“You look like her,” he replied.
Well, that wasn’t so bad. My Mom was a mess, Hawk was right, but she had pretty kickass style.
“You act like Meredith,” Hawk cut into my thoughts.
I focused on him. “I do?”
“When you’re bein’ sweet and not ranting or hacking at cookie dough with cleavers.”
I smiled. “I didn’t hack at cookie dough with a cleaver.”
He grinned down at me. “It was close.”
He was right and I felt my body start to shake with laughter.
He watched me laugh until I was just smiling at him then he dipped his head and kissed the base of my throat. Then he rolled off me, pulled the covers over us, reached out to turn off the light on his nightstand and turned me so my back was tucked into his front. Then he pressed into me and reached across me to turn off the light on my nightstand. Then he pulled the hair off my neck and kissed the skin at the back of my ear. He wrapped his arm around me, pulled me deep, hitched my leg with his and settled into the pillows.
Hawk’s goodnight.
No slam bam thank you ma’am. Instead, talking, laughing then cuddling.
I guess I could deal with firebombs and drive-bys and learning my Mom was still a mess after all these years if this was how I ended my day.
I lay in the dark of Hawk’s cavernous warehouse, in his big bed, his big, warm body close, the memory of his goodnight sweet and fresh.
Yeah, I could deal with all that if this was how I ended my day.
But now I was wondering if Hawk felt the same.
Chapter Nineteen
One Hand Up
My eyes opened and I saw it was dawn. There were lights on in the warehouse and I knew they were over the kitchen. I heard Hawk’s murmur, he was far away, on the phone.
I scooted to the edge of the bed, dropped my torso down and felt for my nightshirt. I found it, searched for my underwear, found that and lifted up. I pulled my nightshirt over my head, shoved my arms through and then shimmied my undies up while in the bed. Then I got out, wandered to the bathroom, did my thing, wandered out and down the stairs.
Hawk was still on the phone, dressed in uniform of skintight, long-sleeved tee and cargo pants. His hair was slightly wet and he already had his boots on.
He was leaning one hand into the back counter, he didn’t move and his eyes didn’t leave me as I walked his way. I lost sight of him when my body collided with is, my cheek pressed to his chest and my arms went around him. He took his hand off the counter and wrapped his arm around me.
“Yeah, report it to Lawson, set up the meet with Tack,” Hawk said into his phone.
I sighed into his chest. He wasn’t going about his own business, he was going about mine.
“Copy that,” he went on, “be there in twenty.”
He flipped his phone shut and shoved it into his cargos. I tipped my head back and looked up at him as his other arm closed around my shoulders.
“Sleep okay?” he asked, his chin dipped to look at me.
“Mm hmm,” I answered.
He dipped his chin further and his mouth touched mine as his arm around my back also dipped, scrunched up my nightshirt then he held it up with his arm as his hand cupped my ass, skin to panties.
Nice.
When his mouth went away I asked back, “Did you?”
“Yeah,” he replied.
I took in a breath and asked, “Is something going on?”
His arm at my shoulders squeezed as did his hand at my ass. “We have news.”
“Good news or bad news?”
“Both.”
“Uh-oh,” I mumbled.
“I don’t have a lot of time but do you need coffee before you hear it?”
“Is that your way of asking me if I need Valium before I hear it?”
He smiled and I got more squeezes.
Then he spoke. “Drive-by was about Ginger. Not Tack.”
“Is that the good news or the bad news?”
“The good, means we know who we’re lookin’ for and why they did what they did. Since Tack’s thrown down for you and I made things clear yesterday, they also know they bought themselves two sets of enemies they do not want. Ginger knows a lot, pissed off a lot of people and she can cause a lot of trouble, the police and Feds get to her, but she isn’t worth the heat my boys and the Chaos MC are gonna bring down on them. They bought that, pullin’ that shit, and they don’t want it and won’t want that heat to get hotter. It’s a guess but this means you and your parents are likely safe.”
