Hawk pulled up, helmet on, and behind him on the bike, pressed right up against him like I had been just four days ago, was a girl. She had long, wavy, black hair that ran down her back and streamed out of the shiny, full-head helmet.
She got off the bike like there was a fire under her ass while he kicked the stand down. Her hand hooked under the front of her helmet and whipped it off, dropping it on the ground beside the bike.
And I stood there, my feet frozen to the ground, even though a horrible burning feeling crept over my skin and up my neck, setting my whole head on fire.
“Joey.” Hawk got off the bike, lifted his helmet off, and set it lovingly on the seat. He flashed the girl a look and took a deep breath, then spoke to her. “I’ll see you upstairs.”
“What — you’re not going to introduce me? Clearly, this bitch was waiting for you.”
My mouth dropped open, my eyes narrowed, and I shook my head quickly. “I… God, I’m…whatever.” I turned on my heel to go, but Hawk caught up with me and caught my wrist, tugging me gently back around.
“Joey. This is my sister, Olivia.” I’d never heard a voice sound more weary at an introduction.
“Your sister?” The burning feeling receded into a shortness of breath and sheer embarrassment. "But you told me…" I stopped myself before I could say the rest. That he told me she had cancer. That I thought she died.
Too bad Olivia picked up on it. "You told her I had cancer? Did you let her think I was dead?" Olivia’s mouth gaped, and she slowly turned to stare Hawk down.
He hadn’t let me think of much at all that night, to be honest, except kissing him. I had assumed‘ “leukemia”‘ meant she had died.
“He wishes I was. Dead.”
“Olivia…” Hawk growled in a very different tone than I had found sexy the last time we’d been together.
One huge thing about this didn’t make sense, though. If Olivia was his sister, and he didn’t have anything to hide, why the hell hadn’t he returned my messages? This was the Hawk that drove me up the wall, that made me want to rage. And right now, that rage was getting the better of me.
“Why didn’t you text me back?” I asked.
Olivia crossed her arms and glared at Hawk. “Because he’s a fucking loser and can’t take care of his shit to save his life.”
“Language, Olivia.”
“Are you seriously fucking talking to me like you’re Dad? Because you’re not. You can’t handle half the shit he did half as well as he did.”
“Well, Dad had his own problems.” Hawk’s voice had dropped so low that I had to strain to hear him. Which I did.
“You shut your fucking face about Dad’s problems.” She stood there, staring at him with wide eyes and her lips turned down, which somehow made her look vulnerable despite what she was saying.
I watched Hawk’s jaw flex as he stared back at her, taking deep breaths through his nose. “You can talk to me like that whenever the fuck you want, but not in front of my friends. Do you understand? We’ll talk about this upstairs.”
“Well, I have news for you, big brother.” Olivia sneered. “You can’t tell me what to do or where I’m going to do it. Ever.”
“Olivia, please. What do you think you’re going to do? You can’t drive the bike, and I know for a fact you have no cash for the bus.”
She glared at him for a solid second before she turned and stalked to the door. With her key in the lock, she said, “If you’re not up in five minutes, I split.” Then the door slammed shut behind her.
There were so many things I wanted to say to Hawk, that I wanted to ask him. What the hell had happened to his phone? How it was possible that we lived in the same town and yet hadn’t communicated since he had given me the best orgasm of my life? But meeting Olivia and watching her freaking out had pretty much answered all those questions and told me that Hawk needed one thing — for me to listen.
If only I hadn’t dropped that damn ranting note in his mailbox. Holy hell, I was no better than she was.
“I’ve gotta go up to talk to her, and she’ll lose her shit if you come up, too,” Hawk said, kicking at the ground. “She hasn’t already lost her shit?”
Hawk laughed once and rolled his eyes up and to the side, just like I did when I was trying to keep from crying. I remembered the move well from when Dad was in the hospital.
“This is nothing. In fact, her insane temper is one of the reasons she’s here at my place right now.” He rubbed the back of his neck, squeezing and rolling it back. “Do you mind waiting right inside? Like, at the bottom of the stairs? I’m so sorry, but she actually will completely lose it if you come up.”
