Hawke

by R. J. Lewis

  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.”

  Her lips formed a frown and her eyes narrowed. “We’ll see about that, Hawke Navarro.”

  Despite losing his finger, becoming a dead fugitive, and having no purpose in life, he let out a hard laugh. “I guess so, Tyler Wilson. I’m watching you.”

  With that, he let her go and shoved her back. She fell back on the mattress, air knocked out of her lungs, before growling in frustration and sliding off.

  “I see he’s gotten ruder in prison,” she told Hector, straightening her non-existent pink shorts and tank top. “You should have busted him out before he turned into an asshole.”

  She scurried out of the room without a glance back. Hawke smiled wistfully, already wishing he was back at the clubhouse to make her life a living hell.

  God, he wished for a lot of things, actually.

  “She did miss you, you know,” Hector spoke from the chair, staring at the door like he could see her through it. “She took it hard. Lost her old man and you a year apart. We did our best, and everyone loves her. She’s a good girl.”

  Instantly, Hawke’s smile vanished. He shifted his gaze to his brother, and a tight feeling emerged in his chest. All his brother cared about was pussy and beer. He was no fucking role model. It irked him that he would watch Ty grow, mostly because Hawke had a feeling Ty was different. She had been around violence all her life, and it never bothered her. She was such a fucking oddity, standing there in her pink girly clothes, her hair done up all the fucking time, barely blinking when a fight broke out and teeth were lost and blood was spilled.

  “Tyler is going to turn into a beautiful woman in a couple of years,” Hawke said sharply. “If you touch her, Hector, I will come for you, and I will kill you.”

  Hector’s face dropped, and he looked stunned. They stared at each other for several moments, the tension between them growing thicker by the minute.

  “Wow,” Hector finally said, astonished. “That escalated fucking quickly.”

  “Tyler doesn’t need to get treated like a whore by you.”

  “Why the fuck would I treat Tyler like a whore?”

  “Because you have no respect for women.”

  “I like to fuck, so what?”

  Hawke clenched his teeth. “She’s not one of them.”

  “I care about Tyler,” Hector retorted, firmly. “I don’t look at her like that. She’s like a sister to me.”

  Hawke tilted his head to the side, smelling his brother’s bullshit from a mile away. “I haven’t heard that line before.”

  “This is different than that last time. I’m serious –”

  “Just don’t do it.”

  Hector dragged his teeth over his bottom lip, something he did when he was pissed. “You see her f
or five seconds and suddenly you’re all up in that? She’s fucking grown up, Hawke, and when she’s old enough, I can’t be responsible for her choices.”

  Hawke’s anger pounded into his skull as he sharply snapped, “She’s off-limits and you fucking know why she needs to stay away.”

  “I know why, but she doesn’t.”

  “She thinks it’s only because of her old man, and she needs to keep thinkin’ that way.”

  “Fine, but that reason isn’t enough to keep her from the club. She’s fucking home there, Hawke. She loves it.”

  “The club gives her exposure, makes people wanna look into her.”

  “They won’t find shit.”

  “Just don’t touch her.”

  “You can’t demand those things Hawke without putting a claim on her!”

  “Then I’m claiming her,” Hawke said impulsively. “Nobody from the club is to ever touch her.”

  “And outside it?”

  “Outside it is fine because I want her to move on to someone decent. Just nobody from the club.”

  Hector was stunned, but he didn’t question it. He looked away from his older brother and leaned back in his chair. Neither of them spoke after that. It was always like this between them. Always unnatural. Never easy. They were two completely different people, fated as brothers but never with the bond to prove it. Hawke knew it had to be this way. His brother was too loose, and he didn’t trust him with his decisions yet.

  They were a doomed duo.

  When the doctor finally arrived, Hector excused himself. Made some excuse about needing to make phone calls, but Hawke knew it was bullshit.

  Tyler reappeared minutes later and sat on the corner of the bed as Gecko went to work. The bald tiny man didn’t ask questions. Frankly, Gecko didn’t want to know what had happened, or why Hawke was even out of prison to begin with. He was a man of few words, opting to just assess the wound and take care of it.

  Smart man.

  He patched up the cuts along Hawke’s arm and then began stitching the gaping wound shut. All the while, Tyler watched, not at all disturbed by the gruesome scene.

  God, she looked different. Two years had transformed her. Curves had sprouted. Soft ones, but ones nonetheless. She wasn’t a little girl anymore.

  “He didn’t have to shoot you,” she whispered to him just then.

  Hawke didn’t respond, but he stared at her hard, and she felt it deep in her bones. That stare was razor sharp. There was no way to shrug it off because when Hawke looked at you, he really looked at you.

  She fidgeted a little before meeting his gaze and they looked at each other. He saw her chest move faster, watched the way her lips parted. She still looked at him the same, he realized. Like he was some kind of god. He never understood her fascination with him, but he liked it, and he missed it, and he hoped to fucking god she didn’t look at anybody else in the club the same way.

  Tyler. Again, there was always…always something about her. Hawke couldn’t place it. Couldn’t put it into words, either.

  When Gecko finished, he dosed Hawke up with painkillers strong enough to put a horse down. Then he packed away his things and the first thing he asked was, “How do I get paid?”

  “Hector is in the room next door,” Tyler responded, avoiding Hawke’s eyes. “He’s expecting you.”

  “What’s he doing?” Hawke cut in.

  Tyler was uneasy. “He’s…with a girl.”

  “You’re shitting me right now.”

