Hawke (28 page)

“Fuck you,” she repeated. “I hate you.”

“Yeah, sure you do, darlin’.”

That just pissed her off some more, and she flew at him again, smacking him across the chest, hollering some more how much she hated him. That he was a monster and a murderer.

“But you knew that already,” he replied evenly. “You knew I was all those things and you still wanted me.”

She sucked in breaths, growing quiet as his words sank in. He saw the truth in her eyes as he said it. She crumbled, that anger transitioning back to sadness.

She walked away from him and made it five steps before she collapsed to the ground and buried her face in her hands.

Tyler

I’d pined for Hawke for years, wanting more than anything for him to come back.

And now I wanted him gone with a fury.

I barely touched him on the ride back. I was happy to just fall off the bike during those sharp turns if it meant not touching his body.

Though I hated that I still wanted to.

The whole day had been orchestrated so he could tell me the truth. He’d taken me away from the clubhouse so I wouldn’t have lost it in there and subsequently inform everyone else of it too. It was the right thing to have done because I knew it would have torn the older members apart knowing my old man – whom they still revered – had done something so atrocious as this. Even now I wanted to protect his name.

How sad was I?

He’d ripped the club apart, would have disastrously put the Warlords name in the ground if they hadn’t resorted to doing drug deals, and I still wanted to protect him?

Love didn’t make you see right from wrong. It wanted you ignorant so you could shield not just the person you loved, but yourself too.

Like Hawke. I hated him for keeping it from me, but I didn’t really want him gone. I was just pissed. Really, really pissed at him, and I held on to that anger for days and days, moving away from his touches, never talking to him except to tell him to get out when he made to sleep next to me.

He never got out. He slid into bed every time and wrapped his arm around me and forced me against his chest. “You don’t really want me to go,” he whispered to me once, kissing along my bare shoulder. “You want me here.”

“No, I don’t,” I seethed.

“You do, and you wanna know how
I
know?” He sucked at my neck. “Because you still look at me in that way, Tyler.”

I swallowed thickly, trying to resist the warmth his touch created inside my arctic chest.

“I know it hurts,” he continued, his voice softening. “And you can push me away all you want, but I know you need me just as much as I need you. I’ve given up everything right now to be here. The law is still out there, and I’m risking my neck just to have you in my bed. But I want you, Tyler. I want you so bad it hurts.”

He was right, but I wasn’t ready to admit that, so I just listened. I continued to resist his touches, but that only spurred him to try harder.

Secretly, I didn’t want him to give up.

I should have seen it from his point of view. How hard it would have been to tell me this. I was just too clouded with anger and looking to take it out on him and blame him when really it was my father who’d betrayed us. I was struggling to come to grips with it, though. My father had been so passionate about this club. He’d been so happy, so involved. I wondered a lot of things about it. Were there signs I’d missed? Had his behavior been off? Was my father angry? I couldn’t recall anything out of the ordinary.

At the end, I had to force myself to come to grips with the fact my father wasn’t the man I thought he was.

Hawke

It had been seven days of her pushing him away. Just how much longer was she going to keep doing it? She was centering all her frustrations on him and not Hector. How that asshole flew under her radar was a mystery to him.

Hawke got she was pissed and sad about it. Hell, he was too for the longest time after Dennis had died in his arms, but…fuck, he never considered what it meant to care for someone other than him. He never knew the devastation he could feel being cast aside every night.

Why did people want relationships when this was the utter bullshit that came along with it? You could easily save yourself the trouble and play the single game and fuck without caring whether you were in the good graces of whatever hole you were sticking your dick into.

Yeah, that thought lasted about two seconds because…yeah, he fucking wanted her. Didn’t care either that she currently held the power between them. The strong euphoria that shot through his veins every time he held her made all that bullshit worth it.

Throughout the day he gave her space. He couldn’t risk her going to work, so she kicked around the clubhouse, spending a lot of time with Holly and Shay and avoiding him at all costs.

