the look on your face that Green may have mentioned it to you, but what I know for a fact is that you don’t know how much my time there meant to me and how since then…I’ve never been the same.”

I've heard Hart’s voice more these past few weeks than I have in the years I’ve known him, and as I watch his words unfold in front of me, I can see a pang of sadness in his blue eyes—they’ve deepened.

Now, they’re no longer the blue of the ocean, but that of the deep, dark sea. Hart’s once optimistic smile is now nowhere to be seen and with the way he parts his lips, I know in my heart, I’m about to hear something he’s held back for far too long.

---