“I… I can come back…” But I didn’t really want to make that offer, and my voice betrayed it. I didn’t want to lose sight of him, given how difficult it was to nail him down in the first place.
“No. No, I want you here.”
He wanted me here. Pretty much the opposite of the message I’d gotten since I’d seen him last. But I nodded, not knowing what to say. Hawk shot me an apologetic look as he let us both in and dashed up the stairs, mumbling, “Just don’t go anywhere.”
The tone and inflection of his voice sounded — and felt — exactly the same as when he’d asked me to stay the other night. Lonely and cautious. Not how I would have thought of Hawk when I first met him at all. My heart twisted.
Ten seconds later, Olivia started screaming again. Hawk’s deeper voice came in shorter bursts between her long tirades. The distance of a floor and a stairwell between us managed to do a good enough job of muffling her voice that I couldn’t actually make out her words, but thirty seconds after the shouting started, I heard a huge crash of something breaking on the floor. Then the door slammed shut again, and Olivia flew down the stairs, taking them two at a time. Hawk was right on her heels, pulling on his jacket as he came down.
Olivia slammed the main door behind her as she left. Right before Hawk reached it, he turned on his heel and met my eyes.
“I’m leaving my bag here,” he said, dropping his worn canvas messenger bag on the concrete floor. “Let yourself in. There should be something to eat if you’re hungry, if you can avoid the shards.”
Then he was gone.
I blew out a breath and plopped down on the first step, trying to make sense of the storm of emotions brewing inside me. I’d gone from hating Hawk to being crazy about him to hating him again to feeling sorry for him. And most of all, I was frickin’ confused. I definitely wasn’t ready to walk back into that apartment — wasn’t ready to face the memory of being there with him. Not yet.
And maybe I was a little pissed off that I hadn’t known all this about him before I slept with him. Not that it would have changed anything. Or maybe it would have.
Being with Hawk — or around Hawk or in a fight with Hawk — made me question every single thing about myself and my life. And I didn’t know whether I loved it or hated it.
My life just didn’t work like this. Never had, anyway. Ever since Dad died, I knew the exact path it would take. Now, between struggling so hard while I was only a junior at pre-med and having totally confusing feelings for this totally confusing guy and my mini-freak out during rounds the other day, I had no idea where my life was going anymore — who I even was.
The one thing I knew was that I didn’t know anything. Which meant that I could not let Hawk read that note that made me sound like I thought I knew everything.
“Shit.” I launched myself off my perch on the stair and paced once, twice through the narrow hallway, the concrete dull and unforgiving beneath my feet. “Shit, shit, shit.”
My eyes fell on Hawk’s bag. He’d told me to let myself up, and where else would his keys be? And the key for his front door had to be on the same ring as the one for his mailbox. It just had to be.
I fumbled through his bag, which really just included his wallet, a few notebooks, a book we’d been assigned for that damn business class — which meant he did actually care, damn him — and finally
my fingers hit the cold metal of his keys at the bottom.
“Yes!” I ran outside and jammed the small brass one, which looked just like every mailbox key I’d ever had, into the lock at the front of the gray metal box, and the front swung open. Enough junk mail to last a week — and probably some bills, too — exploded out onto the ground. One or two of them skittered away with the wind, and I scooped up the main pile in one hand while chasing them. After a few frantic minutes, more dropped mail, and a couple of breathless sprints back and forth across the cold, windy alley, I’d re-gathered everything that had come out of the mailbox.
Olivia was right about one piece of his shit Hawk didn’t have together — actually checking his mail. Still, half my sorority sisters left their mailboxes crammed full of junk mail for weeks on end, too. Pretty normal.
I shuffled through the thick stack of envelopes and advertisements once, then twice, and didn’t find the sheet of notebook paper. I had no idea where Hawk had gone with his sister, but he said he’d be back soon. How long was soon?
“Dammit,” I whispered.