“That is good news,” I noted.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean we don’t play it smart. You with me?”
I wasn’t sure I was but I nodded anyway.
“What’s the bad news?” I asked.
He hesitated then explained, “Jorge took a meet with Dog yesterday. Apparently, you told Tack you were through with me and he took this as tacit permission to make his play. Seein’ as he’s Tack and not the kind of man who asks your sign, tells you he likes your smile, buys you a drink and hopes to get him some, but instead locks you in a room and thinks when he returns from causing havoc and exacting retribution, you’re gonna be waitin’ for him to do whatever he does to make his claim, he’s not feelin’ like backin’ down from war. It didn’t help that my boys bested his and captured the prize. Now there’s face to be saved. We sent in lieutenants and they weren’t able to make a deal. Now the captains have to meet.”
Oh boy.
“Do you want to go into more detail about war?” I asked but I wasn’t sure I wanted more detail.
“Did you tell him you were through with me?”
“Um…” I mumbled, trying to pull back a bit but his arm and hand got tighter so I stopped trying. “I was in a bad mood,” I explained.
“Shit, Gwen,” he muttered.
“I also told him I’d sworn off men and was going to take up hiking and set up a ferret rescue.”
He stared down at me. Then he said, “Babe, let me tell you something about men.”
Uh-oh.
“Um…” I began in an effort not to learn anything about men. Hawk wasn’t the only man who was a mystery to me. Men on the whole were a mystery to me. I had no clue why they did half the shit they did and I’d long since decided I didn’t want to know. You could spend decades trying to figure that shit out and never succeed. Ignorance, I decided, was bliss when it came to men. I’d learned to go with the flow and hope I didn’t get chewed up too much in the process.
Hawk kept talking. “Sayin’ shit like that to men like Tack is like a dare.”
“What?”
“He’s the president of an MC. He’s got money. He’s got balls. He’s got brains. He’s got charisma. He’s got power. Men like that, women are easy. Men like that don’t want women who are easy. They want women who are smartasses and they’re cute. A woman like that tells you they want nothin’ to do with men and are gonna set up a ferret rescue, men like Tack take that as a challenge and challenges are what they feed on. They live and breathe for challenge. You sayin’ what you said to Tack is the same as a man comin’ up to him and shovin’ him in a bar. He’s gonna react to that, strongly, and best the situation no matter what he has to do to do it.”
“That’s crazy,” I told him because it was.
“That’s Tack.”
I stared at him. Then it hit me.
“It’s also you.”
His hand squeezed my ass. “You’re learnin’.”
Then something else hit me.
“What happens when you best the situation?”
“What?”
“What happens when it isn’t a challenge anymore?”
His hand left my ass so his arm could curve around my waist and he pulled me closer, muttering, “Sweet Pea.”
I pulled my torso back as best I could and kept my eyes glued to him.
“Is that an answer?” I asked.
He kept his eyes locked to me and asked ba
ck, “You gonna give me you?”
It was my turn to say, “What?”
“Babe, yesterday, you said your fuckwad ex crushed you. And I know this to be true because, for days, I watched you approach every situation between us with one hand up as if you’re wardin’ off a threat. When I do something you like, your face gentles because I’ve surprised you, you haven’t had shit like that from a man. You just walked up to me and slid your arms around me sweet. I’ve made you come for me and I’ve been inside you. You’ve shared gratitude. But, Gwen, that hand’s still up, wardin’ me off. You haven’t given me you, not even close. There is no way I’ve bested this situation.”
That was an answer it just wasn’t the answer.
“Okay, so say you best the situation.”
“I haven’t.”
“Say you do.”
“Gwen, I haven’t.”
“But say you do.”
“I do, then we’ll see how that plays out.”
Not a good answer. I knew how it played out. Scott Leighton taught me that.
I looked at his chest and muttered, “I need coffee now.”
“Gwen,” he called.
