Whispered Temptations

Chapter Seven

「 ✦ Halsey's POV ✦ 」

Hazel reached us with all the subtlety of a police raid.

She stopped at my side, breathless not from exertion but from excitement so intense it seemed to be leaking out of her pores.

Her eyes darted from me to Hero and back again with shameless curiosity.

For half a second, none of us spoke.

Then Hazel pasted on the sweetest smile known to mankind and held out one perfectly manicured hand.

"Hi," she said brightly. "I'm Hazel. Her sister. The terrifying one."

Hero looked at her hand.

Then at her face.

Then, with a solemnity I would later realize was one of his more dangerous qualities - the ability to appear completely sincere while clearly being entertained - he took her hand and said, "Hero. The man you were prepared to kill two minutes ago."

Hazel blinked.

Then barked out a laugh.

"Okay," she said, pointing at him with her free hand. "I like you. That's annoying."

"I get that a lot."

"No, you don't," she said immediately. "People probably just black out around you and wake up emotionally compromised."

I covered my face with one hand.

"Hazel."

"What?" She looked at me, wounded. "Am I wrong?"

Hero's mouth twitched.

"No."

Hazel gasped. "See? Honesty. We love that."

I dropped my hand just in time to see the full force of Hero's attention slide back to me. It happened in an instant - one second he was indulging Hazel, the next his focus had narrowed again, all of it returning with quiet, devastating precision.

If Hazel noticed, she had the decency not to say so.

Instead she hooked her arm through mine and leaned into my side.

"Halo sent me because apparently you've been gone long enough for her to assume you've either been kidnapped or are throwing up in a hydrangea bush."

"I was not throwing up in a hydrangea bush."

"Well, I knew that, because if this man had murdered you he wouldn't still be standing here looking like an expensive sin."

"Hazel," I hissed.

She ignored me beautifully.

Hero, to his credit, looked far too interested in this conversation.

He slid his hands into his pockets and asked, "Does she always speak like this?"

"Yes," I said.

"No," Hazel said at the exact same time.

Hero's gaze stayed on me. "So yes."

Hazel pointed at him. "You catch on fast."

"I'm motivated."

The word landed strangely.

Not because it was overt.

Because it wasn't.

Because he said it while looking directly at me, and because somehow that was infinitely worse than flirting I could brush aside.

Hazel's brows went up.

Oh no.

She heard it too.

That mischievous gleam lit her face with terrifying speed.

"Well," she said, drawing the word out. "This is interesting."

"It is not," I said.

"It is deeply interesting."

Hero did not rescue me.

If anything, the faint shift at the corner of his mouth suggested he was enjoying my discomfort far too much.

I narrowed my eyes at him.

He looked innocent.

The lie of it nearly made me laugh.

Hazel squeezed my arm once and leaned closer to me. "Halo wants you back inside for a second. Niko's interrogating the room with his eyes and Lo is trying not to be weird about it, which means she is being very weird about it."

"That is a sentence only you could say."

"And yet you understood it perfectly."

Unfortunately, I did.

I glanced at Hero. He hadn't moved, but something in him had gone very still again, like he was waiting to see what I'd do.

The awareness of being watched - by him, by Hazel, by my own traitorous nerves - made me feel suddenly too warm.

"I should go."

Hazel looked scandalized. "I literally just said Halo wants you to."

"No, I mean..." I made a vague motion between me and Hero that somehow communicated absolutely nothing and everything all at once.

Hazel's eyes widened a fraction.

Then, to my horror, softened.

Not teasing now.

Seeing.

That was worse.

"Oh," she said quietly.

Hero's gaze flicked to her, then back to me.

My chest tightened.

I hated how obvious everything felt all at once.

Hazel, mercifully, seemed to recognize that if she pushed too hard I'd retreat into myself and stay there for the rest of the night. So she did something very rare for her.

She showed restraint.

Only a little.

She gave Hero one last appraising look, then leaned toward him just enough to lower her voice - not quietly enough for me to miss it, of course.

"If you make her uncomfortable, I'll bury you under the porch."

Hero's expression didn't change.

"If I make her uncomfortable," he said calmly, "she'll tell me herself."

Hazel looked impressed despite herself.

Then she looked at me, as if waiting to see whether I agreed.

And the thing was...

I did.

That startled me more than anything else had so far.

Because I believed him.

Not absolutely. Not blindly. I wasn't stupid.

But enough.

Enough that my shoulders lowered by a fraction I hadn't noticed they'd been holding.

Enough that something warm and wary inside me didn't immediately retreat.

Hazel caught it too, whatever shifted across my face, because she simply nodded once and stepped back.

"Fine. But I'm still watching you."

Hero dipped his chin in acknowledgment.

"I assumed."

She beamed at that, then tugged at my wrist. "Come on, Zizi. Halo is spiraling internally."

I let her pull me a step before I stopped and looked back.

I shouldn't have.

Hero had not taken his eyes off me.

The force of it hit me all over again - that same sharp, silent pull, like a thread tied somewhere deep in my ribs and wrapped once around his hand.

The yard suddenly felt too small.

I looked away first.

Again.

Hazel made a very interesting noise in her throat but said nothing until we were halfway across the grass and safely out of direct earshot.

Then she exploded.

"What the hell was that?"

I kept walking.

"Nothing."

"Halsey."

"Stop saying my name like you're a disappointed principal."

"You were in the backyard alone with Hero James."

"That is an objectively true statement."

"And?"

"And what?"

"And apparently the s****l chemistry was visible from space."

I nearly tripped over my own foot.

"Hazel!"

"I'm serious. He looked at you like -"

"Do not finish that sentence."

