Sweet Ache

by K. Bromberg

  “Better now, yeah. Thank you, Colton.”

  “Sure, whatever,” he says, shrugging off the compliment and rising from the couch. He walks a few feet forward and stops in front of me. “If you decide to give this guy another chance … I plan on having a little chat with him. You need to know that ahead of time, okay? Because I don’t want you giving me any shit when I show him the long walk off a short pier I’ll be giving him if he fucks with you again.”

  I nod my head in agreement with a soft smile on my face. God, I love my brother. He leans down and kisses the top of my head. “Thank you.”

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah, I will be.”

  “Okay, I’ve got to get into the office,” he says, starting toward the door. “Ry said to call her so you guys can do the girlie shit together. That it’ll make you feel better.”

  “Okay, sure.”

  “And lock the door behind me,” he reminds me since I always forget.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I tell him as I sink back into the couch when the door slams shut.

  I want to pull the blanket over my head and hide, want to grab my keys and drive to see him, but know I need to flat iron the damn piece of paper and see if I can live with the creases I can’t get out first.

  Chapter 32

  QUINLAN

  I’ve showered.

  At least I can add that to my list of accomplishments for the day. My head hurts from the significant quantity of wine and ice cream consumed last night. The problem is Hawkin’s ruined ice cream for me. Sitting there eating it straight from the container with Layla made me more depressed, which led to more wine, which led to more ice cream.

  Thank God it’s the one day I don’t have to be on campus for class or TA sessions. I’ve made a resolution to throw myself into my thesis and not come up for air until I have the first draft completely finished to turn in on Friday.

  I’m burying my head in the sand by getting up late, blaming it on the wine headache that’s no longer present, but I’m also pretending that I don’t remember that today is Hawke’s hearing and possible sentencing. I hate that I want to be there for him, hate that I’m still mad at him, hate that I am still falling deeper in love with him.

  I guess it’s true when they say instead of overlooking faults, love sees through them and to the hidden parts inside. Whoever they are need to consider that it still sucks trying to figure your way around them.

  Colton’s brotherly advice won’t stop running an endless loop through my mind. Thoughts about trust and crumpled paper, being perfectly imperfect, and whether the risk to lay my heart on the line is worth it, consume my thoughts even as I pull out my research papers.

  Focus, Westin. Focus.

  The knock on my door pulls me from my scattered thoughts, and I immediately get my hopes up that it’s Hawkin while at the same time groaning because I don’t want it to be him. But wait, it can’t be him because he has a court hearing shortly. I don’t want to care, want to shut my mind off but know it’s no use. With my papers still perfectly neat and untouched, I head to the door wondering who is there.

  Before I even look through the peephole, I’m mad at myself for wanting it to be Hawke and then I’m confused because even if it was, I wouldn’t respond anyway. Or maybe I would give in once I saw him face-to-face. I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m surprised at who stands on my porch.

  Through the lens of the peephole I take in his buttoned-up shirt and clean-shaven face before unlocking the door and opening it. “Hi?”

  “Hey, Quin,” Vince says cautiously, eyes studying my reaction to his unexpected appearance. “Sorry for just showing up, but … I got your address from Hawke’s phone….” His voice fades off midexplanation, and I can see him trying to figure out how to say whatever he’s come to say. He’s obviously uncomfortable, and I’m unsure whether it’s because he’s here clearly butting into Hawke’s and my business or because he saw me naked and coming the other night.

  I definitely know the reason why I’m shifting my feet back and forth in unease.

  “You clean up nice. Hot date?” I ask to try to break up the awkwardness, and no sooner than the words are out of my mouth does it dawn on me why he’s dressed so nicely. “I … Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “It’s okay. This was a knee-jerk thing to do on the way to the courthouse … but I had to say some things to you.” The gravity in his tone is unexpected and has me immediately curious.

  “Come in.”

  “Just for a minute,” he says as he walks past me. I lead him into the family room, watching him check everything out. “Nice place you got here.”