My fingers trembled, and I flipped through wildly once more. Finally, the ragged edge of the paper brushed my finger, and I triumphantly yanked it from an advertisement for carpet cleaning. Hawk probably would have thrown it out anyway. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief. There was no trash anywhere in sight, so I crammed it in my back jeans pocket, shoved the rest of the mail back in the box, and slammed it shut.
Now I just had to find the key for the heavy metal door that led from the alley into the stairwell. I tried one, then two. Only one fit in the lock, but I couldn’t budge it. Just as I was trying the third one, the tripping, spitting rumble of Hawk’s bike came around the corner.
He killed the ignition and dismounted immediately, pulling off his helmet in one smooth motion. “Hey, what’re you doing outside?”
I shook my head frantically, then realized I looked like an idiot and swallowed hard. Calm down, Joey. It’s gonna be fine. You didn’t do anything wrong — yet.
“I…uh… I just wanted a breath of air. It was kind of crazy in there.”
“I’m sorry. I really am. I want to explain….”
“No, really, it’s okay.” Why was I saying that? If I wanted him to invite me up — and no matter what my logic said, everything in me was screaming that all I wanted was to be back in that apartment with him — then I needed to hear him out. “But,” I stammered, “I am freezing. Do you have some coffee or something?”
Hawk’s shoulders relaxed, and a look of relief swept over his face. “Yeah. Just let me get her inside.”
It took me a second to realize he was talking about the bike. “Oh, yeah,” I said.
He motioned for the keys, and I handed them over and moved aside to let him open the door, which I held as he wheeled the bike into the stairwell.
Chapter Eleven
Hawk let out a long breath and looked up at me with weary eyes. “Still want to come up?”
He looked so tired that I half-wanted to tell him to go to bed. But with stuffing that note in my pocket, I’d changed something about myself. For that moment, all I wanted — all I wanted in the entire world — was to sit beside him, hold his hand, and listen to whatever horrible storm in his life was making him this unhappy.
We stepped into the apartment, and a chill swept over me.
Hawk rubbed his hands up and down his arms. “Goddamn, it’s freezing in here. I’m sorry. I turn the heat down during the day…”
“To save energy. Good earth move.” I smiled and tried to keep my teeth from chattering.
“Yeah.” He strode over to the thermostat and pushed the knob up. His eyes met mine like he was trying to decide what to do with me. “Coffee. Right.” He spun around to face the kitchen, then groaned at the broken pottery all over the floor. “I can’t believe she broke that plate.” He kicked some of the larger pieces aside as he went into the kitchen.
I watched him work, the way those forearms flexed, the way his shoulders slumped. His eyebrows furrowed, and he moved slowly, ploddingly. Like his world was crumbling all around him and he was just trying not to let the pieces bash his head in. He looked exhausted from the weight of it all.
A small red light glowed from the dark kitchen, and the rasping sound of the coffee pot started a few seconds later.
“It’ll just take a couple minutes.” Hawk crossed over to the couch and perched himself on a saggy-looking ottoman facing me. His palm swept over his eyes, sliding back down along his cheek, and finally squeezing the back of his neck.
I nodded, still looking at him. I didn’t know why I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Somehow, I knew how badly he needed someone to listen.
“My phone died,” he finally said, staring at the ground. “Like, completely died. It was four years old and finally just wouldn’t turn on or anything. I tried to get a hold of you on Friday and Saturday. Sunday, I worked. Then Sunday night, all this shit hit the fan.”
“Your sister?”
“She’s been having trouble ever since Dad died. It was her freshman year in high school, and things are shitty for kids then anyway, you know?”
I remembered the braces and frizzy hair that had been my trademark in ninth grade, plus the fact that my name was Josephine. Changing into Joey my sophomore year was crucial to kids actually starting to let me sit at their lunch table.
“Yeah, high school sucks, I guess.”
He glanced up at me. “Even more when your only surviving parent dies, and your brother’s still a teenager. I was nineteen.”
“So what’s going on now?”
