HAWK: The Caged Kings MC

by Kathryn Thomas

  “Hawk.” She takes a step towards him but he holds up his hand to stop her.

  “What the hell is this?” His voice is cold and it chills her to the bone.

  “Hawk, I’m sorry. I was planning to tell you -”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Melissa.” The warm, tender way that he usually says her name is gone and she wonders if it’s ever coming back. “Are you a reporter?”

  Melissa swallows hard, wishing that she could give him a different answer. But the time for lies has passed. Now all she could do was tell him the truth, tell him everything. She nods tightly and watches as his shoulders slump at her words.

  “You told me you were a blogger, that you wrote fiction, that you wanted to become a great writer.” He shakes his head like he can’t believe that he trusted her.

  “All those things were true. I didn’t lie about any of that!” She hears the desperation in her own voice.

  “So what do you do for the Portland Tribune? Did you know they’ve been trying to get the low-down on the Kings for years, just so they can sell more papers?” The anger on his face makes her take an involuntary step back. Then it hits him, he connects the dots and Melissa wishes that the earth would open up beneath her and swallow her up. “That’s why you came to the bar that night, isn’t it? You were working for the paper.”

  “That’s how it started, but I met you and everything changed.” She takes another step towards him.

  “I don’t want to hear this.” He walks past her pulling on his t-shirt and jacket and heading out of the bedroom.

  She follows him, not wanting him to leave like this. “Hawk, let me explain!”

  He whirls around to face her, his eyes angry. “Explain what? That you only got close to me to find out about the club? That you’ve been lying to me, to all of us? That you made me think I could trust you when all the time you were just getting ready to betray us?” He slams his fist against the doorframe hard and she winces at the impact but he doesn’t even seem to feel it. She’s never seen him like this; it gives her a bit of an insight into the things he does when he’s working for the Kings. It’s not something she ever wants to be on the receiving end of.

  “Yes, I was supposed to write a story about the Caged Kings. My editor thought I would be able to get information that his guys have never been able to access. It was going to be my big break, but this morning I told him that I couldn’t do it.” For the first time she feels like she has Hawk’s attention. “I fell for you, for the club, and the community. I knew there was no way I could write the story, not the way he wanted me to. I never wanted to hurt you. Please, you have to believe me.”

  “You told me I could trust you. I made the mistake of believing you then. I won’t make the same mistake twice.” His hand grabs hold of the doorknob and yanks it open.

  “Hawk, please don’t leave like this. Talk to me.” Melissa feels the tears pricking at the back of her eyes as she watches his chest heave with the deep breaths he’s taking to calm himself down.

  “We all trusted you. The guys treated you like family without even knowing you.” Hawk shakes his head but keeps his back turned to her so she can’t see his face. “You want me to talk to you, to tell you that everything is going to be all right, that all is forgiven? I can’t even look at you, Melissa. I can’t stand the sight of you.”

  He storms through the door, slamming it so hard behind him that it makes the windows rattle. As the sound of his motorcycle fades, Melissa slumps down onto the floor, drawing her knees up to her chest and she finally lets the tears come.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “Are you sure you’re going to be alright? I don’t have to go out tonight.” Ali gives her best friend a concerned look.

  “Yes, you do.” Melissa gives Ali a serious stare, which is only made mildly less effective by the redness of her eyes. “I don’t expect you to babysit me every night. It was a breakup, not a bereavement!” Melissa tries a smile but, from the expression on Ali’s face, it doesn’t come off all that well.

  “Don’t do that, ‘Mel. I’m the one who’s been sharing pizzas and passing you tissues for the better part of a week! You don’t have to pretend around me. I know it wasn’t just a breakup!” Ali lays her hand over Melissa’s, surreptitiously moving her coffee mug out of reach at the same time, knowing that if Melissa has any more coffee, she’ll be up half the night obsessing over what happened between her and Hawk.

  Melissa looks up at the ceiling, sighing deeply and wrapping her terry cloth dressing gown around herself even tighter. She was in the second stage of post-breakup mourning now and that mostly consisted of moping around the house and feeling sorry for herself. So far so good.

  “What do you want me to say, Ali? That I cared about him? That I hate how we left things?” Melissa rubs at her eyes, surprised that she can even bring herself to cry anymore. Her tears should all be used up by now, surely. “Sorry, I know you’re just trying to help. But right now I think I just need to be alone.” She lets her forehead drop down to the kitchen counter and starts banging her forehead against it.

  “You know that if you keep doing that for much longer, you’ll be lucky if you have any brain cells left.” Ali nudges Melissa back from the countertop and rolls her eyes at the expression on her friend’s face. “How have you got yourself so worked up about a guy that you only just met? I mean I haven’t even met him yet!” Ali almost looks more annoyed about this than any other aspect of the situation.

  “Sorry, Ali, you’re right. I should have waited until you’d given him the seal of approval before I screwed everything up.” Melissa throws herself onto the couch with more force than necessary, taking up the same position she’s held the majority of the last few days.