Meanwhile, he spent his time making the clubhouse into a serious stronghold. He made deals and reconnected with contacts that’d been left cold for eons. Next he was looking to go over every patched member and determine how just essential they were to their role because, shit, there were too many members as it was and they were doing nothing but taking money to support their lifestyle outside the club.

It pissed Hawke off unlike anything else.

In the middle of all this was Hector, who was still sobering up and trying not to touch the drink, though Hawke could tell it was a major struggle. But he was changing, and without the drink he wasn’t angry half as much.

“Instead of waiting for her to get over it, maybe you should take her out,” he told him as they stood out front of the building, watching Jonny and Jesse drill more bars over the windows.

Hawke scoffed. “Tyler won’t let me within a foot of her.”

“It’s her birthday in a week. Take her to Ma’s. She loves it there every time I go around. Maybe she’ll warm up to you again afterwards.”

“All Ma would talk about to her is how much of a shit I was growing up.”

Hector chuckled. “Possibly.”

“Fucking women, Hector.”

He shook his head. “Yeah, well, that’s why I don’t fall in love, man. Life’s too short to be in pain.”

Hawke smirked, nodding before replying, “Actually, the pain’s the best part.”

Hector sighed, looking at his brother peculiarly. “Fuckin’ turning into one of those sad saps now, man? You got woman bits I don’t know about?”

“Fuck you.”

“No, you want to fuck Tyler.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“The daughter of Dennis, I have to add.”

“She sure is.”

“That annoying little turd that used to drive us up the fucking wall with that squeaky fucking tricycle.”

“That would be her.”

The disbelief was still apparent in Hector’s voice as he stressed, “Tyler.”

“
My
Tyler.”

Just as Hawke said that, he saw Jesse’s body tense. The fucker had been listening to them, and there was a wounded look on his face he was doing his absolute best to conceal. Hector noticed too and he nudged Hawke’s shoulder, whispering, “He’ll get over it, man. It was just a mad crush.”

Jesse’s reaction didn’t fit that of a mad crush. He obviously cared for her, and maybe it would have pissed Hawke off if it was someone else, but Jesse was loyal and passionate. No matter how devastated he was, he would never cross Hawke or Tyler. It just wasn’t in his nature.

Just then the sound of an approaching vehicle interrupted them. Hawke glanced over his shoulder as a black Mercedes turned in, slowly coming to a stop in front of them.

Hawke’s eyes narrowed and he let out a long breath. “Fuck.”

The passenger door opened and a suited man stepped out, glaring at Hawke with a face as cold as ice.

“Borden,” Hawke said, his voice tight.

“We’ve got to talk,” Borden replied. “I’ve got answers.”

“Let’s go inside.”

But before Hawke could turn, Borden moved to him abruptly and slammed his fist against Hawke’s face, causing his head to jerk to the side and ringing to explode in his ears.

“That’s for fucking leaving me,” Borden growled.

Hawke wasn’t going to argue because, yeah, he fucking deserved it.

Hawke

Borden wanted to talk alone with him, so Hawke took him to the meeting room and shut the door behind them. Borden threw a file on the table and turned to him, his mouth set in a hard line, his eyes cold and angry.

“First of all,” he started, nose flaring, “you could have fucking told me a long time ago that this was what you wanted.”

Hawke crossed his arms and leaned back against the door, retorting, “I didn’t know I wanted it.”

“You don’t just wake up and want to be president again.”

“No, you don’t.”

“So what happened then? You can’t possibly be doing all this for pussy.”

A sliver of anger tore through Hawke’s chest, and he ground his teeth together, trying to keep it together. “Isn’t it funny how the tables turn?” he asked, sardonically. “If I recall, I was in your shoes asking you the same fucking question once upon a time.”

“This is different. Emma was a struggling waitress that carried a cheap as shit switchblade. Your girl lives with bikers who are pleading for you to come back.”

“And I’m back now.”

“What about all those talks we had about you being on my side instead of theirs.”

“We’re on the same fucking side.”

