Hot Driver - S01 E15

Story 3 days ago

Hot Driver - S01 E15

Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 15

Le Chateau – Private Dining Room – Night

Ivory didn’t hesitate.

The moment warmth spread across Norman’s trousers, she reached into her clutch and pulled out her phone, angling it just enough to capture the whole humiliating scene — his stricken face, the spreading stain, the way his hands fluttered uselessly over his lap like that could somehow undo what had already happened.
“Smile,” she said coolly, snapping the photo before he could even react.

Norman’s face crumpled from mortification into pure panic. He shot up from his seat so fast his chair toppled backward with a loud crack against the marble floor, and without a word, without even attempting to salvage what little dignity remained, he bolted from the restaurant, weaving between tables, nearly knocking over a passing waiter in his desperate scramble for the exit.
The dining room had gone completely silent. Every head turned. Whispers rippled outward in his wake.

Ivory sat there for a moment longer, savoring the small, vicious satisfaction of a job well done, before rising smoothly and walking out with her chin held high, utterly unbothered by the stares following her.

Outside, the sky had opened up. Rain fell in a steady sheet, drumming against the pavement, against the awning, against the windshield of the parked Porsche where Duane stood waiting near the door.
He saw her coming and immediately recognized the storm brewing behind her eyes — something far worse than the one falling from the clouds.

“How’d it go?” he asked carefully, opening the door for her without being asked this time.
She didn’t answer. She slid into the back seat and stared straight ahead, jaw locked, saying absolutely nothing.

Duane got behind the wheel and glanced at her in the mirror. “That bad, huh?”
Silence.

“You know, for someone who just apparently traumatized a grown man into wetting himself, you don’t look particularly victorious.”

Still nothing.

“I’m only asking because your face looks like you’re about to combust. I’d rather know now if I need to evacuate the vehicle.”
“Just drive,” Ivory finally snapped, her voice tight and clipped.

He pulled out into the rain-soaked street, the wipers thudding steadily back and forth, the silence in the car stretching thin and taut.
They hadn’t gone more than a few blocks before it broke.
“WHY IS IT SO HARD FOR PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND?!” Ivory suddenly exploded, her voice cracking through the quiet like a whip. “WHY DOES EVERYONE KEEP PUSHING AND PUSHING AND PUSHING?!”

Duane’s eyes flicked to the mirror, startled, but he said nothing, letting her continue.
“I’ve sworn off love,” she said, her voice shaking now, all her careful composure splintering apart at once. “I don’t want it. My heart is too fragile to be broken again — do you understand that? I don’t want love. I don’t want marriage. I don’t want another arranged date with another pathetic man my father thinks will ‘fix’ me. I want to be left ALONE.”
Her hands were trembling in her lap.

“I want to be alone,” she repeated, quieter now, almost to herself. “Is that so hard to understand? Is it so wrong to just want to be left in peace?”
Her eyes burned, hot and wet, and for a horrifying second she thought she might actually cry — right there, in the back of her own car, in front of him of all people.

She wouldn’t allow it.
She turned her face toward the window instead, watching the rain streak sideways across the glass, refusing to let a single tear fall where he might see it.
Duane didn’t say anything. He kept his eyes on the road, his expression unreadable, and drove.
Neither of them spoke for the rest of the ride.
The Car – Later
“Don’t take me to the Bennett Mansion,” Ivory said suddenly, her voice flat and drained, all the earlier fire burned out of it. “Take me to my own house.”
Duane glanced at her, surprised. “Your own house?”

“I have a place. Separate from my parents’. Just drive where I tell you.”
She gave him the directions in short, clipped sentences, and he followed them without argument, without a single sarcastic comment, sensing correctly that tonight was not the night to push.

The house, when they arrived, was smaller than the Bennett Mansion but no less impressive — a sleek, modern building tucked behind tall gates, dark and quiet, clearly unused for some time. Ivory let them both in with a keycard, moving through the entryway like a ghost, and disappeared up the stairs without a word.
“No maids?” Duane called after her.

“I don’t stay here enough to bother hiring any,” she said, not turning back. “Lock the door when you’re done standing there.”
Then she was gone, and Duane was left alone in the dark, quiet foyer of a house that felt more like an abandoned refuge than a home.

He stood there for a moment, taking it in — the silence, the shadows, the strange stillness of a place clearly meant to be a hiding spot rather than a residence.
Is this where you come when it gets to be too much? he wondered. Is this what you do when nobody’s watching?