  “Exactly.” Ali’s response shows no sign of irony whatsoever. She collapses into an armchair opposite Melissa, looking at her intently.

  “What?” Melissa shifts uncomfortably under her friend’s intense stare.

  “I’m just wondering when you’re going to be done beating yourself up about this.” Ali shrugs, looking around the room as if she might find the answer somewhere—just lying around.

  “Ali, we’ve been through this.” Melissa groans, putting her head in her hands. She can’t bear to have this conversation again. “I lied to him; he found out in the worst possible way. He didn’t give me a chance to explain, and I don’t know if he had if it would have made any difference. I betrayed him, Ali, and this is a guy who takes trust pretty damn seriously. I screwed up. End of story.” Melissa wonders if she sounds as miserable to her friend’s ears as she does to her own.

  “You were doing a job, ‘Mel. A job that you’ve jeopardized to do the right thing by Hawk and his buddies.” Ali leans forward, as if she’s trying to get her friend to see sense purely with the power of her mind. “That has to count for something.”

  “Not enough apparently.” Melissa shrugs, signaling she’s done with the conversation.

  “It’s not like you knew you were going to fall in love with the guy when you agreed to write the article. You couldn’t have planned for this, ‘Mel. You get that, right?” Ali looks like she wants to shake Melissa into rational thought.

  “I didn’t say I’d fallen in love with him.” Melissa grumbles her response, knowing that she’s zeroed in on the only thing she can disagree with.

  “No, you didn’t.” Ali gives her a meaningful look, which Melissa dodges as best she can.

  The silence stretches between them, and Cat jumps up onto Melissa’s lap as if she senses that her mistress needs some comfort. “So how’d it go with Vince’s new girlfriend? We never talked about it.” Melissa’s attempt to change the direction of the conversation isn’t exactly elegant, but it gets the job done. She’s fed up with talking about herself and about Hawk and about the many ways in which she had screwed everything up.

  Ali gives her a long look, as if she’s deciding whether or not to let Melissa distract her. “She was…fine.” The way that Ali says it giv
es the impression that the new girlfriend was anything but that mediocre word. “You know his type, all moony-eyed with less than two brain cells to rub together. This one wanted to be an actress.”

  Melissa snorts at the thought, just imagining the scene between the two women. “So what’s she doing in Portland?”

  “She probably couldn’t find her way to LA.” Ali’s tone is bitchy, but she knows it.

  “Meow! Saucer of milk for the blonde in the armchair!” Melissa raises an eyebrow, and they both laugh. It feels good; it’s the first time that Melissa has really laughed since her argument with Hawk. She feels the smile fade from her face and remembers how there is a reason she has decided not to think about him. “Well, it’s not like you were going to actually like any of the girls that you saw with Vince.”

  Ali refrains from comment, but the wistful expression on her face says it all.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be going on a date? You’re going to be pretty late if you don’t leave now.” Melissa gives her friend a pointed look, but Ali doesn’t move from her chair. “Ali?”

  Her glazed expression fades, and she seems to be rejuvenated with renewed purpose. “I can’t leave you like this, looking all sad and heartbroken. What sort of a best friend would I be if I dumped you for a dude?” Ali shakes her head in consternation.

  “Umm, the kind that actually has a life?” Melissa looks at her friend a little more closely. “You were looking forward to this up until about an hour ago. What happened?”

  Ali rolls her eyes at the serious note in Melissa’s tone. “I changed my mind, that’s all. I’m just not in the mood for the all the first date getting-to-know-you crap.”

  Melissa frowns at her friend, knowing that Ali loves first dates. It has been one of the running jokes between them: Ali would go on any number of first dates, she loved the fact that she could be whomever she wanted to be, that it was a blank page, full of possibilities. It was the dates after that when she usually lost interest.

  Ali bites her bottom lip, looking cagey, and Melissa zeroes in on the action like a missile. “Ali, fess up.”

  Ali sighs theatrically. “It’s no big deal. He seems like a nice guy and all, but I just realized the real reason I agreed to go out with him at all.”

  Melissa waits for the punch line, but Ali is silent, looking at her hands knotted in her lap. Ali is the most outgoing, extroverted, full of fun person that Melissa has ever known, but the woman sitting in front of her doesn’t look like any of those things. “Don’t make me drag it out of you, Ali.” She gives what Ali refers to as her ‘Don’t fuck with me’ stare.

  “He’s a friend of Vince’s.” Ali says the words so quietly that at first Melissa doesn’t think she’s heard right. However, the embarrassment on Ali’s face makes it clear that Melissa hasn’t misinterpreted her whisper.

  “You agreed to go out with him because you knew that Vince would find out and you were hoping it would bother him, make him jealous.” There’s no judgment in Melissa’s voice—if anything she’s surprised that something like this hasn’t happened before.

  “I know, it’s pathetic.” Ali barks a humorless laugh.

  “That’s not what I was going to say,” Melissa chides her. “But Ali, don’t you think it’s time you just told him?”

