Kristen Ashley - Mystery Man

That was an answer it just wasn’t the answer.

“Okay, so say you best the situation.”

“I haven’t.”

“Say you do.”

“Gwen, I haven’t.”

“But say you do.”

“I do, then we’ll see how that plays out.”

Not a good answer. I knew how it played out. Scott Leighton taught me that.

I looked at his chest and muttered, “I need coffee now.”

“Gwen,” he called.

My arms slid from around his back so my hands could press against his chest.

His arms got tight. “Gwen.”

I pressed harder on his chest.

He shook me gently and ordered, “Gwen, give me your eyes.” I looked up at him and he asked, “You want false promises?” I didn’t answer so his face dipped closer. “Baby, I can’t tell the future.”

“I can,” I whispered and pushed hard on his chest.

I succeeded in gaining a few inches until he hauled me right back, his arms locking around me.

“There it is, Gwen, this is that hand you got up,” he said quietly.

“I need coffee, Hawk.”

I tilted my head down and pushed again at his chest but his hand came up, twisted in my hair and tugged back gently so I was looking at him.

“All right, babe,” he said, “there’s two ways this plays out. I best this situation and you give me all of you, honestly, I could find that’s not what I want and we both move on.”

I yanked my head back but he held firm and kept talking.

“Or,” he went on, “I find treasure and a man who finds treasure does everything he can to protect it and keep it close. I don’t know which way this is gonna go but I’m willin’ to ride it out and see. That’s not a risk I’ve taken in a long time, Gwen, that’s a risk I’ve avoided. But I’m takin’ that risk with you. You step away now, that tells me I’m not worth it to you to take that risk with me.”

I stilled my struggles and stared at him.

“You gonna step away?” he dared.

“I need to think,” I whispered.

He shook his head. “No. No, you don’t. You live in your head too much, you curl up and shut shit out and spend so much time doin’ it, you forget to live your life. You can’t live your life in your head. That isn’t livin’. Trust me, babe, I know. I’ve been doin’ near the same thing for awhile now, so long I forgot what it feels like to be alive. You got in my face that day you got back from Ride and reminded me what it feels like to be alive. Feels good, Sweet Pea, so I’m not goin’ back now.”

Something was clogging my throat but I still managed to ask, “What are you talking about?”

“You drop that hand and quit fendin’ me off, I’ll tell you.”

“You tell me now, maybe I’ll drop that hand,” I returned.

“Doesn’t work that way, Gwen.”

I started to get mad and said, “Of course not.”

“Babe, you don’t get it.”

“I do,” I told him. “It’s your way or no way.”

“There’s that hand again.”

God! How could I forget how annoying he was?

He wanted it? He was going to get it.

“I loved him,” I announced, Hawk’s body got still and I went on. “A lot. Looking back, I have no freaking idea why but at the time, I was sure. Completely sure. I knew. I was absolutely certain. No doubts. None at all. Does that sound familiar?”

“Babe –”

“Ginger fucked him on our wedding day.”

On that, Hawk’s body locked and I nodded. “No joke. No one knows. Not even Cam and Tracy. Then, later, she was in some trouble, less than she has now, but she needed to crash at our place so I let her. I was out, don’t remember what I was doing, came home and found them at it again. It all came out then, Ginger told me and Scott didn’t deny it. Ginger, I got it, Ginger did that kind of shit all the time. But Scott, even though I knew, I locked myself in my head and went into denial and pretended. Hoped he’d grow up and grow out of it. But you wake up real fast when you walk into your home and find your husband fucking your sister.”

Hawk stared at me and I kept talking.

“You know, the funny thing is, I think Ginger did it so warn me off. I think Ginger knew exactly what kind of asshole he was and that was her fucked up way of protecting me. She wasn’t gleeful when it happened, she didn’t throw it in my face. She seemed relieved. But me, I loved him, I was so sure and I didn’t want to admit I got it that wrong. And when you’re that sure and end up getting it that wrong, you lose faith in yourself, your ability to make the right decisions about your life. So, Hawk, there’s a reason that hand’s up. Because I was sure about you too and for a year and a half you gave me nothing but really great sex. Now you want more but there is no way, no way in hell I’m not going to proceed with extreme caution.”

His hand cupped my head and his arm pulled me close while he whispered, “Baby.”

No. No. He couldn’t be sweet and get to me. He needed to give me something a whole lot different than sweet.

“You told your man you’d be there in twenty and I need coffee,” I reminded him. “And I also need to think. You might not want that but tough. It’s what I do. So let me go.”

He didn’t let me go. He held me tight and stared into my eyes.

“Hawk –”

“All right, babe, I’ll let you go but I’ll give you this to think about when you crawl into your head. For eight years, I’ve been dead. I had people loyal to me that I trusted and I didn’t let anyone, not one fuckin’ person into those ranks. Then I see this woman at a restaurant who laughs in public like she’s giggling with her girls over coffee at her kitchen table. The only thing I had to give that woman, I gave her. I know everything about you, Gwen, because my boys had orders to report to me daily. Where you went, what you did, who you were with, how you spent your money, who you met, who you talked to on the phone, when the lights went out in your bedroom and they knew you were asleep. I told myself it was because you needed lookin’ after but it wasn’t that, Gwen, it was never that. I didn’t know it then. I didn’t know it until Jorge phoned me and told me to get my ass to base because you were on screen in Ride. I didn’t go to base, I demanded a report, got it and went to your house because I knew your shit just got hot and I knew I was not gonna let anyone harm you. Then I saw the tapes and I knew the next day that both Lawson and Tack were throwin’ down and that’s when I knew no one was gonna have you, not anyone, but me. I haven’t let anyone in in eight years, Sweet Pea, except you. Now, you still got all I’ve got to give but I’m not gonna trust you with the rest until you trust me. So when you crawl into your head, think about that.”

