Hawke (3 page)

Hawke

“You want pussy?” the voice asked.             

This was fucking ridiculous. Hawke stiffened and glared up at his brother. Did he seriously just ask that fucking question?

He had just vomited his body weight, his skin was slick with sweat, he was missing a finger and was still bleeding profusely seven hours after he had been broken out of a prison he had spent a year rotting in. So he was a fugitive too, which was fan-fucking-tastic. His brother deserved the “stupidest fucking brother of the year” reward for this grand fuck-up.

Hawke glanced around the room – a hovel motel room in some no hope part of a town he didn’t even know the name of – and felt his rage levels climb.

“No, Hector,” he hissed, meeting his brother’s eye with a cold look. “I don’t want pussy. I don’t
care
about pussy. I don’t want some nameless twat sitting on my lap. What I want is my fucking life back, and you destroyed every goddamn chance of that happening by pulling what you did.”

Hector ripped his gaze away from his older brother. He moved to the stained chair opposite of him and collapsed into it. His entire body gave out and he let out a long exhale as he stared up at the ceiling.

“What was I supposed to do, Hawke?” he asked harshly. “You were surrounded by enemies and there was a price on your head. You were going to get killed in there. Everyone wanted you dead! You expected me to just let that happen? Do you know the devastation this club would feel if you died? It would have killed all of us.”

Hawke didn’t reply. Frankly, he was too delirious to. His hand was pulsing like a motherfucker; the pain was so acute, it was debilitating. Instead, he sank back into the nasty twin mattress and held his hand to his chest, shaking. He was bare chested, his lower half in baggy sweats. The man that busted him out was a crazy motherfucker, insisting on making him leave his jumpsuit behind to make the scene look like a grizzly attack in the middle of the wilderness. Authorities would soon find nothing but blood, his mangled prison outfit, and his fucking finger (and he wanted his fucking finger back with a passion because having nine fingers was already a pain in the ass).

Personally, Hawke didn’t think it would work, but the bastard blew his finger away without even giving him the opportunity to speak. After that, he passed out, and the timeline from that van to this nasty motel room was murky. All he remembered was waking up to this shithole and staring holes at his pretty boy brother wearing a cut with the word PRESIDENT on the front – a word that he had proudly owned for years before the entire world decided it wanted to take a giant shit on him.

“Where’s the guy you hired?” he asked, his voice weak.

“Why?” Hector smirked. “You wanna kill him?”

“No, I want to thank the sadistic fuck for busting me out.”

Hector’s smirk fell from his face. “
I’m
the one that hired him, and he’s already gotten his payment and left.”

“What the fuck is his name?”

“Marcus Borden, and that name’s getting more and more known as we speak.”

“He’d be useful to the club.”

Hector chuckled dryly. “He wouldn’t be interested.”

“Why the hell not?”

“There’s a lot to catch you up on. The year you’ve been in there, a lot has changed. The powers in New Raven have shifted, the gangs have been put to ground, and I know this Borden guy has something to do with it. He’s rising, and he’s got a fucking past that’s interesting and scary to say the least. I knew he’d get the job done and frankly, I wouldn’t want a guy like him in the club at a time like this anyway.”

Hawke sucked in a breath as a wave of pain hit him. His eyes briefly shut. “Keep him in our pocket, then.”

“We will. Now get some sleep, man. You look like shit.”

Hawke didn’t want to sleep. His mind wouldn’t let him, and his body was fighting the pain hard.

He tried to console himself that it was better than being back there, in a shithole, staring at four walls for so many hours, until he lost his damn mind and they started talking to him.

“What am I supposed to do now?” he asked sometime later. He could hear how tormented he sounded, and it didn’t fit him. Not at all. He was a tough motherfucker, but this…this changed everything.

Hector shrugged. “Lay low until the heat is gone.”

Feeling scornful, Hawke scoffed. “The heat will never be gone. You know the shit I’ve done. If the cockroaches even suspect I’m alive, they’ll be crawling all over Warlord territory for eternity to cuff me all over again.”

“Then you gotta be dead, Hawke.”

Hawke frowned. “A dead man has no purpose,” he whispered, more to himself than anyone.

It was one thing having no purpose in prison, but out of it too? No, that was unfathomable. Without purpose he was a fucking nobody. What would he do? Where would he go? What was the purpose to his life without his bike and club?

Another wave of pain spread throughout his large body. He broke into sweat and turned to his side, cradling his mangled hand to his chest. His teeth clenched tightly and his entire body went rigid as he rode it out through heavy breaths.

“When does the doctor get here?” he rasped out.

“On his way,” Hector assured him.

The club had their very own surgeon on call. Gecko wasn’t from town. He was completely off the grid and had no relations to the criminal underworld in the slightest. He was practically a ghost. He’d come around, put you back together again, and went on his own way thousands of dollars heavier. He was a master with his hands, so the money was worth it, but at the moment he was fucking late, and Hawke needed him hours ago.

The room began to spin. Hawke scrambled to the edge of the bed and dry heaved. An acidic taste invaded his mouth, and he spat it out on the green carpet below. He groaned, waiting for the pain to dwindle. When it did, he pressed his forehead against the mattress and gulped in deep breaths. Sometime later, the faint sound of a door opening caught his attention.

“Please tell me that’s him,” he grumbled. He needed some morphine. And sleeping pills. And a new fucking finger. Yeah, he needed a lot of fucking things right now.

“Hawke?” a soft voice sounded out. “Oh, my God.”

He recognized the voice.

My god, it was the sweetest voice he’d ever heard.

His entire body stilled and then sagged into the mattress. “Tyler,” he replied, steadily. “What are you doin’ here, darlin’?”

