“His Wire had been severed before you Jolted him, Hazel,” Vee explained, and Hazel found that the realization brought her more relief than she would have imagined. “It’s what the tech, Matthew, and I were doing in the living room while you diffused the failsafe. Matthew realized he couldn’t find the failsafe in time, but he thought it might limit the damage Peter could do if he were separated from the Bridge. I used the key you gave me to finish the severance, so the Jolt just acted like a Taser.”

“So instead of living his life out at a facility,” offered Sophie with more pleasure than she should express, “he will live out his days in prison. I’m not sure which one I would have preferred.”

Hazel glared at her best friend, but didn’t acknowledge the dig. “I just…this isn’t the outcome I wanted.”

“But that is,” Sophie nodded, gesturing across the lobby to where Rel was stepping out of Mr. DeSoto’s office. Hazel tried to suppress the grief stirred in her at the sight of him. Even as he had, in his infallible kindness, comforted Hazel, he had pushed her away. As soon as Vee had made it to the bedroom and retrieved Peter, Rel had gently lifted Hazel off of him and backed away from her, pressing himself against the wall as if scared to touch her. She wondered how much she had hurt him with her loyalty to Peter, with the kiss he had seen. When would he let her explain?

Rel and Tomás made their way to the group of ladies, and Hazel didn’t look at them. Rel, though, came to stand beside Hazel, and her breath struggled through her lungs. Was he just doing what the people in the room expected of him, or did he want to be there?

“Were you able to separate all of the kids from the servers?” Sophie wondered.

“Easily, now that we did not need to worry about upsetting anyone.”

Before anyone could speak again, the elevator bell sounded, and a cadre of agents stepped off.

Rel moved away from Hazel, and he and Vee stood to their full height in front of the agents, staring blankly at the wall.

“Associate Director Lewellen,” Tomás declared warmly, offering his hand to shake.

“Mr. DeSoto,” the stranger replied, and though the man wore strict formality, he shook Mr. DeSoto’s hand with familiarity.

“This is where I get off,” Tomás announced, turning back to Sophie and offering her a hug.

“It’s not right, Daddy!” she complained.

“It is exactly right, dear Sophie. Let your love for Hazel remind you. All those other people were put in danger, and their lives upended by my actions.”

“By Peter Donovan.”

Vee clasped Sophie’s hand. “It’s going to be okay,” Vee claimed as Tomás threw her a grateful smile and accompanied the agents into the elevator.

“AD Lewellen is one of your dad’s best friends, Sophie.” Rel adopted a comforting tone, but Hazel sensed just a hint of resentment. “And he engaged in some…questionable tactics of his own. I don’t think there will be any unjust stones thrown. Which reminds me…” Rel turned to meet Hazel’s gaze for the first time since they had awakened that morning. Really, since the fight in Peter’s bedroom. “Can I have a minute, Hazel?”

Everything about Hazel spoke pain, and Rel doubted himself for a minute, not wanting to bring up any unpleasant topic until she felt better.

With a deep breath, though, she managed a lighter expression, and Rel’s heart warmed. She hadn’t spoken much since they had returned.

“Sophie,” Hazel hummed, stepping up to her friend and wrapping her into a hug. “Your dad will be okay. Rel and Vee will keep the NCB honest, and I will be his witness. This whole thing has been hell.” She stepped back and looked Sophie in the face. “I’m not one to make excuses for people, myself included, but if there was ever a time to lose it, it was when someone held you hostage. Anyone with a brain will see that, especially with your dad’s generosity to the people from my building. The new apartments will have state-of-the-art systems, and the whole place will be much nicer than any of us could have afforded otherwise.”

Even though she wouldn’t be fully mollified, Sophie smiled at Hazel. “You’re a good friend.”

“So are you, Sophie. The best.”

Sophie leaned in to whisper into Hazel’s ear, and she spoke as low as possible so no one would hear. “Go put that boy out of his misery. He has been in agony since last night.”

That’s because I stabbed him in the back, Hazel leveled silently, but she just squeezed Sophie’s hand and turned back to Rel. He really did look miserable.

“You have a few minutes now?” Hazel asked him, and from behind them, Sophie called out.

“Use my dad’s office, Hazel.”

Hazel threw a grateful smile over her shoulder at Sophie, and as they approached the door, she glanced down to where her hand almost connected with Rel's. When his eyes followed hers, she heard his quick intake of breath before he took her hand.

Steeling herself, Hazel reached for the door. “Come on,” she commanded.

Once the door shut behind them, Hazel stopped their forward motion, turning back toward Rel. She stood so close he could smell the peach scent of her shampoo. When she peered up at him, the misery on her face expressed the inside of his mind, and he couldn’t indulge his own insecurity at the expense of her comfort. A moment later, he had threaded his arms behind her and rested his chin on her head.

