by Hagen, Casey
I’d learned a long time ago to take what I want, to make my decisions, to determine my fate—or else someone else would do it for you—but apparently along the way, I’d packed away the knowledge, buried it in the back of my heart’s closet like a perfectly preserved—yet still forgotten—wedding gown.
“Ladies, I’m hoping you’ll help my buddy and I solve a debate. Team Edward or Team Jacob?” a voice said behind her.
A voice, deep and smooth, like an aged whiskey, and so damned familiar my lungs seized, leaving me with a loud hum swelling in my head, crowding out my current worries and ushering in sweet anguish.
Falcon Malone.
His gaze met mine, those dark-onyx eyes of his traveling over me every bit as powerful as his fingertips—his mouth.
A familiar anger, as much a part of him as his painful childhood, swirled in their depths.
And a spark of possession.
Always possession when he looked at me. With no intention to ever stake a claim.
At least not how I had once longed for him to.
A few brief moments in our intertwined history didn’t count.
Because he always let me go.
His partner in crime smiled at me and reached out a hand. “I’m Hawk.”
Tall, dirty-blond hair, powerful shoulders, blue eyes over a sexy grin, he checked off most of my boxes in the looks department on first inspection.
Had he stood next to anyone other than Falcon, he would have checked off all of them.
Those sinewy muscles from childhood having begun filling out during Falcon’s time in the Air Force, had come into their own. He lifted his hand to run his fingers along the scruff on his chin, the gesture revealing a dagger tattoo.
Done in mostly black with intricate shading, the blade sliced through a human heart. Ancient scrolls in the handle led down to talons clutching the only color in the piece. Every line carved into his skin told a story, all the way down to the aquamarine stone the same color as the eyes staring back at me each morning in the mirror.
Okay, that was probably some schoolgirl wishful thinking. Or the alcohol obliterating my usual good judgment.
Well, fuck the alcohol. Even with it coursing through me, I didn’t miss the irony of placement if the one infusion of color was influenced by my eyes. The underside of his forearm, where he never had to see it.
This was the first time Falcon graced me with his presence since Ethan’s funeral which made him a grade A shitbag.
A deliciously dark and brooding shitbag who detonated my ovaries with the way his snug black T-shirt hid not a single one of the dips and contours in his broad hard chest.
And don’t glance down to catch your breath…because the noticeable gear shift he smuggled behind the zipper of his faded blue jeans would bring you to your fucking knees.
Falcon’s hard stare showed his hand, at least for someone who knew him once upon a time, and in that moment, I realized just what this was.
Hawk set his sights on me, leaving Falcon no choice but to follow along. And opening with Twilight only proved he was hoping we’d crush them to dust and send them on their merry way to another conquest.
Because god forbid the ass open his mouth and be honest with Hawk about our history.
Like the way Falcon stood unyielding ten years before, in his airman uniform, his jaw tight, unable to look me in the eye, and unwilling to say the word out loud.
Goodbye.
He’d left me in pieces next to the fresh dirt covering Ethan’s body, tucked under the shade of a massive oak tree obliterating the heat of the sun. I suppose it didn’t matter. Not even the fiery orb could warm the cold thread of grief—of guilt—worming its way through me.
All these years, and here I stood, his best friend’s little sister and his shameful secret.
Well, he stepped up on the wrong fucking night because I am done with shadows. I’m finished with letting anyone steal my shine.
I took my time sliding my palm over Hawk’s, delighting in the sight of Falcon’s jaw locking from the corner of my eye.
“Come have a seat right next to me, Hawk.” I tugged the high-top chair and debated the most graceful way to climb up onto it.
“Here, let me help you,” Hawk said, scooping me up with a hand behind my knees, another across my back, and setting me on the cool leather.
Blood simultaneously drained from Falcon’s face while anger bloomed on his razor-sharp cheekbones. Oh, he tried to disguise it by propping an elbow on the table and settling his weight on one leg, the picture of casual.
