The Face of Scandal Read Online Free Page B

seeing it towed away or try another slow tour of the block?
    Before she could make up her mind, Sadie unbuckled her seatbelt.
    “Wait, let me park first—”
    “It’s okay,” she told Hazel. “I don’t need a chaperone.”
    “Are you sure?” Sadie’s mood swings were as impenetrable as cinderblock. They’d been particularly bad since this morning. Her vivaciousness over dinner had struck Hazel as a front, but she’d been wary of assuming, of meddling in Sadie’s pain. She dropped her hands into her lap. “I could just walk you to the door.”
    Sadie focused a pair of inky black eyes on her, the corners crinkled with some other sentiment than amusement. “Afraid I won’t go inside?”
    Yes . It was nothing Hazel could admit without sounding judgmental. She supposed she was. Tonight hadn’t brought out the most virtuous side of her.
    “Give me a break. Where would you go?”
    “Your place,” Sadie replied easily. “You’re not using it right now, are you?”
    Something in her tone of voice tipped Hazel off. Sadie had thought of everything. Between needling Ward and stealing the spotlight over dinner, she’d still found the time to map out her next move. Unfortunately, she didn’t have all the data.
    “It’s not safe,” Hazel told her, thinking of the ugly slurs her efforts to protect her privacy had prompted. “That latest repost of Malcolm’s video brought all the creeps to the yard. They found out where I lived, started goading each other into—”
    “Yeah, I figured.” Sadie gripped the door.
    “I’m serious!”
    The icy glare Sadie flung back would have had Hazel ratcheting up the tone if it wasn’t for the bruise on her friend’s cheek. One eye had begun to swell a little, giving her face a strange, lopsided quality. She looked just pitiful enough to make Hazel back off. “If you’re not ready to tell your mom, we can think of something else.”
    “Like what?”
    “A hotel?” Hazel suggested. “I don’t know. How are you on cash?”
    “Not as well as some people,” Sadie quipped. Before Hazel could reply she went on, “It’s okay. I need to bite the bullet sooner or later, right? And we drove all this way…”
    Hazel reached between their seats and clasped Sadie’s elbow with a cold hand. “Do you want me to take you back to the loft?” she blurted out.
    “I didn’t realize there was a spare room.”
    The tightness in Hazel’s chest unfurled in a rush of corrosive suspicion. Did you know? Were you planning this all along, too? Hazel balked at that greedy rush of condemnation. She had returned from Missouri more secure in her relationship than she’d ever been, but she was beginning to realize that didn’t mean all her fears had evaporated.
    They’d merely changed focus, from Dylan leaving her because of the video to Dylan leaving her for another—better, prettier—woman.
    “No spare room,” she told Sadie, looking across to the lit windows of the house where she and her mother had lived since their move to California. It was just a small bungalow with green shutters and an overly decorated front yard. It was homey, welcoming. But needing distance from family made perfect sense to Hazel, even when said family was sweet and understanding, like Sadie’s mom. “We’ll figure something out.”
    As she put the Volvo into gear, she could’ve sworn she heard Sadie sigh with relief.
    “Thank you,” Sadie gushed. “You’re the best.”
    I’m really not. Hazel mustered a smile, but Sadie had already glanced away. She hummed jauntily the whole ride back to the loft.
     

Chapter Three
     
     
     
    Dylan agreed at once that Sadie should spend the night. Ward followed suit, as Hazel had expected him to, albeit sedately, smiling politely and retiring to his room as soon as the decision was made.
    It was another hour before Hazel finished helping Dylan change the sheets and the towels in the bathroom. Sadie would spend another night in his room, dressed in whatever