  Ali looks at her as if she’s just suggested that she jump out of a twenty-story window. “Hell to the no.” She shakes her head so hard that Melissa worries she might give herself whiplash. “And don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing…distracting me from your train wreck of a relationship to talk about my train wreck of a non-relationship. I see your game, Potter.”

  Melissa holds her hands up in surrender. “You got me. We’re equally pathetic.” She wonders if that merits a high-five, probably not. “So are you going to let this guy down easy or just stand him up?” Ali shoots her a look, and Melissa makes an innocent face. “Either is good with me, I’m just asking. This is a judgment free zone!”

  “I’ll text him and say that I’m not feeling well.” Ali shrugs, as she heads to the kitchen and opens the refrigerator.

  “Does that mean we’re moving on to the ‘Death by Chocolate’ faze of our men troubles?” Melissa figures she could get excited about that particular part of the grieving process.

  “You know it. I’ll hit the store for supplies.” Ali grabs her keys and pulls open the door brusquely to a buxom platinum blonde who looks as shocked as Ali does.

  “I was just about to ring the bell.” She motions towards the doorbell, as if trying to prove that she wasn’t just hanging outside their house with no intention of coming in.

  “Okaaayyy.” Ali gives her a dubious look, wondering who the hell this person is that’s turned up uninvited at their front door.

  “I’m here to see Melissa.” The blonde folds her arms over her impressive rack and gives Ali a look that would have wilted a lesser woman.

  Ali blinks a few times and then puts two and two together, taking in Felicia’s dye job, her eyes flicking over the intricate designs on her nails. “You must be Felicia.”

  “Felicia?” Melissa squeaks the word out from the other room, scrambling to her feet and going to stand in the threshold of the living room.

  Felicia takes in Melissa in her dressing gown and fuzzy pig slippers, rolling her eyes before she looks back at Ali. “So can I come in? It’s freezing out here.”

  Ali steps back and Felicia takes that as enough of an invitation to walk inside, huffing about how cold it is outside.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “What are you doing here, Felicia?” Melissa gives her a curious look and then looks past her, as if she’s expecting to see someone else.

  “He’s not with me.” Felicia shakes her head, clearly reading Melissa’s mind.

  Melissa nods sadly, as if that was more or less what she had been expecting. The three women stand awkwardly, staring at each other. “If you’re here to give me a hard time over the article, then you’re wasting your time. I don’t need to hear all the reasons why I’m an asshole again.” Melissa crosses her arms over her chest, wishing that she were wearing something a little more impressive than her pajamas.

  Felicia rolls her eyes again, as if her patience were wearing thin. “You got anything to drink?” She directs the question at Ali, as if Melissa hadn’t even spoken.

  “Umm, sure.” Ali shrugs, leading Felicia through to the kitchen. Traitor, Melissa thinks to herself.

  Once Felicia has popped the cap on her beer, she takes a deep drink and settles herself on a stool at the breakfast bar, making herself comfortable. Ali gives Melissa a ‘What the hell is going on?’ look, but Melissa just shrugs, knowing that Felicia isn’t here on a social call. Sure, they were getting along fine when things ended between her and Hawk, but it wasn’t as if she and Felicia were best friends. There is no reason for her to be here unless something has happened. The thought makes Melissa’s blood run cold. She knows that the kind of business that the Kings are in isn’t exactly the safest.

  “Is Hawk alright?” The panic in her voice is plain for them all to hear, but she’s too worried to care about looking like a desperate ex-girlfriend.

  Felicia’s eyes soften, as she looks at Melissa, reading the fear on her face. “Physically he’s fine.” Her tone is reassuring, and Melissa feels all the muscles in her body relax. She hadn’t even realized she was so tense.

  “Good. That’s good.” Melissa lets out a breath of relief, absently wondering how it was possible for her to care so much for someone who had blown her off so completely. “So what are you doing here, Felicia? If the Club has sent you to check that I’m not writing the article, you can tell them they don’t have anything to worry about.”

  “The Club hasn’t sent me. No one knows that I’m here.” She looks pointedly at Melissa. “I’m here because of you and Hawk.”

  Melissa laughs mirthlessly. “Then, it looks like you missed the memo, because there is no me and Hawk—not anymore.”

>   Ali watches them both, keeping far enough out of it to let them talk but close enough to weigh in if she needs to.

  Felicia raises her eyebrows and takes another swig of her beer. “You’re both as stubborn as each other.” She says the words under her breath but loud enough to be heard.

  Melissa tries to clamp down her tongue, but she just can’t resist asking the worst possible question. “How’s he doing?” She aims for breezy, but she’s not naïve enough to believe that’s how it comes out.

  Felicia gives her an appraising stare—from her fluffy slippers, flannel pajamas, and terry cloth dressing gown to her red-rimmed eyes and hair that she’s just piled on top of her head in a messy bun. “About as well as you.”

  Melissa flushes, wishing again that she didn’t look like she’d spent the past few days moping around the house—which was exactly what she’d been doing.