After several breaths, Rel ventured his thoughts. “Are you okay?”

Hazel wanted to say yes, but she hated to lie to Rel. Ever since she had kissed Peter – right in front of Rel – since she had cried over Peter, Rel had held her at arm’s length, and her chest ached with the fear that she had not only lost Peter, she had offended Rel in the process.

Of course, she had. How else could Rel have reacted to everything she did in that apartment. It was as if she didn’t care about Rel at all – which was so far from the truth. “I’m not sure how to answer that question,” she tried.

“You could answer with the truth,” Rel begged as he pushed her back and looked her in the face, and though he attempted a teasing tone, her hurt expression showed that he failed.

“I wasn’t trying to lie to you!” she insisted, shaking off his grip from her arms and turning toward the huge window. “I didn’t know what would happen, and I certainly didn’t know how it would affect me.”

“That’s not what I meant. I mean, you were sad about Peter.”

“Of course, I was sad about Peter!” she insisted defensively, throwing her hands in the air. “I had known him for years, and most of the time, I had thought him my friend. How was I supposed to react?”

Rel stepped toward her. Why was she so upset? “Hazel,” he reached for her arm and spun her around, gripping both arms so he could look at her. “You were supposed to react exactly as you did! You wouldn’t be you if that whole situation hadn’t broken your heart!”

Confused, Hazel raised her eyes to his. “But then why were you mad at me? Is it because I kissed him?"

“No,” came the tense reply, and the look in his eye took her back to the hallway of Dragnet, the heated craving that had fed the moments before he pushed her away. “I understood that, too, though I almost sprinted across the room and punched him right there.”

“If you understood, why did you push me away?” Her tone came out breathless. “Why did you hold me at arm’s length?”

To her surprise, Rel huffed a laugh.

“Do you think this is funny?” she pulled against his arms.

“Not funny, Hazel. Ironic.” He let go of her and ran his hand through his hair. “If I had been more mad, things might have been easier.”

“More mad…?” Hazel was thoroughly confused.

“Come here.” Rel reached for her hand and dragged her to a little settee that looked out across the nearby park. When he started to pull her to sit with him, Hazel resisted. “Hazel,” he sought her eyes. “There’s something I have to tell you, and I think you’ll appreciate it more if you aren’t so far away from me.”

Suppressing her hurt, Hazel relaxed and let him pull her onto his lap. His warmth tempted her to calm, but she held back for fear that she was misunderstanding his actions.

“First of all, I need to apologize for the way I treated you in the coffee shop.”

“Don’t be stupid – now I know you were trying to keep me safe.”

“That doesn’t excuse me for the harshness, and believe it or not, I held myself back at the time.”

Hazel narrowed her eyes at him. “Okay, apology accepted. But a lot has happened since then; why have you still been acting like I might electrocute you if you got too close. Do you think I’m going to jolt you, too?”

With a glare, Rel pressed into his explanation. “Of course, not Hazel. You know it’s not that, but I understand I’ve been confusing. I have been staying away from you for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that I thought you were upset that you had to jolt Peter to save me.”

“What?” Hazel actually looked angry.

“If I hadn’t let him get the upper hand, if I had been able to restrain him, you wouldn’t have had to do that.”

“Rel!” Hazel corrected. “That is ridiculous! You were a hero. If you hadn’t been there, I can’t imagine where I would be.” The idea sent a shiver up her spine. She could imagine Peter after the Crash, the ways he would hold her to him. How she would be too scared to get away.

Reading her stress, Rel hugged her to him.

“It’s okay, Hazel.”

“Yes,” she pushed him back so she could look in his eyes. “Because of you. I had to Jolt Peter because it was the right thing to do, for a lot of reasons. I had decided to do whatever it took to stop him as soon as I entered that apartment last night. But because of you, I had a fighting chance. I was no match for Peter physically – we used to spar, so I know. You had no problem with that part. Before you brought your kick-ass fighting, I was going to fail immensely.”

“No problem! That’s what you call ending up on the ground being choked out?”

“After holding him at bay and protecting me for ten minutes! It’s one thing to fight with no distractions, but Peter didn’t value anything in that room as long as he could stop me. There’s no telling if he would have seriously injured or even killed either or both of us. You had to preserve something, which is much harder than his intention to destroy.”

Rel reached his hand to her face, smiling with tender amusement. “You give me too much credit.”

“No way. I give you exactly what you deserve, and I know how amazing you are. Which is why it hurt so bad that you pushed me away after.”

Again, Rel dropped his hands and huffed a sigh. “Hazel, this is really embarrassing.”