Except for the murder in his eyes.
“Thank you,” I murmured. “Now for your question…”
“My question? Nah, forget about it,” Hawk said.
“Team Edward,” Soraya said as she aimed her keen observation skills on Falcon, but apparently willing to play along.
If anyone was going to notice nuances of mood and body language, it was Soraya.
Kennedy snorted. “Please, Team Jacob all the way. Edward is a controlling prick.”
“Yeah, but how many times has Soraya told us Graham was a controlling prick so is it really at all surprising?” Julia asked.
“I can handle a controlling prick as long as I control his prick,” Soraya said with a smirk. “And Graham’s prick? It’s all mine.”
Soraya, Kennedy, Julia, Marie, Ridley, and Ava all cast their votes, split down the middle, three for Jacob, three for Edward leaving me as the tiebreaker.
“Tiebreaker. It all hinges on you, Emory,” Hawk said, leaning into me.
“Team Emmett,” I said, my eyes locked on Falcon’s.
Kennedy crossed her arms. “Emmett so doesn’t count.”
“You know what, tonight it does. It’s Emory’s night, she gets what she wants,” Julia said with a casual shrug making it clear she didn’t care one way or another.
“Yes. I do get what I want,” I said with a note of finality in my voice I’d mastered over the years, calming the chaos of dysfunctional, often explosive families at the eleventh hour, you know, right before the bride walked down the aisle.
“But Emmett? He’s not even in the running.” Kennedy argued.
“Why not? Maybe Bella’s over the tug of war between hot and cold and instead wants to start a war…with Rosalie,” Ava added on a bubble of buzzed laughter.
“Why Emmett?” Falcon asked, drawing every single eye at the table in his direction.
He did that. He commanded attention with minimal conversation and brooding ways.
Fuck if I didn’t resent the way he alpha-holed his way into captivating my friends, even if only for a few seconds.
“Well?” he said, his dark brows slashing low over his eyes.
“Because he knows Rosalie’s decisions are hers and hers alone. None of that condescending patting her head with a muttered ‘I know what’s best for you, little lady’ bullshit.”
“Because he’s afraid of her,” Falcon scoffed.
“Because he respects her,” I countered.
“Sounds like Falcon’s never been afraid of a woman,” Julia said.
“Maybe he’s never gotten close enough,” Ridley said with a laugh.
“Or he got too close, it terrified him, and he wasn’t up to the challenge,” I said, knowing damn well I was poking at a serpent just itching to sink his fangs into the enemy and neutralize his threat.
Problem was, full of liquid courage and out of fucks, I had nothing left to lose. This might be my only chance because if I knew Falcon, he had no problem with vanishing with the blink of an eye.
The next time he did, it might be forever.
3
Emory should have been spanked a hell of a long time ago.
Somewhere in the last ten years the girl I’d known had morphed into something else entirely, something I would have known had I stuck around.
Yeah, I know. My own fault.
I watched the way she flirted and laughed, the way the curve of her breasts and the edge o
f her white lace bra kept making cameo appearances with every movement. Emory talked with her hands…glimpses of her cleavage might as well have been confetti raining down on all of them.
I didn’t miss the fact her body mostly shifted toward Hawk.
And he’d noticed the goddamned confetti. The man looked like he was perched in the middle of Times Square on New Year’s Eve—something no self-respecting New Yorker would intentionally do—as we rolled into the new year.
God, she used to be sweet, soft-spoken, a bit naive, but those qualities only endeared her to me.
Ultimately made me brutally protective of her. Even when she didn’t know it.
Even when I had become the person she needed protection from.
The conversation—one I was not exactly privy to anymore—slid into 1980’s air band ballads and all things Air Supply, a specialty of Hawk’s—much to my and Penn’s mutual disgust. If Hawk started singing, something he’d been known to do, I’d stop his heart right here and just go to jail.
