Because if he can’t, something like tonight is going to happen again. The silence wraps around us and I question myself, ponder whether I’ll be able to live with another tonight, especially if he doesn’t explain his actions any further. I wonder if letting him between my thighs when he hasn’t let me in his private life makes me seem like a pushover, or a woman willing to forgive at the drop of a dime. I let the thought settle and know that it doesn’t, it just makes me human.

But at the same time, I’m going to have to make sure he understands that the word “doormat” is the furthest thing from what is stamped on my forehead.

A small part of me revels in the fact that whatever he’s distraught over, he came to me tonight, needed me tonight. Not one of his other thirty flavors from his past. That’s a pretty heady feeling when you combine it with the emotional highs and lows of the day.

I’m so caught up in my thoughts I don’t even realize that I’m tracing the tattoos on the inside of his forearm, the treble clef and the symbol for strength, moving over them in a rhythmic movement. And something strikes me suddenly, so I shift my body so that I can look at the wrist of the arm Hawkin has resting on my back. He obliges my nonverbal request and lets me look at the skin sans tattoos on there.

“What?” he asks as I shift back over, curiosity now getting the better of me.

“You never explained the pink heart thing the other day. Do they all have them? You don’t?”

He stares at me a beat before he laughs. I welcome the sound after the heaviness of our exchange, and wait for his answer. “They’re … oh God.” He chuckles, his chest beneath my chin vibrating from it. “For as long as I can remember, the four of us made bets—about anything: songs, women, you name it. We did it so much that it became a habit, but at some point we realized that there was no recourse for losing.”

“Uh-oh,” I say, the smile on my lips contradicting the shake of my head.

“Yep. So one drunken night we decided that loser gets a tattoo, winner’s pick. More drinks, more decisions were made and we decided that it had to be a uniform image and location. We figured why not make it an image of what we love….” He pauses, the self-deprecation in his laugh humorous. “Ah, I can’t believe I’m telling you this…. Rocket said he loves the pink color of the inside of a woman’s pussy…. And, well, our decision was solidified. A pussy pink heart.”

“Well,” I say, but I’m so busy laughing it’s the only word I get out.

“Yeah, I know. Can you see why I make sure I can win any bet I take so I don’t ruin the significance of the ones I have?” I nod my head, envisioning each of the guys’ wrists and their permanent reminder, as he continues. “The guy has to get the heart outlined to make it bigger with each bet he loses … hence why Gizmo has the biggest one. Love the guy to death but he’ll bet on anything.”

“I’m afraid to ask what the bets are.”

“You should be.” He snickers.

“And you’re just that good, you’ve never lost?” I ask, immediately assuming he has to cheat the system somehow.

“Nope, I’m just that good,” he says, causing me to smile as he clears his throat. “It’s hard to explain…. Sounds stupid, really, but my tats have a meaning; they tell my story in a sense, and I refuse to lessen their significance by scarring myself with a pink heart.” His voice fades and a silence falls around us, so that even though we are lying on top of each other, I feel the distance.

“How long have you guys been together?” I ask, wanting to keep him engaged, learn more about him, and I figure this is a safe topic of conversation.

“Vince since sixth grade. Him, our other friend Benji, Hunter, and I used to be inseparable. We met Giz and Rocket in high school.”

He skims quickly over his brother’s name but I don’t miss it. So Hunter was a part of this close-knit group of guys who are now a band and now he isn’t? There’s obviously more there. I’ve seen the animosity between him and Vince firsthand. I want to ask, want to delve but choose a safer path.

“What happened to Benji?”

“He’s still around,” he says, voice laced in amusement. “Ben doesn’t have a musical bone in his body. He prefers being an asshole … so he became a lawyer.” I snap my head up at him, surprised by the comment but find him smiling so I know he’s teasing. “Nah, he’s a good guy. Always looking out for my best interest.”

I rest my head back down on his chest as the song changes. Hawke’s fingers keep tapping the beat on my back, but I still feel like there is a huge elephant in the room that we need to address. I’ve watched my brother go through some pretty serious shit, watched Rylee break down his walls, and learned that with men patience is a virtue you need to hold on to. And I’m patient, but I’m also curious.

“So is this how you deal with all of your problems?” I ask, causing his hand to stop momentarily from playing the beat before he continues again.

“Hmm?” he murmurs. “You mean putting the spin in your machine’s spin cycle?” He chuckles softly, his hand moving to tug the holder out of my ponytail and begin to play with my hair. “Because shit, that felt hella good. We might have to try that again sometime, minus the barge through the door thing.”

“It was kinda hot,” I tease, earning a tug on my hair that makes me laugh. “I’d hate to see what you do when it’s just you and the guys on a tour bus then,” I joke, wanting to lighten the mood some, give him room to breathe so that he can be comfortable enough to answer.

I love the laugh he emits; it’s free and sincere and tells me some of the weight on his mind has lifted. “I assure you the guys don’t get to see that side of me,” he muses. “And to answer your question, no, that’s not how I usually deal with shit. I take it out on Giz’s drums—pound the hell out of them for a good hour or so—but I think I’ve found my new substitute.”

“You have?”

“Yes. You.” His unexpected words cause a flutter in my stomach that I try to ignore. I’ll need to try harder with that because even though I’m sure he knows the right thing to say to make a woman swoon, the sincerity in his tone weaves its way into my soul and wraps around my heart. Gives me hope of possibilities that I realize I was fearing before but now really want to believe have a chance.