“The club’s throwing a party to get the cockroaches off our back,” Hector cut in before she could respond. “You told me never to let her around a party at the clubhouse. She’s been waiting in the car this whole time, and that’s where I told her to stay.” His words were laced with disapproval. “I never gave her permission to get out of it, either.”

“It’s too hot out there and the air conditioner isn’t working,” Hawke heard her snap back. “You left me to bake in there. I was going to die.”

“You weren’t going to die.”

“You don’t know that.”

Hawke would have smiled if his lips were working. Ty had a sharp tongue on her. Almost two years apart hadn’t changed her a bit, and fuck, he liked that.

Quiet footsteps approached. He tried to move his body to face her, but breathing alone was hard enough. He felt the mattress behind him sink only a little bit. A little bit because Tyler was tiny, and quiet too. God, she could be so quiet when she wanted to be. He’d found her under tables, or hiding in closets, eavesdropping in conversations and events she shouldn’t have witnessed over the years since she was five years old. Now she was what, fifteen? A decade of this shit and she still hadn’t learned her lesson, and what had she seen in the time he had been gone? Who had she spent most of her time with? He hoped it wasn’t Hector. Fucking hell, if it was Hector then she was fucked. He was not the kind of role model to have around an impressionable chick.

The thought bothered him.
A lot.

A cool hand touched his arm. “Hawke, you don’t look good,” she told him sadly. “There’s blood everywhere. Are you dying?”

“It’s nothin’, Ty.”

“It doesn’t look like nothing.”

“Well, it is. It’s nothin’.”

She let out a long breath, like she’d been holding it for a while. “You’re going to die. People say that when they’re going to die.”

“He’s not dying,” Hector said, irritated. “This is Hawke we’re talking about. He’s just scratched up bad. Lost his finger.”

“How did he lose a finger?”

“The guy that broke him out blew it away.”

“Why would someone that was
breaking
him out shoot his finger off?”

“You wouldn’t understand. This is grown up stuff, Tyler.”

“I don’t think you understand it yourself, Hector, and quit treating me like I’m ten years old. I’m more of an adult than you are most days.”

Hector grew impatient. “Look, you really shouldn’t be here. This shit makes you an accomplice. Go take a walk. As far as you know, Hawke is dead and you never saw him once. Now go.”

Of course she ignored him. She grabbed at Hawke’s shoulder and pulled him back. He barely budged. She used both her hands on the second try and sucked in a breath, rolling him on to his back with all her might. Hawke’s vision blurred under the light, and then slowly spotted and cleared. A face was looking down at him and…

Holy fuck.
He thought. Had he been in prison longer?

She couldn’t have been fifteen. Could she?

A pair of deep brown eyes searched his as he scrambled to recognize the girl. No, it was definitely her. She looked like a fucking angel.

He smiled at the familiarity of her face: small and round, lips pressed in concentration, brows furrowed. She appeared far beyond her years, and her features now were so prominent and symmetrical; he knew she was going to be an incredibly beautiful woman one day. Hell, she was already there.

“Did you get my letters?” she asked him then.

“I got ‘em,” he answered.

She’d sent him over twelve letters in the course of one year, talking about anything and everything. He understood why she did it. Tyler was infatuated with him, always had been, even now she was staring at him with want in her eyes. Truth be told, he had liked getting those letters, had expected them even every time the fucks at the prison handed the mail out. He’d kept them too. Had stuffed them in his jumpsuit before the escape.

They were probably gone now.

“They treatin’ you alright?” he then asked her.

She nodded once. “Now we can go back to fixing cars, and…shooting guns in the paddock. It’ll be like before.”

Emotion pulled him under for a moment, and he swallowed a hard lump in his throat. Fuck, she was so sweet, wasn’t she? Excited over the things he used to take for granted.

“Things aren’t just gonna go back to the way they were before,” he explained quietly, wincing for a second as his hand continued to throb. “I can’t come breezin’ through the door, Tyler. I’m not gonna be around to protect you again, and you deserve a normal life. Your old man wanted that for you. You gotta promise you’ll stay away. For real this time ‘cause I know you’ve been around while I’ve been locked away. Be with your mom and take care of her.”

Tyler’s eyes hardened a fraction. “You know what Mom is like, and besides, I don’t want to stay away. It’s my home. It’s yours too, and just because you lost it doesn’t mean I should too.”

“You’re not safe there.”

“Safe from
what
exactly? It’s all in your head. I get it, you know. Dad made you give him a promise and now you’re obsessed about it and not seeing right.”

“Need I remind you what that officer would have done had I not showed up?”

“That’s why there’s Hector. He’s looking after things and he’s done a good job with keeping his eye on me. He did all year long, and he didn’t once try marching me out the door.”

A vein throbbed at his temple. Anger surged for a fleeting moment as he envisioned Hector teaching her about life, because what the fuck did Hector know about life?

“Tyler…” he started in warning.

She slowly backed away from him, scowling at his tone. “I think I’ll go back to the car.”

“Stay,” he told her sternly. “You might die from the heat, remember?”

“I’d rather die from the heat than be told I don’t belong in the club.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Goddammit, she was stubborn. Before she was far enough out of reach, he grabbed her by the arm with his good hand. He pulled her to him abruptly, causing her to fall on top of his bare chest. They both lost their breaths as their chests crashed against one another. Her face was half a foot away from his. He stared hard into her startled brown eyes, not letting the pain stabbing him everywhere show in his.

“Just because I’m technically dead that doesn’t mean I can’t keep an eye on you,” he told her quietly. “I’m your ghost now, darlin’, and you’d be surprised how much control a ghost can still have from the grave.”