“She moved in with my aunt and uncle in Radnor. Rich neighborhood with good public schools. Only problem is that rich kids have lots of money for alcohol. And drugs. And Olivia takes after my dad.”
I shouldn’t have asked. Josephine wouldn’t have asked. And sorority Joey wouldn’t have. It wasn’t polite to pry, especially when you were talking about family drama, but when I was around Hawk, something strange happened to me. I became someone who dared to ask, dared to challenge.
“How?” My hands trembled because somehow I knew how awful the answer was going to be.
“Dad loved everyone. He loved life. He was a risk taker, and with the bar, it worked out for him sort of. But he was also obsessive, addiction-prone. An alcoholic. Any of the money we should have had when he died he’d already pissed away on drinking.”
My voice was a whisper. “Because of your mom?”
“Partly. But I don’t like giving him excuses. Just like I don’t like giving Olivia excuses for getting caught with a fucking open container in her locker, stealing my aunt’s car, and running away from home.” He rested his elbows on his knees and raked his fingers back through his hair, letting out a deep breath. “My aunt wanted me to take her for a couple days, let her cool off. But obviously, I can’t control her either.”
I left a few seconds of dead air and then asked, “Where is she now?”
Hawk looked up, shaking his head. “Her damn skeezy boyfriend’s. It fucking sucks, but it’s cold outside and at least there she’s safe. Has something to eat.”
His voice broke at that, and I saw his ’Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed.
“You really love her, huh?”
He laughed. “Yeah. Even when she pisses me off, I love her. She’s all I have left.”
I nodded. “I know that feeling.”
Hawk looked up, his eyes meeting mine. “Yeah?”
“My dad died. Four years ago. Cancer.”
Hawk looked at me, his eyes full of pity. “Sucks.” He opened his mouth and then closed it again, looking back down at his folded hands.
“Yeah. A lot.”
“I…” Hawk cleared his throat. “I’m sorry.”
I nodded. Then, after another stretch of silence, I said, “Why didn’t you tell me? About your sister?”
He shrugged. Looked away. “We were just partners on a class project. Strangers. I mean, th
at’s all we were, until… Well, anyway, I have way more baggage than anyone needs to know about.”
I couldn’t argue with that. In fact, I could say the same about myself. But we weren’t talking about me right now. So I dodged. “I thought…the morning after we…you know…”
Hawk looked back up at me with those sparkling, gorgeous eyes, and it felt like they were boring into my soul. “Yeah. I know.” His eyebrows furrowed. “I’m really sorry about that. One of our distributors for the bar fucked up one of our orders and…”
“It’s…whatever.” I hated that I’d felt like a one-night stand, but even though I was still annoyed, I allowed him this concession. Stuff came up, and apparently, in Hawk’s life, that stuff always took the “batshit crazy” form. “I found some of Olivia’s things under the sink when I was looking for toothpaste. I think they were hers anyway. And I thought…I don’t know. I guess I thought you had a girlfriend.”
“Oh, Christ. Of course you did. I’m….shit, Joey. I’m really sorry.” He stood up and sat next to me on the couch. Then, as our thighs grazed, he seemed to realize he was actually acting like a normal guy for a change, and he sat up straight, stiff.
And for all the moments I had envisioned touching him, holding him, grabbing him and kissing him, now I was frozen myself. Completely paralyzed.
It only took a few seconds of feeling like that to want to get the hell out of there.
“So…maybe we should set up times for the project now before I lose track of you again.”
“Oh. That’s why you came up.”
“No! I mean…” Shit. “Is that why you wanted me to come up?”
“No.” He watched me steadily. I could have sworn he moved a fraction of an inch closer. “I wanted to explain why I didn’t text you back.”
“You don’t seem like the kind of guy who would normally go to such great lengths to tell a girl he’s sorry for not texting her back.”
“I’m not.” His eyes held mine steady.
I could barely breathe. “So why did you?”
“I don’t know. I guess… I didn’t know I’d end up liking you so much.” The corner of his mouth pulled up into a crooked smile.
Heat Up the Fall: New Adult Boxed Set (6 Book Bundle) Page 123
