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“Darling, please calm down,” Ian said.
He was looking at her hard. She couldn’t read that expression. What was it? Was he angry? Was he embarrassed?
“I haven’t raised my voice. You don’t get to dictate my emotions. And there’s no one here! Who could possibly care if I suddenly got angry at you for acting like a stupid, cowardly college boy who won’t give me a damn answer?”
“Hazel, please, let’s just put this on the backburner for a little bit long—”
“No, Ian. I don’t think I’m asking for too much. I just want to know how you feel. Where you see us in three months? Six months? Nine months? Are we together next year? Do you even want that?”
Ian rubbed his hands together and pursed his lips. “I can’t answer that right now.”
Something snapped. Hazel stood and headed toward the door. Ian jumped up and grabbed her wrist.
“Stop it! Get off of me!” She jerked away from him. “How can you do this? How can you sit there so passively? After all this time? We’ve been together for months now. And I’m nothing to you? Just a good time?”
“Hazel, it isn’t like that. Can you just—”
“I swear to fucking God, if you tell me to calm down, I’m going to break your balls, Ian Cartwright.” Hazel winced at the harshness of her voice, but she wouldn’t stop. “Forget this. Forget all of this. Forget you knew me. I never imagined I could be so utterly disappointed in you.”
And with that, she left the restaurant, called an Uber, and cried all the way back to her apartment.
Chapter Eleven
The winter break had been painful. While Ian had been scrambling to find an appropriate new head for the project to connect with Meryl’s domestic and sexual violence organization as well as deciding what to do with this unfinished book, the worst part of the fallout came when he was at home. He had gotten used to Hazel coming over—sharing his bed, walking through his penthouse in various states of undress, humming bits and pieces of numbers they’d heard at the symphony. He had thought that she would come back after their fight in the restaurant, since she didn’t have a ride, but she’d simply disappeared, and would not take his calls.
He was alone. And every thought of her stung.
Hazel would be fine without him. She could easily get an internship for her Capstone, find jobs on her own, do her own research as she continued to make her way to the top. The reality was that Ian needed her. He couldn’t give her up. He also could not find her. He’d tried to visit her at her apartment, but her friend Natalie always rebuffed him and claimed that Hazel didn’t live there anymore. Ian wasn’t sure if that was true. He couldn’t keep hanging around the apartment building though. Not without giving himself away.
During his long nights, he wondered to himself if it had been worth it to keep their affair a secret. He’d always imagined that he’d been in control of Hazel, and she would follow his lead regarding their relationship. As powerful as she could be, she also had let Ian steer their relationship in ways that Ian hadn’t expected. Now, every night, he got up, paced around his house, saw her out of the corner of his eye, and thought about whether he’d been taking advantage of her age and uncertainty so that he didn’t have to make a commitment yet.
He wasn’t certain of that. However, he was certain that he should have just been honest with Hazel about how he felt—how he loved her, but needed time, not just for PR purposes, but to adjust to being in a serious relationship again. Sometimes, he dreamed of having conversations with her or spotting her on campus, but she always slipped away before the two of them could talk.
It was nearing the end of January when Ian finally spotted Hazel for real. She was talking to some friends, wearing another loose sweater that she apparently favored during the winter months, and set her bag on the ground and stretched her back.
Ian considered letting her be, but only for a moment. He was on campus because he’d had a meeting that morning with the head of the Business department, who was evaluating the practicum from last semester in hopes of repeating the course, either with Ian or other visiting professors. Now he was standing there, watching Hazel from afar, like some kind of teenage pervert. He took a few steps closer and, suddenly, from his new angle, or thanks to a few students moving along with their business, he could now see her in full. He had to blink and shake his head to be certain that it was actually her.
The sweater was not that loose. It flowed long enough to be a dress and hung freely with the cardigan Hazel wore over it, but around her middle, the fabric curved forward in a distinctive bulge.