My arms slid from around his back so my hands could press against his chest.
His arms got tight. “Gwen.”
I pressed harder on his chest.
He shook me gently and ordered, “Gwen, give me your eyes.” I looked up at him and he asked, “You want false promises?” I didn’t answer so his face dipped closer. “Baby, I can’t tell the future.”
“I can,” I whispered and pushed hard on his chest.
I succeeded in gaining a few inches until he hauled me right back, his arms locking around me.
“There it is, Gwen, this is that hand you got up,” he said quietly.
“I need coffee, Hawk.”
I tilted my head down and pushed again at his chest but his hand came up, twisted in my hair and tugged back gently so I was looking at him.
“All right, babe,” he said, “there’s two ways this plays out. I best this situation and you give me all of you, honestly, I could find that’s not what I want and we both move on.”
I yanked my head back but he held firm and kept talking.
“Or,” he went on, “I find treasure and a man who finds treasure does everything he can to protect it and keep it close. I don’t know which way this is gonna go but I’m willin’ to ride it out and see. That’s not a risk I’ve taken in a long time, Gwen, that’s a risk I’ve avoided. But I’m takin’ that risk with you. You step away now, that tells me I’m not worth it to you to take that risk with me.”
I stilled my struggles and stared at him.
“You gonna step away?” he dared.
“I need to think,” I whispered.
He shook his head. “No. No, you don’t. You live in your head too much, you curl up and shut shit out and spend so much time doin’ it, you forget to live your life. You can’t live your life in your head. That isn’t livin’. Trust me, babe, I know. I’ve been doin’ near the same thing for awhile now, so long I forgot what it feels like to be alive. You got in my face that day you got back from Ride and reminded me what it feels like to be alive. Feels good, Sweet Pea, so I’m not goin’ back now.”
Something was clogging my throat but I still managed to ask, “What are you talking about?”
“You drop that hand and quit fendin’ me off, I’ll tell you.”
“You tell me now, maybe I’ll drop that hand,” I returned.
“Doesn’t work that way, Gwen.”
I started to get mad and said, “Of course not.”
“Babe, you don’t get it.”
“I do,” I told him. “It’s your way or no way.”
“There’s that hand again.”
God! How could I forget how annoying he was?
He wanted it? He was going to get it.
“I loved him,” I announced, Hawk’s body got still and I went on. “A lot. Looking back, I have no freaking idea why but at the time, I was sure. Completely sure. I knew. I was absolutely certain. No doubts. None at all. Does that sound familiar?”
“Babe –”
“Ginger fucked him on our wedding day.”
On that, Hawk’s body locked and I nodded. “No joke. No one knows. Not even Cam and Tracy. Then, later, she was in some trouble, less than she has now, but she needed to crash at our place so I let her. I was out, don’t remember what I was doing, came home and found them at it again. It all came out then, Ginger told me and Scott didn’t deny it. Ginger, I got it, Ginger did that kind of shit all the time. But Scott, even though I knew, I locked myself in my head and went into denial and pretended. Hoped he’d grow up and grow out of it. But you wake up real fast when you walk into your home and find your husband fucking your sister.”
Hawk stared at me and I kept talking.
“You know, the funny thing is, I think Ginger did it so warn me off. I think Ginger knew exactly what kind of asshole he was and that was her fucked up way of protecting me. She wasn’t gleeful when it happened, she didn’t throw it in my face. She seemed relieved. But me, I loved him, I was so sure and I didn’t want to admit I got it that wrong. And when you’re that sure and end up getting it that wrong, you lose faith in yourself, your ability to make the right decisions about your life. So, Hawk, there’s a reason that hand’s up. Because I was sure about you too and for a year and a half you gave me nothing but really great sex. Now you want more but there is no way, no way in hell I’m not going to proceed with extreme caution.”
His hand cupped my head and his arm pulled me close while he whispered, “Baby.”
No. No. He couldn’t be sweet and get to me. He needed to give me something a whole lot different than sweet.