And with that, he let me go and then he was gone. He didn’t vanish, his place was too big to pull that off, but I was immobile with shock, fear and something else, something a whole lot different, something warm and beautiful and that was even scarier, so I didn’t turn around to watch him leave.

I sat in Hawk’s battered old chair and stared across his cavernous lair.

I’d just finished my voyage of discovery. I didn’t go so far as to look through his desk and bedroom drawers but, after he left, I’d poured a mug of coffee and searched the only space I knew that was really his.

I went under the bedroom platform and checked out his shelves.

He had a lot of CDs; he liked music, plain to see. His tastes were all over the place. Rock ‘n’ roll, the old stuff, seventies mainly. Heavy metal, all good, no hair bands. Jazz, the sweet kind, from days gone by, not the saxophone-heavy new kind. Blues, Billie Holiday and Robert Johnson, nice. R&B, some rap and, rounding out this selection, even some classical.

In other words, nothing there to get a lock on anything – there was too much of everything.

I went to the books and, although there were a lot of them, they didn’t tell me anything more. He didn’t relax with an exciting thriller or an intriguing mystery. Most of the books were books I didn’t even know they wrote books about and I was a book editor. Manuals on strategy of war, hand-to-hand combat, martial arts philosophy. Biographies of war generals. History books of battles. Nothing else. Not even a slim volume of poetry to give me some insight.

So I curled up in his chair and looked across his space as my mind filtered through what I knew of the bed platform and his office. This also gave me nothing. What you saw with Hawk was what you got. His life was narrow, organized and controlled. There was no personality to it. He had a family, brothers, nephews – family that was close and they cared about him but there were no photos. No scrapbooks. No frames of ribbons earned for feats executed in the Army. No DVDs that showed what kind of films that entertained him. No art on the walls that reflected his taste. His furniture and fittings were stylish and expensive, definitely, but they were also heavy, masculine and durable. Even if they were attractive, they were utilitarian.

Except this nook. This chair. This table. This lamp. It didn’t fit but it also didn’t tell me anything yet somehow I knew it said it all.

All I sort of knew was, if what he said before he left, and even what he said about when he first saw me was what I thought he meant, I meant something to him before I walked into Ride.

Daily reports.

You didn’t demand daily reports on someone you didn’t care about in some way, even if it was a distant, freakishly-stringent, emotionally controlled way.

I sighed. Then I made a decision. Then I untucked my feet from under me and walked up the steps to get my phone. Then I walked to the kitchen, got myself a fresh mug of joe and I walked back to Hawk’s chair, took a sip of coffee, put it to the table and tucked myself into Hawk’s chair.

I flipped open my phone and scrolled down. Then I stared.

Then my belly got squishy and my heart swelled right before I smiled softly at my phone.

Hawk had programmed four listings in my phone. One that just was “Hawk” which I assumed was his cell. Under that was “Hawk Base”, under that “Hawk Base Private” which I assumed was his private, direct line at the office and under that “Hawk Home”.

Apparently, Hawk wanted me to be able to contact him if I needed to contact him.

For shits and giggles, I scrolled down to “Hawk Home” and hit go. A couple seconds later the phone upstairs, the one on one of the end tables by the seating area, the one in the kitchen and the one on his desk all rang.

I smiled again and hit the red button. Then I scrolled up to Hawk and hit go.

It rang twice before it was answered with an industrious but definitely sassy, “Hawk’s phone, you got Elvira. Talk to me.”

I didn’t talk to her due to my surprise that she answered the phone.

“Don’t got all day,” she prompted.

“Um… sorry, I was calling Hawk,” I said stupidly.

This was met with silence.

Then a high-pitched, “Gwen?”

“Uh… yeah, um… is Hawk –”

“Girl!” she cut me off. “How you doin’?” she asked conversationally, like we’d not only met but given each other manicures. Then again she’d packed my bags for me so she probably thought she knew me.

“Uh… fine,” I answered.

“Good to hear,” she replied. “The shit’s gone down with you happened to me, basket case. No doubt. Then again, I had Hawk gathering the boys to launch an all-out rescue operation on a biker compound to save my ass, maybe not.”

“Yes, that does make me feel a modicum of safety,” I agreed.

“Modicum!” she hooted like that was hilarious. Then again, it was. Hawk and his commandos provided much more than a modicum of safety.

“Um… thanks for packing my bags,” I offered.

“Girl, thank you! Sortin’ through your shit was like a trip to female Candy Land. You got thirteen little black dresses,” she informed me.

“I know,” I replied.

“Each one red hot, scorchin’. Seen you on camera loads, girl, thought it was about your ass, maybe your hair, but now I know it’s about those little black dresses,” she said.

“Unh-hunh,” I mumbled.

“Anyway, what you need?” she asked.

“Is Hawk there?” I asked back.

“Negatory,” she answered. “He’s in the middle of somethin’, can’t take calls, forwarded them to me.”

Hmm. This didn’t sound good.

“Can you give him a message to call me?”

“Sure, but you can tell me what you want and I got authority to take care of it. Boys are busy but I know you’re quarantined at the Hawk Hangout so you need somethin’, let me know and I’ll find someone who can sort you out.”