  She shook her head slowly. “He stopped off at some titty bar on our way here and found some girls. He thought you’d be into the idea too.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Hawke clenched his teeth.

  Here he was in a dump of a place, hiding out from the law, and his brother was already getting his dick wet. This was why he doubted Hector taking over when everything had gone down. He couldn’t think past his own dick.

  Gecko, sensing the tension, managed a stiff nod and strode out of the room as fast as possible, shutting the door quietly behind him. Tyler looked at the door for a few moments and then back at Hawke. He was already drowsy; his head swam and his body felt contentedly numb from the pain.

  The room was still and the silence felt heavy. Hawke began to feel groggy, like his limbs weren’t working. With heavy blinks, he watched Tyler shove the covers off the bed. Then she rested on the mattress, pressing her body against the length of his. Her head sat on his chest, her cheek pressed against dried blood and she was completely unbothered by it.

  “What are you doin’, Tyler?” he asked, his voice slow and sluggish.

  “You got busted out of prison,” she replied quietly. “I won’t see you again for a long time. All those months piled on top of one another, and it was a giant blur. I don’t know if I can handle that happening again, Hawke.”

  “You’ll be fine.”

  “Your bedside manners suck.”

  “You say that like you’re the one that’s bleedin’.”

  She let out a shaky breath. “I am bleeding.”

  He sighed and tried to lift his arm up. He groaned. His body felt far away. He hadn’t felt this vulnerable in a while and it didn’t sit well with him.

  “What are you doing?” Tyler asked.

  “Trying to lift my fuckin’ arm up. What’s it look like?” he grunted.

  “Do you need help?”

  “No.”

  It took him several awkward moments, and then his arm went up and dropped around her frame, good hand cupping her small shoulder. Her body relaxed at the gesture and she breathed deeply, wrapping her arm around his hard torso.

  “Everything is gonna be alright,” he told her. “You don’t worry about me, Tyler. You worry about yourself. I see you when I see you.”

  “How long?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s not good enough.” Her voice broke. “The club’s not the same without you, Hawke. You have to find a way back.”

  “You were just talkin’ about how incredible Hector’s been doing –”

  “Yeah, in front of Hector. It’s not like I’m going to trash him when he’s three feet away from me. I mean, don’t get me wrong, he’s trying really hard and I don’t want to downplay his efforts, but it’s not the same and he struggles. You’re the real president and we need you.”

  Barely hanging on to consciousness, Hawke closed his eyes. “It’s not up to me anymore, darlin’. I can’t go back. I’ll never be able to, and that’s something you have to accept.”

  “It’s not fair.”

  “Yeah, well, Ty, you’re fifteen, and you’re gonna find out soon enough how unfair life is. And instead of whining about it, you gotta suck it up and learn to evolve. That means accepting I’m not gonna be around the club for a very long time.”

  “Take me with you.”

  “I don’t know where I’m headed.”

  “I don’t care. Take me.”

  “No.”

  He felt her anger. She tried squirming back out of his arms, but he tightened his grip so she wouldn’t move. “Stop fightin’ me,” he told her sternly.

  “Then take me with you,” she pleaded. “I want to be with you.”

  “Ty –”

  “I love you!” She went limp again and sniffed, hiding her face against his chest. She couldn’t face him after that admission. Instead, she kept her lips sealed and coated his skin with her tears.

  Hawke stilled, taken completely off guard. “Ty,” he said, “what in the fuck do you know about love?”

  “I know love is home, and I feel it most when you’re with me.”

  He sighed and shook his head to himself. This girl was so fucking naïve. And ridiculously sweet. What the hell had he done to just claim her from the other guys? He didn’t want her, but the thought of her growing and fucking around with someone from the club grated on his nerves. They would just lock her away in a nice little house on the other side of town while they fucked other women. It would be living her mo
ther’s life, and he couldn’t risk that possibility.

  But…love?

  She’s a teenager. She probably loves a different boy every week.

  “It’s not love you’re feeling,” he said to her. “It’s fantasy. You’re young. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “What if I do?”

  “You’ll find someone,” he vaguely said. “Get a cute little pimply dude from your high school. Have fun with him in the back of his thirty-year-old truck. Experience shit, Tyler. Don’t be deluded enough to just wait around for me because I sure as shit am not gonna be waitin’ around for you to grow up. You gotta stop whatever you think you’re feeling because it’s not real.”

  “What if you want me one day?” she asked. “And what if it’s too late when you do?”

  “Tyler, actin’ cryptic isn’t in in your nature –”

  “What if you want me? Just answer.”

  “Tyler, one day every fuckin’ man will want you. And by then, even if I looked at you and wanted between those legs, you’ll have your eyes open to the world, and you’ll be having too much fucking fun to stop and want some dead fugitive.”

  She didn’t agree with his words, but she didn’t argue. She was stiff in his arms, and though he was barely hanging on to consciousness, he tried to comfort her. He rubbed circles over her shoulder and kept her glued to his side. She felt good like this. He knew it was because he hadn’t felt the warmth of someone in a very long time, but he liked this.

  He liked it a damn lot.

  “Your letters helped,” he murmured, unable to put a lid on his thoughts. Mostly, he wanted to make her feel better. “They helped a lot, Tyler. No one else wrote to me. Only you did and…”

  Every time he’d read them, they’d made him feel like he was part of her life still, and he hadn’t known how important that part was until he was gone. It meant something deep to him that she hadn’t forgotten about him; she’d clung on hard, and it’d deterred him from some very dark thoughts.