“You told your man you’d be there in twenty and I need coffee,” I reminded him. “And I also need to think. You might not want that but tough. It’s what I do. So let me go.”
He didn’t let me go. He held me tight and stared into my eyes.
“Hawk –”
“All right, babe, I’ll let you go but I’ll give you this to think about when you crawl into your head. For eight years, I’ve been dead. I had people loyal to me that I trusted and I didn’t let anyone, not one fuckin’ person into those ranks. Then I see this woman at a restaurant who laughs in public like she’s giggling with her girls over coffee at her kitchen table. The only thing I had to give that woman, I gave her. I know everything about you, Gwen, because my boys had orders to report to me daily. Where you went, what you did, who you were with, how you spent your money, who you met, who you talked to on the phone, when the lights went out in your bedroom and they knew you were asleep. I told myself it was because you needed lookin’ after but it wasn’t that, Gwen, it was never that. I didn’t know it then. I didn’t know it until Jorge phoned me and told me to get my ass to base because you were on screen in Ride. I didn’t go to base, I demanded a report, got it and went to your house because I knew your shit just got hot and I knew I was not gonna let anyone harm you. Then I saw the tapes and I knew the next day that both Lawson and Tack were throwin’ down and that’s when I knew no one was gonna have you, not anyone, but me. I haven’t let anyone in in eight years, Sweet Pea, except you. Now, you still got all I’ve got to give but I’m not gonna trust you with the rest until you trust me. So when you crawl into your head, think about that.”
And with that, he let me go and then he was gone. He didn’t vanish, his place was too big to pull that off, but I was immobile with shock, fear and something else, something a whole lot different, something warm and beautiful and that was even scarier, so I didn’t turn around to watch him leave.
Chapter Twenty
Unoccupied
I sat in Hawk’s battered old chair and stared across his cavernous lair.
I’d just finished my voyage of discovery. I didn’t go so far as to look through his desk and bedroom drawers but, after he left, I’d poured a mug of coffee and searched the o
nly space I knew that was really his.
I went under the bedroom platform and checked out his shelves.
He had a lot of CDs; he liked music, plain to see. His tastes were all over the place. Rock ‘n’ roll, the old stuff, seventies mainly. Heavy metal, all good, no hair bands. Jazz, the sweet kind, from days gone by, not the saxophone-heavy new kind. Blues, Billie Holiday and Robert Johnson, nice. R&B, some rap and, rounding out this selection, even some classical.
In other words, nothing there to get a lock on anything – there was too much of everything.
I went to the books and, although there were a lot of them, they didn’t tell me anything more. He didn’t relax with an exciting thriller or an intriguing mystery. Most of the books were books I didn’t even know they wrote books about and I was a book editor. Manuals on strategy of war, hand-to-hand combat, martial arts philosophy. Biographies of war generals. History books of battles. Nothing else. Not even a slim volume of poetry to give me some insight.
So I curled up in his chair and looked across his space as my mind filtered through what I knew of the bed platform and his office. This also gave me nothing. What you saw with Hawk was what you got. His life was narrow, organized and controlled. There was no personality to it. He had a family, brothers, nephews – family that was close and they cared about him but there were no photos. No scrapbooks. No frames of ribbons earned for feats executed in the Army. No DVDs that showed what kind of films that entertained him. No art on the walls that reflected his taste. His furniture and fittings were stylish and expensive, definitely, but they were also heavy, masculine and durable. Even if they were attractive, they were utilitarian.
Except this nook. This chair. This table. This lamp. It didn’t fit but it also didn’t tell me anything yet somehow I knew it said it all.
All I sort of knew was, if what he said before he left, and even what he said about when he first saw me was what I thought he meant, I meant something to him before I walked into Ride.
Daily reports.
You didn’t demand daily reports on someone you didn’t care about in some way, even if it was a distant, freakishly-stringent, emotionally controlled way.