  “Thanks. Is there anything I can get you?” I ask, manners prevailing despite suddenly being nervous.

  “Nah,” he says, but remains standing when I motion for him to sit. We stand, staring at each other for a moment. “Look, I don’t even know where to start other than to say I’m really sorry.” He blows out a breath and goes to run his fingers through his hair but stops when he remembers it’s stiff with gel. “The whole bet thing … at first it was a joke … and then as I started seeing how Hawke was being with you … I kind of forced the issue to try to make him see shit about himself…. It was too convenient—you being there was too convenient and made it easier for me to force the issue. I … Shit, I’m sorry.” Despite his fast-paced ramble, his last words are barely audible, but the regret laced with shame in his voice tugs at parts of me. So many questions whirl and race through my mind, and there’s a tangled mix of emotions that I can’t put my finger on except for one: anger.

  “So … he’s not getting any response from me so he sends you to do his dirty work for him?” I know it comes off bitchy, but I can’t help it, he’s at fault here too. He just confessed to using me and I’m supposed to sit here and kumbaya with him? Best friends like Vince, like Layla, go to bat for you, so how is this any different?

  “No,” he says quietly, his eyes pleading for me to listen. “He has no clue that I’m even here.”

  And why should I believe that? “What was the bet? How’d it come about?” I need to hear it from him so I can use the words as a validation for the anger I’m harboring and to withhold the forgiveness I feel.

  He looks down at the floor for a moment and then back up. “It was after the first lecture. You’d given Hawke a run for his money, and I teased him that you might be the first woman he’s ever met that would turn him down. He had a knee-jerk reaction, said bet me. I’d recently lost a really crappy bet so I took the chance to brand him with that ridiculous heart for once, betting him that he couldn’t sleep with you by the last day of the seminar. Due to a bet I lost where there was no proof, he jokingly offered for me to join in if I was so desperate for it … so I agreed.” He looks at me sheepishly.

  I take the damn piece of paper I’m holding crumpled in my hand and toss it into the trash can. The decision to not flatten it out, see where I stand, was just made that much easier.

  I force a swallow down my suddenly dry throat; I hate hearing the details but need to all the same to reinforce my resolve. How I felt then, how I feel now, and the tears I feared would come if Colton hugged me, all come barreling down on me. Consumed by my thoughts, it takes a moment for me to come to the here and now, to Vince standing before me trying to see how the confession sits with me.

  “Quin … I used you and I’m an asshole for it.”

  “You can say that again.” Sarcasm thickens my voice.

  I expect him to argue but he just nods his head and wins a few points with me. “Here’s the thing though—I saw something in Hawke that I’ve never seen before when he was around you. He’s spent his whole life living by whatever his dad made him say that damn day … always pushed anyone away when they got too close and yet with you he struggles with it. It was like something about you made him question himself, question the fucked-up shit in his head,” he says and a part of me stands up at attention, allows me to know that Hawkin did
in fact care about me somehow, some way.

  It’s bittersweet. It pisses me off. And it makes me miss him that much more.

  And it makes it that much harder to deny that damn piece of paper is out of the trash can, still balled up, but with new significance.

  “I screwed this up in so many ways—”

  “Look, I get that you’re protecting Hawke, but he’s a big boy, he can make his own amends,” I cut him off, using anger to fuel my bravado, and at the same time realizing that I’m the one shutting Hawke and his attempts down, that he has tried to explain. Talk about an emotional clusterfuck.

  “Just …” He sighs. “Quin, you have every right to be pissed but please, just hear me out.” He stares, making sure I’ve heard him. “At first it was funny. Watching Hawke get flustered, be off his game when he talked about you. Then I noticed every time I brought up the bet he would say no way in hell was he letting me near you and at the same time, he wasn’t getting a tattoo. I realized that maybe for once in his life, he thought he just might be worthy of having a real relationship, but every time I questioned him on it, he got defensive … so wrong or right, I pressed him on it.”