How the fuck had I been cast into no man’s land at the corner of the table with several feet between me clutching my last dregs of whiskey and their laughter? Either my wingman services had been so on point they rendered me useless after my whopper of an introduction—or—they’d all decided to mostly ignore me and my stellar personality.
I gulped the last of my drink and waved my empty glass to the waitress; the minute she nodded and smiled, I turned back to leaning my elbows on the table. Bile climbed into my throat—waiting to be washed down with a fresh drink—as a man I’d die for successfully charmed Emory. The one goddamned woman who no matter far I ran, how fast I screamed through the sky in an F-22, and no matter how many women I fucked my way through, couldn’t be scoured from my fucking soul.
Desperation clawed at me, a sign of weakness I’d only felt one other time, as I watched them laugh with Hawk. I dug my fingers into the edge of the table, sending all the frustration coursing through me into my hands while forcing a fleeting smile on my face.
My man was killing it tonight. He didn’t need a wingman.
Which was probably good, since he didn’t have one.
I brooded and schemed, going for belligerent asshole to kill the mood, because it was the only plan I had at the moment.
Only it didn’t have one flicker of a chance of working. They continued on like I wasn’t even there. And the ache in my chest grew.
A fresh whiskey appeared, and I snatched it before it could spend more than a second on the table before me. The waitress smiled a secret smile. The kind a willing woman used to silently offer all the things she couldn’t offer out loud while on the clock.
Ah, my guardian angel. Maybe I could use this. Use her. Yeah, I know it made me a dick, but I never claimed to be a nice guy.
I’d been born a first-rate bastard, and better for Emory I stay that way.
The waitress ran her palm over my biceps and squeezed my shoulder. “Can I get you anything else, big guy?”
Emory shifted into my peripheral view. I locked eyes with her, steeling myself against the look in her eye—the untold story of us—lingering in their glittering blue depths.
I slid my hand over the warm one hovering over my shoulder and glanced up at the hopeful gaze peering down at me. “I’m good for now, thanks. Don’t go too far though. I might just”—my eyes darted back to Emory’s—“want you again before the night’s over.” I drew out the words the way I often had when I wanted to destroy a woman’s panties with nothing but the sound of my voice, letting the waitress know just what I was suggesting.
She licked her bottom lip and winked. “You’ve got it.”
I watched her walk away, the swing of her round ass hugged by snug blue jeans, the sight not doing one damn thing to my cock. The same cock that if it could speak would tell me how far away Emory sat from me to the damned millimeter.
Glancing back at her to see the look on her face and claim my painful victory, I found something else entirely.
Fucking Hawk, his face tucked against Emory’s ear, her hand curved over his jaw, holding him there as he whispered something to her.
My brain short-circuited on the view. Fire raced over my skin, anger surging through my blood. Searing possession I hadn’t felt since the night she called me after the guy she’d been on a date with decided he had a right to do whatever the hell he wanted to her took over.
The night my restraint broke twofold.
I forced the memories back, the time in my life where raw emotions so visceral collided. In a handful of hours love, hate, guilt, and crushing grief pummeled me full force and by morning, became the internal war I battled every moment since.
This was Hawk. He wasn’t taking advantage of her. He wasn’t hurting her.
She wanted this.
Bloody hell—the reality didn’t make it any better. I squeezed my eyes shut and gulped down a good swallow of my drink.
“Hey, did you remember to pick up your antibiotics today?” I tossed out the question casually, defiance rearing its ugly head, turning me into a fucking backstabbing prick.
I took another sip of my whiskey but didn’t look their way. I knew what I would see. The sudden silence of the conversation coming to a screeching halt grew louder than the noise in the entire pub.
Hawk closed the three-foot gap between us and leaned in. “I don’t know what the fuck’s wrong with you, but get it together, man. Get. It. Together. Fucking focus. Jesus.”
“I think you’re wasting your time, guy. That’s all. Her pack is tight, and I don’t see you getting very far with her tonight. But the waitress is on the prowl. No complications,” I said, tossing blue jeans out like she was my possession to pawn off on whoever I wanted.