“Embarrassing?”

“I pushed you away for a purely physical reason, not because I was upset with you.”

Confounded, Hazel shifted so that she faced him fully. “Physical?”

“When Peter rushed you, I wanted to pummel him. I was terrified. And I would have done anything to save you.”

“But you pushed me away instead. I mean, I know you don’t have a girlfriend…”

“So, remember how I told you my Neurex was weird?”

Hazel shrugged her agreement.

“Before my Wire was severed, I had limited control of the Neurex.”

“Again, okay…”

“Right after I met you – the day your apartment burned – the NCB started manipulating my emotions. They kind of…pushed me toward you.”

“Wait,” Hazel puzzled. “Are you saying you aren’t really interested in me?” A hurt expression sent her lips into a pout, and in hopes of disabusing her of the notion, he took her face in his hands and planted a short kiss on her lips.

“That is not at all what I am saying,” he comforted.

“But if they were manipulating you, how do you know this is real?” She gestured to the space between them.

“Well, first of all, I figured out that it was your handheld that did it.”

“Did it?”

“Set off the hormone surge. I suspected when I dragged you out of that club, when you didn’t have your handheld and the surge was absent, but then the hallway happened…”

At the thought of the hallway, Hazel licked her lips, understanding completely. Though Rel bent and kissed her lightly, he let go of her with a quick motion and leaned back to create some space between them.

“The…intensity…made me doubt my instincts,” he grinned his most charming smile, and Hazel found herself staring stupidly into his brown-green eyes. Irritated, she shook herself out of it. “But it also helps to have really smart friends. I had the same questions as you, worried that I was going to be leading you on just to disappoint you when I was master of myself again. That somehow the interest was manufactured. But Vee made a really good point.”

“First of all, I already liked you from the first time I met you. That was before the manipulation. When it hits, you can’t miss it, and I would have known. I liked you so much from that first car ride that I wondered if it would break some kind of NCB protocol if I asked you out. Then, you were with Peter. Then, once they messed with my Neurex, I started to lose memory of the timeline. The feelings were so intense, I didn’t know when they had started or how much of them were mine. But Vee saved my sanity. She reminded me that the intensity of my feelings for you were completely in line with normal, if a little too easy to ignite. I just had to use more self-control in order not to overstep propriety.”

Hazel snorted. “Propriety. I had thought you were just shyer than I am, which is hard to do.”

Rel lifted his hand to her face. “I am definitely not shy,” he grinned, raising her eyes to his.

“So, what you’re saying is you’re weak?” She peered at him through her lashes.

“You laugh, but I was…”

Hazel could read the stress on his face, a flash of tension at the memory of his desire, and a thrill heated her skin.

“I’ve seen you, Hazel. You expect respect – as you should, and as I want to give you.”

“True, but I didn’t have my handheld at Peter’s, so you weren’t…under the influence. Why did you push me away?”

“My Wire was severed, so no one was manipulating my Neurex. Except me. After the severance, I had full control of the enhancements the Neurex offered.”

“You manipulated your own Neurex?”

Rel pursed his lips. “I had to stop Peter, and there are some pretty powerful human hormones that offer a burst of strength. And being human, those hormones do not act in full efficiency. They affect more than just my muscles and my attitude. When he lifted you onto that bed…”

He said nothing else, and Hazel squinted her eyes at him. “So what you’re saying is, you pushed me away because –“

“Being a little…ramped up, I didn’t think it was exactly an appropriate time for what my hormones were telling me to do.”

For the first time in hours, Hazel grinned, and she turned to him, straddling him so that she could look full in his face. Smiling to herself, her fingers drew circles on his sweater. “Sounds like you were pretty overwhelmed.”

“Stop it, Hazel,” he murmured, his voice pained, and Hazel grinned.

“Okay, continue…” She raised her arms to his shoulders and pulled herself close enough to latch her hands behind his neck.

Rel rolled his eyes but took a breath and tried to continue in nonchalance

“You’re teasing me right now, but you have no idea, Hazel,” he hummed, and Hazel lost a little of her teasing attitude. “My mind was so conflicted, because I wanted to make you feel better, but I also wanted to…it was so physically tense. It was like an out-of-body experience.”

For a moment, Hazel pierced his eyes with hers, and the heat swelled at the thought of how he might have ended that sentence. I also wanted to…

Mr. DeSoto’s office was not the place or time to have the conversation, though, not with a building full of people ready to open the door at any moment. Hazel sucked in a breath to break the connection, and she returned to her teasing tone. “Not out of body for your body, I imagine,” she snickered.

“You realize you’re on my lap right now, completely in my power.” He tugged her waist until their bodies pressed together.