“We’ll be business partners, and you wanna know how many times shit like that deteriorates between two parties, Hawke? Do you see my reluctance right now?”

“It’s justified.”

“Damn fucking straight it’s justified!” Borden hollered, losing his cool in a way Hawke wasn’t familiar with. “You don’t seem to fucking realize that outside of you and Emma and my family, I got nothing. I can’t have us be at odds with one another.”

Hawke moved to the chair and collapsed into it, rubbing his face in exasperation. “Christ, Borden, you think I would ever want to be at odds with you? That shit won’t happen.”

“Give me your fucking word.”

Hawke looked at him, his eyes firm and unwavering as he said, “I give you my fucking word.”

Borden didn’t look any less tense. He was fuming, his face cracking with anger as he said, “You haven’t thought this through. You’re blinded by your affections –”

“I’m not giving her up.”

“Can you go to war? See your men die all over again? We lost someone too, and how difficult was that to move on from? You don’t want the death of people you care about on your conscience.”

“No one’s dying on my watch.”

“Not until you fucking read what I have to show you.”

Hawke hesitated, glancing at the file on the table and then at Borden. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you can’t knock out threats when you don’t even know who they are, and Hawke, you didn’t see this one coming.”

Hawke stilled, feeling a wave of trepidation run through him as he eyeballed that file again. Horrible thoughts flashed in his head, of all the his doubts, of all the shit he’d heard.

Were the rumors true? Was Hector behind it? That was his nightmare, and the answer was sitting feet from him.

“How bad?” he asked tightly.

Borden frowned, looking bothered for a moment before replying, “Very fucking bad.”

*

For a few minutes, Hawke watched Tyler conversing with Jesse. He was making her laugh, which was a welcoming sight. The boys really did treat Tyler like she was part of the family. He’d seen it a lot, the love and respect they had for her.

But Jesse was shirtless again, the asshole. Probably trying to get her to salivate or some shit, only she was barely paying attention to his torso the way Holly was as she distributed beers to the boys sitting in their chairs out front. When she went to hand one to Hector, he shook his head stiffly and she seemed pleased.

Hector looked around and caught sight of Hawke standing by the window, looking out at them. He narrowed his eyes in question, and Hawke looked away, not ready to speak of what he’d learned in that room.

He thought he’d lose his shit after reading that file, but…strangely, a calm wave swept into him. He felt numb, and he supposed that was better than rage.

Maybe, if he’d been around, he’d have figured it out a long time ago.

Maybe…he could have stopped so much heartache.

The monster within twitched, longing for action now instead of later, but…Hawke needed to process first.

Just then Tyler looked up, catching sight of his cold stare. Her smile faded away, and there it was again, that look she was trying hard not to show. Unfortunately, Hawke didn’t want to see it. He didn’t want this fucking numbness to wear off. He needed it. It was armor. It was the only way he could mentally formulate a plan of attack.

He turned his head and walked away.

*

He ended up sitting alone in his room, his face buried in the palm of his hands. The lights were off, and the silence was deafening.
This is different.
He tried telling himself.
There’s a door that opens. The lights are off. You can’t hear those…those screams.

But it wasn’t enough, and the monster within stirred as the walls closed in on him.

In an instant, Hawke was back there again.

In solitary confinement.

Bloody pictures on the walls.

A piece of shit fluorescent light over top of him, his only light, the symbol of timelessness as it never changed, never wavered, never even went out.

Screams – fucking hell, he could still hear them echoing inside his skull.

It was a fucking pit. One that made him want to dig his fingers into his throat and rip his lungs out.

He should have done it. Should have died in a puddle of his own blood.

Then he wouldn’t be back here.

President.

In love with a woman who currently hated him.

Having to kill all over again.

Having to make the world fear him when all he’d done the last five years was hide, purposeless and void of life.

And now this.

He could see himself, pacing in circles in that pit of misery, then collapsing to the ground, that fucking fluorescent light blinding his eyes as two words chanted all around him.

Don’t trust.

Don’t trust.