She finished it anyway. "Like if you asked him to burn the house down, he'd want a lighter."

My face went so hot I was surprised smoke didn't start pouring out of my ears.

"You're insane."

"Maybe." She grinned sidelong at me. "Am I wrong?"

I opened my mouth.

Closed it.

Because yes, she was exaggerating.

And no, she wasn't wrong.

Hazel saw the silence and made a tiny strangled sound of triumph.

"Oh my God."

"Don't make this a thing."

"It is already a thing."

"It is not a thing."

"It became a thing the second you sprinted out of the house looking like your soul had left your body."

"I did not sprint."

"You spiritually sprinted."

I groaned.

The back door swung open ahead of us, releasing a wash of music and warm air as a couple stumbled out laughing. Hazel steered us around them and back inside, where the heat hit all at once - perfume, alcohol, bodies, bass, the heavy pulse of the party returning like a second bloodstream.

It felt different now.

Not because the room had changed.

Because I had.

Or because something in me had been nudged off its axis out there under the oak.

As we moved through the kitchen, people looked at Hazel and smiled. A couple of girls called Halo's name from the hallway.

Someone brushed past my shoulder, muttering an apology, and I barely registered it because every inch of my skin felt newly awake.

I was absurdly conscious of the path Hero would have to take if he came back inside.

Of the fact that he now knew my name.

Of the fact that I knew his voice in the dark.

Hazel grabbed two bottled waters from a cooler by the island and shoved one into my hand.

"Drink this before you dehydrate from tension."

I twisted the cap off and took an indignant swallow.

"Has anyone ever told you you're difficult to be around?"

"Constantly." She sipped her own water. "But they love me anyway."

That, unfortunately, was true.

By the time we found Halo again, she was perched sideways in Niko's lap on the sectional, one arm around his shoulders while he talked animatedly with Dawson and Carter over the music. The second she saw us, her whole body sharpened.

There it was.

The spiraling Hazel had mentioned.

Niko noticed it too and rubbed one slow hand up Halo's bare back, clearly trying to stop her from launching herself across the room in protective older-sister mode.

It did not work.

Halo was on her feet before we even reached them.

"Where were you?" she demanded, though the relief in her face softened the edge of it. "I turned around and you were gone."

"In the backyard."

"With Hero James," Hazel supplied helpfully.

Halo's eyes widened.

Niko's brows rose.

Carter looked openly entertained.

Dawson took a very deliberate sip of his drink as though he'd just stumbled onto live theater.

I glared at Hazel with everything I had.

She smiled angelically.

Halo took me by the wrist and dragged me one step closer, examining my face like she could reconstruct the entire conversation from my blush alone.

"What happened?"

"Nothing."

Hazel laughed so hard she almost spilled her water.

Niko's mouth twitched.

Halo looked between the two of us, then back at me.

"Halsey."

The use of my full name in that tone should have irritated me. Instead, it made something unexpectedly tender rise in my throat.

Because this was how they loved me - loudly, nosily, with impossible amounts of concern and zero respect for privacy.

It was a little suffocating.

It was also the reason I knew how to survive being hurt.

"Nothing happened," I said, softer this time. "We talked."

Niko leaned back slightly. "And?"

I looked at him.

His expression wasn't suspicious, exactly.

Just assessing.

Protective in that blunt, masculine way that said Halo mattered to him, therefore her sisters mattered too.

I appreciated it more than I wanted to.

"And he didn't make me uncomfortable," I said carefully.

Niko held my gaze a moment, then nodded once.

"Good."

Halo was less easily soothed.

Her eyes narrowed slightly. "Did he touch you?"

My mind, traitorous and immediate, offered a vivid image of what it might feel like if he did.

I nearly choked on my water.

"No!"

Hazel leaned into my shoulder, delighted. "Not yet."

"Hazel!" both Halo and I snapped at once.

Carter started laughing outright.

Even Dawson looked like he was trying not to smile.

Niko pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered something in what I assumed was Croatian that sounded deeply resigned.

"I swear to God," Halo said, pointing at Hazel, "you are getting exorcised."

Hazel only grinned wider.

The music shifted then, the bass line changing, and people around the living room began shouting in recognition of the next song.

Someone dragged Ashton into an argument near the beer pong table. A fresh burst of laughter rose from the kitchen.

And through all of it, through the noise and light and bodies moving around us, I felt it before I saw it.

That awareness.

That tightening along the back of my neck.

I turned.

Hero stood near the archway leading from the hall into the living room, one shoulder braced lazily against the frame as if he had every right in the world to occupy space that way.

His attention was fixed on me.

Of course it was.

The room seemed to tilt around that fact.

Niko followed my line of sight and cursed under his breath.

Halo looked.

Hazel looked.

Carter smirked.

Dawson just exhaled through his nose like a man watching a disaster unfold in slow motion.

Hero's gaze flicked briefly over my sisters, Niko, and his friends, taking in the cluster around me. Then it settled back on my face.

He didn't wave.

Didn't smile.

Just lifted his chin once in quiet acknowledgment.

The gesture should have been casual.

It wasn't.

It felt intimate somehow.

Deliberate.

Like a question only I was meant to hear.

Hazel made a tiny choking sound.

Halo muttered, "Absolutely not."

Niko said nothing, but his jaw tightened in visible thought.

And somewhere beneath the shock of it, beneath the nerves, beneath the wariness I kept trying to hold onto with both hands, desire bloomed again - dark and immediate and impossible to dismiss.

Because he came back.

Because he looked at me like leaving had never been an option.

And because, despite every warning bell still ringing inside me, some reckless, aching part of me was beginning to want him to cross the room.