  And now my fingers are toying with the edges of the paper to see just how flat it can be made again.

  He’s frustrated that he’s not explaining this very well when in fact he is. I just think my mind is fearful of accepting what he’s trying to tell me. I want to believe him, yet … I don’t know. “But why continue? Just call off the bet, then. Let it run its course….”

  “We should have,” he says and the adamancy in his tone tells me he’s being honest. “But I’ve got to tell you, Quin, it was so fucking great to see Hawke struggle with wanting someone, to feel like he deserved it…. I just wanted him to see it, acknowledge it … and I thought the only way I could do that would be to force his hand. Hell, I knew you guys had slept together, no denying it with the thin-ass walls in our house, but I thought if I could push him into the situation, that he’d push back finally. He’d defend you, realize his feelings for you, and in turn acknowledge so much more about himself as a man.”

  It takes a moment to digest his first few sentences. I obsess over the fact that he’s seen a change in Hawke and that I wasn’t making all of these feelings up in my own head. And then his last sentence hits my ears and takes hold. My eyes flash back up to his, heart hoping what I heard was true. “His feelings for me?”

  Vince angles his head and his expression is one of incredulity. “You have to ask? He’s head over heels for you.”

  That damn paper is uncrumpled, my hands pressing it down, running across its surface over and over, adding pressure, trying to make it as smooth as possible.

  “Oh.” It’s all I can manage as a sliver of hope begins to seep into the majority of the fractures in my heart, cementing it back together. Talk about throwing a perfect chord in there when everything has been playing out of tune the past few days. I tell myself to calm down, tell my pulse to stop racing so I can get a handle on everything because regardless of what Vince has said, there is still a whole helluva lot of wrong mixed in with the little bit of right he’s just laid on me.

  Imperfectly perfect. I shake my head, trying to clear the thought from my mind, but it doesn’t budge.

  “The night of the party, when we were fighting in the kitchen, he told me basically to fuck off and die if I thought he was going to let me in on the action. I laughed, told him to get ready for his pussy-pink heart. He was pissed I was forcing the issue, so that’s why I was so shocked when Rocket told me Hawke was looking for me. And shit, I walked in and you were … how you were. And then Hawke came back and thought you wanted it to happen since you kissed him instead of let him talk you out of it.” He nods with a sallow smile, my thoughts on an emotional merry-go-round. “Yes, he was trying to talk you out of it, but what man is going to resist a woman when she kisses him like you did Hawke?”

  My mind flickers back to it all, the same things I have replayed over and over in my desolate misery. The gamut of emotions I felt that night, still feel now. How my stupidity made me react without thinking, clouded my judgment. The desperation I felt trying to right the wrong, and then with Hunter’s words … the crushing sensation of being used, made the fool, played when everyone else was in on the joke. The flashback gives me a firmer grip on my anger, on the pain Hawke’s actions caused me.

  “Well shit, I mean so much to him, Vince, that he came running right after me, now, didn’t he?” I raise my hands up in the air to emphasize my point.

  “Yeah, that’s because he was too busy landing a punch on me.” There’s a smirk on Vince’s lips but the tone of his voice tells me that he’s dead serious. I just stare at him to make sure I’ve heard him correctly. “Yep. Dead truth. I never saw it coming because the room was so damn dark. And then he stood there for a moment, shocked I think that he actually hit me, and took off after you.”

  The memory of thinking I heard my name being called returns—and I think about how I disregarded it, and wonder if he’d found me then, if Hunter had never interfered, would I have ever known about the bet? Would I still be the fool or would I be none the wiser and better off without the knowledge?

  “Well, he didn’t find me, Hunter did.” I tell him, hands back on my hips and turmoil in my soul. His eyes shock open a little at Hunter’s name but he nods his head up and down.

  “Hawke couldn’t figure out how you knew, but assumed it was his brother.”