He thought about her outburst in the car — the raw, unguarded fury of it, the way her voice had cracked on the word alone.
Was it Ron? he thought. Whoever hurt you enough that you’d rather live in an empty house than let anyone close enough to try again?
He didn’t have an answer. But something about the question settled uncomfortably in his chest anyway.

Shaking it off, he made his way toward what he assumed was the kitchen. If he was staying, he wasn’t about to sit around doing nothing.

The Kitchen
The kitchen, like the rest of the house, was clean but clearly underused — pristine appliances, barely touched cookware, a refrigerator stocked with more take-out containers than actual food.
Duane rolled up his sleeves and got to work anyway.

He moved through the space with practiced, easy precision, pulling ingredients from the pantry and fridge, chopping vegetables with quick, confident strokes, seasoning as he went by instinct rather than measurement. Years of cooking for Sloane’s customers, and years before that cooking for his mother and Luis on nights when she was too exhausted from work to manage it herself, had left him more than capable in a kitchen — arguably more capable than most people would ever have guessed, looking at him.

Within half an hour, the counter held a full spread — grilled chicken glazed with a sauce he’d improvised from what he could find, seasoned rice, a simple but vibrant vegetable side, even a small dessert he threw together from what little sweet stock the pantry had to offer.

He set two places at the dining table, unsure if she’d even come down to eat, but preparing enough for both of them regardless.
Old habits, he thought, glancing at the second plate. Never cook for just yourself. There’s always someone hungry somewhere.

Ivory’s Room
Upstairs, Ivory sat on the edge of her bed, one hand pressed over her face, trying — and failing — to keep the tears at bay.
The memories had come rushing back the moment she was alone. The courtyard. The rose. Ron’s voice, warm and sincere, promising things he never meant. Maeve’s laughter, bright and encouraging, cheering her on toward a betrayal neither of them had bothered to warn her about.
Everything she’d tried so hard to bury came clawing back to the surface all at once, and this time, she couldn’t force it back down.
The tears came before she could stop them.

She hated it. She hated every second of it. Tears were for the weak, she’d told herself a thousand times over the years — every time grief threatened to surface, every time the memory tried to break through her carefully constructed walls. Ivory Bennett doesn’t cry. Ivory Bennett doesn’t break.

But right now, alone in this empty house, with no one watching, she was breaking anyway.

She needed someone. Someone to hold her, to tell her it would be okay, to remind her that she wasn’t actually as alone as she’d insisted, over and over, that she wanted to be.

But there was no one. There never was.
She wiped her face harshly with the back of her hand, furious at her own weakness, and forced herself up off the bed. A shower. She needed a shower, needed to wash away the night, the humiliation, the memories, all of it..

She stood under the hot water until her skin turned pink, until her mind finally quieted enough to function, and dressed afterward in soft, comfortable clothes, her damp hair falling loosely around her shoulders.

As she made her way downstairs, an unexpected aroma reached her — warm, savory, undeniably delicious.

She followed it, frowning in confusion, until she reached the dining room.

And stopped dead in the doorway.
Duane stood at the table, setting down the last dish, looking entirely too comfortable in her kitchen, in her house, like he belonged there.
“What,” she said slowly, “are you doing?”

“Making dinner,” he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You didn’t eat anything at the restaurant, unless traumatizing a man counts as a meal. Sit down.”
“I didn’t invite you to cook in my house.”

“You didn’t have to. I was hungry, and apparently so are you, based on how long you’ve been staring at this food.”
Ivory’s mouth pressed into a thin line, but her stomach betrayed her with a low, undeniable growl.
She sat, reluctantly, across from him, glaring at the plate like it had personally wronged her.

The food smelled incredible. Looked even better. And when she finally took a bite, it tasted better than either.
She would rather die than admit that, though.

“This is terrible,” she announced, setting down her fork with dramatic disdain. “Bland. Tasteless. I’ve had better food from a vending machine.”
She spit the bite delicately into her napkin, wiping her mouth with exaggerated disgust for good measure.

Duane stared at her, shaking his head slowly, completely unconvinced. “You’re really going to sit there and lie to my face while chewing seconds before you spit it out.”
“I’m not lying.”
“Your face says otherwise.”
“My face says nothing.”

“Your face,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “says you haven’t had a decent home-cooked meal in years and you don’t know how to handle it.”
“That’s absurd.”
“Is it? Because you cleared half that plate before deciding it was suddenly disgusting.”