I don’t know what to say but his comment has made me feel a little more secure in this ever-revolving world around us, and I want to give him something in return. I press a kiss to his chest, his heart beating just beneath my lips, and rest my chin there on top of my hand. “You want to talk about tonight?”

“No … I don’t.” He sighs after a moment and I can all but feel his sadness return. “But you deserve an explanation after what I did to you today.”

“Hawkin—”

“I’m not that much of an asshole, Quin. If I’m going to fuck it out with you, you sure as shit deserve an explanation.” There is no arguing with his tone, so I keep my eyes fixed on my fingers tracing his tattoos and nod my head in silent agreement. And of course now that he is about to talk about it, I’m almost nervous to hear the explanation.

If it’s something he keeps this close to the vest, will finding out change the opinions and feelings I’m starting to have for him?

“Today is the anniversary of my dad’s suicide.”

I whip my head up to look at him, shocked by the confession I wasn’t expecting, the key he handed me to unlock one of his doors, and hurt for him all at once. My mouth falls open and then I close it, and open it again, having everything and nothing to say to him.

He keeps his eyes averted from me though. I know he’s hurting, can’t imagine the pain of having to live without a dad, but don’t know how exactly to soothe him besides just letting him know I am here for him in silent support.

“Hawkin.” It’s the only thing I say to him, his name softly spoken.

“No. Don’t…. I gave you the short version of it the other day. I’m sorry.”

“Please don’t apologize,” I plead.

He exhales a breath, his fingers still playing idly with my hair in a gesture so contradictory to the tumultuous emotions emanating off him. “When I was nine, I was home sick. My mom went to pick Hunt up from school and my dad stayed home with me. I went downstairs to get a toy—a Transformer—and he was there. He was ranting and pacing and nervous and the things he said confused me….” His voice fades off as my heart squeezes in my chest at the sadness that begins to suffocate the room around us. “He made me promise him things about my mom, about Hunter, about how I’d live my life…. Then he made me stand there and watch him load the gun … made me watch him pull the trigger.” Hawkin’s voice that is usually so melodic in tone is hollow when he says the last words, and the absence of his trademark warmth speaks volumes. Tells me this man understandably still mourns the loss of his father, the loss of his innocence, and everything else his father took from him that day that I can’t even fathom.

The silence around us is deafening as I reach out and lace my fingers with his, my thoughts racing over the damage that was done to his psyche that day. Questions fly through my mind: Why make your son watch? Why did he commit suicide? How can two sons left by their father end up at such odds when they probably used each other to get through it?

“What was his name?” I ask, unsure what else to ask but needing him to know I care.

“Joshua,” he says softly and then falls silent for a beat. “He told me …” He clears his throat from the emotion clogged there and it breaks my heart. His chest stills beneath my cheek as he reins in his emotion and continues. “My dad said that he was weak, loved my mom too much, and that he just couldn’t deal with it all anymore. By today’s standards, I’m sure he’d be diagnosed with depression, something that might explain things, but looking back through the eyes of a child, we never saw it…. He was just our dad. The man I idolize.”

I press another kiss to his chest, his heart beating erratically against my lips, and it’s not lost on me that idolize is present tense despite the amount of time that has passed. My mind turns to thoughts of my own father, who still seems larger than life. How as a child he protected Colton and me from life’s harsh realities and yet Hawkin was thrust right into them with a front row ticket.

“I’ll never understand why he did it, why he called me in there. Why he left us. It’s hard even now for me to admit how selfish he was for making me stand there and watch him. For making me promise to live a life by the standards he couldn’t himself live out. He saddled me with the burden of proving it’s possible to do what he couldn’t and survive….” He falls quiet, and I just lie there in silent reassurance, my eyes welling with tears I don’t want him to see. Tears for the little boy he was, the damage it caused him, and for the grown man still feeling guilt over it all this time later.

Scars run so deep sometimes, the invisible ones cutting the deepest of them all.

“He ruined us that day—my mom, Hunt, me. But the fault lies on me too because I still want to make him proud somehow by doing it. I can’t not. Something’s wrong with me, I guess … I don’t know.” He shakes his head and blows out a breath in frustration.

“Nothing’s wrong with you,” I murmur, not wanting to overstep my boundaries. “You’re just trying to honor your word. No one will ever fault you for standing by that.”

He just falls silent and I worry that maybe I said something he didn’t want to hear. All I can think about is this little boy with stormy eyes and the invisible scars he wears beneath the surface, the burden of being the man of the house after it seems like the house fell down around them.

“My mom has never been the same since. I’ve always said I lost her that day too. Our house was always filled with the sound of her singing or the classical music she was trying to teach us when the classics we’d much rather have been listening to were the rock variety. Then after … she was just this shell of herself…. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

“There’s nothing I can say,” I murmur; all of the words on the tip of my tongue wouldn’t express even an iota of what I really mean so I just keep quiet, pulling him in tighter to me, appreciating the fact that he trusted me with his story.

“Nothing to say.” He shrugs when he lifts his head up to finally meet my gaze. His eyes are heavy with sorrow and I wish I could take that away from him for a moment, a day, so that he can live free of the burden of it. “Hunter … I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “We were close for a while. We hit high school and he started to fall apart. Sports games without our dad in the stands, my mom so lost we had to turn to friends to teach us how to drive … He fell into a bad scene for a while.” He shakes his head and lays it back down, his eyes returning to the ceiling but not before I can see the pain, the guilt he carries in his eyes.