  “Hunter was in on it, then?” I’m confused as a thought hits me that never crossed my mind before, and just when I was softening some. Hunter’s not part of the band, and yet he knew about the bet. Who in the hell else knew about it then? The groupies by the stairs, the rest of the guests that night? I mean was I the pathetic laughingstock of the party?

  Vince can see my anger rising and puts his hands up to calm me down, his head shaking side to side. “No. He eavesdropped on a conversation Hawke and I were having. That’s the day he punched him, the day his mom unleashed everything….” His voice trails off. “When Hawke went looking for you, he ran into Hunter, who’d been texting for money all day. After everything with his mom, with whatever you were able to get him to see, he told Hunter he was done supporting his habit when he ran out of the monthly bullshit payoff he gives him.” He must sense my surprise at the comment because he nods his head. “I was surprised too. So Hunter showed up, was pissed about being denied money, angry we didn’t tell him when the party was, and him and Hawke went toe-to-toe before Gizmo calmed the situation down. He must have gone outside, and then he saw you … and Hunter did what he always does, he tried to fuck over Hawkin.”

  Sinking down into the couch, I try to wrap my head around the new information, about being used by twin brothers but in ways I never expected, and worry what this all says about me, worry that I’m perceived to be someone who is gullible.

  “Wow.” It’s all I can say.

  “I know…. Look,” he says apologetically, “I didn’t mean to lay all of this on you. I know I’m partially at fault … and I know it’s not going to change your decision about Hawke or take away how bad you were hurt, but I thought you should know.”

  We stare at each other for a moment as tears begin to well in my eyes. I nod my head, letting him know I understand his reasons for being here, but I’m struggling to process everything. I can tell he’s uncomfortable so I’m not surprised when he says, “I should probably get going.”

  “’Kay,” I murmur, lowering my eyes as he walks up to me and leans over to press a kiss to the top of my head much like my brother did. The hollow sound of his boots on the tile fills the house as he walks to the door before I hear the click of it shutting.

  For the longest time, I stare at the same spot on the carpet with blurred eyes and muscles tense as I contemplate what’s best for me. And even when the first tear falls, I already know my answer, know that he’s who I want.

  My hands have worried that damn piece of pape
r flat, edges are folded over, creases are faint but there. Can I live with that? Will those imperfections be the weak point ready to give when the edges are strained over another issue? That’s what I need to decide.

  I want Hawkin on so many levels. I think I’m ready to fight for him. I just need to figure out how to go to him with a heart full of understanding rather than a fistful of resentment.

  Chapter 33

  HAWKIN

  I tap the rhythm out to the song circling in my head, lyrics absent but beat present as I try to work through the nerves humming in my system. I’ve worked crowds of thousands of people but sitting here on the hard leather seat, the judge’s bench in front of me, Ben to my left, and nothing but the unknown stretched out before me, I’m nervous as fuck.

  Add to that he took my phone from me so that it would not interrupt or distract the proceedings, so I’m shit out of luck when it comes to trying to ease my anxiety by getting lost in mindless rounds of Angry Birds.

  I’d kill for some Skittles right now. Maybe candy would help calm me.

  “Relax,” Ben murmurs, closing his hand over the top of mine to stop my thumb from thumping, and immediately the jogging of my knee beneath the table takes its place.

  “Easy for you to say,” I snap, my misplaced anger directed at him. It’s not his future and his freedom on the line here. Come to think of it, it shouldn’t be mine either. I sigh loudly. This self-doubt is such a new thing these days and I hate it.

  “I have a feeling everything is going to—”

  “Feelings don’t mean shit!” I bark in a hushed whisper, and then squeeze my eyes shut to staunch my anger. I mean the comment in more ways than one, and I can’t fucking think about her right now because I need to focus on this, on the here and now.

  Ben sighs in resignation as I glance over my shoulder for the hundredth time since we’ve been sitting here waiting for the judge to arrive. I know she won’t be here but for some reason I keep looking, keep hoping. I’m a poor fucking pussy-whipped sap.