“I was being polite.”
“You threw food into a napkin. That’s not politeness. That’s a tantrum.”
“I do not throw tantrums.”
“You’ve thrown at least three since I met you. I’ve been keeping count.”

They argued back and forth, volleying insults and denials, neither willing to concede an inch, until finally Duane simply shrugged, stood, and began clearing the table, effectively ending the discussion by refusing to continue it.
He won. As usual.

Ivory sat there, fuming silently, watching him move around her kitchen with the same infuriating ease he brought to everything, and hated — absolutely hated — how unbothered he managed to look while doing it.

The Guest Room
Duane retreated to one of the spare rooms down the hall, a space that, unlike the rest of the sparsely used house, actually seemed stocked and ready — a closet with a few basic changes of clothes, fresh towels, the kind of preparedness that suggested Ivory occasionally hosted overnight guests she didn’t want wandering through the main house.

He showered quickly, letting the hot water ease some of the tension still knotted in his shoulders from the long, strange day, and returned to the room afterward to dress.

He’d barely pulled on a fresh pair of pants, shirt still hanging loose and unbuttoned around his shoulders, when the door burst open without warning.
“Duane, I need to—”

Ivory stopped mid-sentence.
He didn’t turn around immediately, still focused on buttoning his shirt, completely unbothered by the interruption. “You know,” he said calmly, not looking at her, “most people knock.”

Ivory didn’t answer.
Her eyes had already betrayed her, sweeping over the expanse of his bare chest and shoulders before he finished buttoning up, tracing the lines of muscle with far more attention than she intended to give.

He glanced up then, catching her mid-stare, and raised an eyebrow, a slow smirk spreading across his face. “Are you just going to stand there and drool, or was there something you actually needed?”
“I am not drooling,” Ivory snapped, her face flushing deep red.
“You look like you’re about to devour me whole.”
“You wish.”
“You’re staring.”
“I’m disgusted.”

“Sure you are.” He finished buttoning his shirt, completely unhurried, clearly enjoying her discomfort far more than he should have. “Your face doesn’t really sell that story, though.”
“My face sells exactly what I want it to sell.”
“Then it’s selling something very different from what you’re claiming.”

“Your body is ugly,” Ivory said, crossing her arms tightly, grasping desperately for footing in an argument she was rapidly losing. “Pathetic, even. I’ve seen better bodies on mannequins.”
“Funny, you were staring at this pathetic body for a solid ten seconds before you remembered you were supposed to be insulting it.”

“I was not staring.”
“You were staring.”
“I WASN’T.”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
They argued for several more minutes, circling the same accusations back and forth, Ivory growing more flustered with every exchange while Duane remained maddeningly, infuriatingly calm.
He won. As usual.

She stormed out of the room without ever actually stating why she’d come in the first place, slamming the door behind her hard enough to rattle the frame.
Rodriguez Mansion – The Next Morning
Abigail woke slowly, reaching across the bed out of habit, expecting to find Tyler’s warmth beside her..
Her hand met cold, empty sheets instead.

She sat up, frowning, and glanced toward the bathroom, where the faint sound of his voice drifted through the partially closed door.

She padded closer, intending to say good morning, when his words stopped her cold.

“I told you to stop calling me,” Tyler was saying, his voice low and tense. “I’ll come today. We’ll talk, and we’ll end it, once and for all. Just — stop calling me like this. My wife cannot find out about this. Do you understand? After today, don’t call me again.”
Abigail’s blood ran cold.

She stood frozen outside the door, her heart pounding so loudly she was certain he’d hear it through the wood, waiting for more, for context, for anything that might make this sound less damning than it did.

Nothing came that made it better.
She backed away slowly, careful not to make a sound, grabbed a coat from the closet, and left the house without a word, without her phone, without a plan beyond simply needing to be anywhere but there.

Tyler emerged from the bathroom minutes later, expecting to find her still asleep.

The bed was empty.
“Abigail?” he called, moving through the room, then the hallway, then the rest of the house, his confusion growing with every empty room.

“Abigail, where are you?”

Her phone buzzed on the nightstand, still charging, still very much in the house.
Realization hit him like a physical blow.
She heard something. She heard too much.

He grabbed his own phone, dialing her number uselessly, listening to it ring from the nightstand a few feet away, panic beginning to claw up his throat.

“Where are you,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair, pacing now. “Abigail, where the hell are you?”