“Emory’s a cool chick, man. So if it isn’t just a hit it and quit it, it’s all good. If you don’t fucking blow it first. Antibiotics? What the fuck, dude?”
“Sorry,” I muttered. But I wasn’t. Because his words about Emory being a cool chick decided to hook into my brain and play on loop.
Worse than a night of hot sex? Double-dating, them getting serious, or—no. Fuck the or.
There was no fucking or in this shit.
“So, what do you guys do for a living? Your talents can’t be limited to 80’s music trivia, as cool as it is?” Soraya, the one with the dark hair and keen eye, said.
If anyone was going to be onto the connection between me and Emory, it would be her.
“We’re pilots and partners in a charter flight company,” Hawk said, handing Emory a fresh drink from the tray appearing on the table before them.
Blue jeans had dropped a whole new round off and I hadn’t even noticed. “We’re not partners. He’s the boss.”
Hawk raised a brow, his voice going steely calm. “A technicality which will be rectified by next week.”
“Oooh, my husband’s been talking about contracting a charter company for us. He hates traveling now that it means either taking our kids on a commercial flight or leaving us home. But he still has to travel so…” She shrugged. “Do you have a business card?”
“Of course,” Hawk said, smoothly whipping one out of his pocket.
The efficient bastard.
“I’m going to apologize now for the way he’s about to jump into your colon to check you all out. He’s protective so expect him to be disgustingly invasive.”
The blonde, Ava, snorted while the rest of the crew laughed. “Invasive? Yeah, okay, that’s a word for it.”
“Not a problem. We’ve both had almost a full decade of experience as Air Force pilots before this. I’m confident he’ll be reassured by everything he digs up.”
Emory met my eyes again, this time with the familiar curious look I recognized, because as kids it was often aimed at me in her determination to figure me out.
Good luck.
“We have a wedding—sorry, hon,” Soraya said, squeezing Emory’s arm, “Kennedy, Ridley, Marie, and I are in soon. It’s in Bar Harbor, Maine. Ma
ybe we’ll manage to have things in place before then.”
Hawk went on to give them the hard sell, telling Soraya about each of our four planes and helicopter. His words background noise to the churning in my head while my mind latched on to and tumbled over what the hell Soraya meant when she apologized to Emory for bringing up a wedding.
Emory’s eyes met mine for a fraction of a second before nervously darting away. Soraya nodded at all the right times as Hawk chatted away, but she also flicked a glance between Emory and I, no doubt gathering pieces to the puzzle.
Something was up with the look in Emory’s eyes, and I intended to find out what the hell it was right after I intercepted Hawk and Emory’s impending hookup.
The only problem I had was figuring out how to do it without hurting the business. If Soraya and her husband could afford to contract a charter company, they had money. Which meant they had influence. So this wasn't only about losing a chance at one contract; this was the potential for word of mouth to do some damage.
Great.
I searched the room for blue jeans, looking for one more drink, and froze when my gaze landed at the bar.
Tate Silver.
My damned salvation.
Emory would not be going home with Hawk tonight.
Hawk would not be burying himself in what was mine.
Yeah, I know how it sounds. Possessive and shit. Too bad.
Thank you, Tate Fucking Silver. I straightened, waited to catch her eye, and when I did, I nodded.
Drink forgotten.
Devious wingman mode…fully activated.
“Hawk?”
He put his hand up and kept talking.
“Hawk, guy—”
“Jesus, what?” Hawk said abruptly, making the ladies’ eyes widen.
I cocked my head in the direction of the bar. “We’ve got company. Tate’s here.”
Hawk’s angry glare fell away, and his gaze darted around the room. “Shit.”
I turned my head just enough to see Tate out of the corner of my eye. “Yeah, two o’clock and she spotted me.”
Okay, so I might have helped her with that, but I needed her to sprinkle some limp dick variety fairy dust on Hawk’s fairytale.