“Oh no you don’t,” Hazel glared at him.

“Fine,” he laughed, and Hazel lowered her arms to ease the tension between them. Still, she managed a smile through the growing strain.

“You were never cut out for power games, Rel.” She touched his cheek, teasing through her breathlessness. “Besides, I’ve played with the best. And I’m an elite gamer.”

“I’m a pretty good amateur. And I have other advantages,” he murmured, and when Hazel smiled, Rel couldn’t stand it anymore. He pulled her mouth to his, and they lost track of time for several minutes.

When the moment cooled, Hazel lay her head against his chest. “Hazel…” He petted her hair. “I’m really sorry you had to do that. I didn’t mean for you to choose between him or me – not that way. Not life or death.”

Sighing, Hazel leaned back to look at him, laying her hand on his cheek. “I had to choose what was right. Besides, it was a privilege to save you, Rel Martins.”

With a smile, Rel raised his hand to cover hers. He had lived in tension for hours, and her words freed something inside him. “And it was a privilege to save you, Hazel Hops. It is Hazel Hops, right? Not Austen Trace?”

Hazel made a face. “Austen Trace sounds like a suburb.”

Rel broke into a grin. “Hazel Hops sounds like a craft beer.”

“Which would you rather be known as?”

Rel laughed out loud, and Hazel sucked in the pleasure of the moment. They had laughed far too little in the past few weeks.

Turning sideways, Hazel leaned against his chest again, nuzzling under his chin. He was…more kind than she could comprehend, if she considered for long. “I guess you were right in the hallway,” she allowed, melting into him as much as she could manage. “It’s good to know that you mean this.” After a minute, she leaned up to kiss him again, and she couldn’t quite remember any of her propriety as she pushed him to lie on the couch, stretching herself along his body and pulling his face to hers. Though he hesitated, he threaded his arms behind her and pulled her into a deeper kiss.

“Ahem,” came the unexpected interruption, and Hazel scrambled to a more proper position next to Rel on the couch. “Good thing it was me and not my dad. Though, apparently, he’s on his way back here. So, you two might want to find someplace else to snog.”

“Snog?” Hazel gasped, incensed.

“Or whatever you call it nowadays. I haven’t had a boyfriend in a while,” Sophie sighed. “You guys get out of here.”

Recovering faster than Hazel, Rel adopted a casual tone. “You promised to teach me how to play Trip,” he suggested, rising to his feet and offering her a hand up. “You said this is the best place to learn.”

Hazel caught his strength and continued the relaxed conversation. “You played a pretty good tank there in Peter’s room, absorbing the blows to protect the sage while she worked. You would be a natural…”

Rel shook his head. “I want to try something a little different. Maybe something I would never do in real life.”

“I know,” Sophie offered. “He could be a berserker.”

Hazel shook her head. “That’s too close to home. You didn’t see him in that fight with Peter.”

When Rel glanced down at her, she adopted a coy expression.

“A mage?” Sophie wonder.

Hazel full-out grinned. “I have a feeling he’s been throwing his charms around since the first girl in grade school noticed his pretty face.” Rel smiled back at her and pecked her on the cheek, at which Sophie rolled her eyes.

“Maybe I could be a ninja,” Rel posited. “It might be nice to be small and quick.”

“Even better to be heavy and quick. You can just give yourself a burst of hormones, and you get the best of both worlds.

“Not sure it’s safe to try that again…”

“I know…” Hazel’s face lit up. “You could be a thief!”

“A thief?” Sophie begged skeptically. “Is this just your penchant for cording irony? I mean, isn’t he kind of morally opposed to thievery?”

“Definitely not. He’s a natural.”

“Why in the world would you say that?” Sophie scoffed, but then she read her friend’s expression. Something about the way Hazel beamed up at Rel must have tipped Sophie off to impending inane humor. “Wait, Hazel,” Sophie pleaded. “I know that face. It usually ends with me rolling my eyes and wishing I had earplugs.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sophie,” Hazel turned to her friend. “He’d be an amazing thief. He’s a natural.” ” As Hazel spoke, she backed up against Rel, and when he slid his arms around her, she spun to face him.

“A natural thief?” he wondered with confused amusement.

“Of course.” She lifted her mouth so that the heat mingled between their faces as she spoke. “The first time I met you, you stole my heart.” She followed the words by gripping his hair and tugging his mouth hard against hers.

Sophie groaned her disgust, but once Hazel released the kiss, Rel actually guffawed, grabbing Hazel around the waist and lifting her off the ground. When he bent down for another kiss, Sophie spun to leave the room.

“I give up,” she announced. “You two deserve each other.” She stalked out the door, leaving Hazel and Rel grinning stupidly at each other as they followed behind.