“Yeah, right. Did you forget we have that twin thing going on?”

“Not very smart to bite the hand that feeds you, right, Hunt?” Vince says, stepping up behind me.

And fuck yes he says what I want to but sometimes it’s a helluva lot easier to just shut the hell up than to make Hunter go on one of his little tirades and fuck up my life some more. Sometimes it takes more of a man to turn the other cheek and appear to be a pussy than it does to plow my fist in his face and tell him I’m done.

But fuck if that time’s not coming sooner rather than later. A man can handle shit dealt to him over and over, swallow his pride and bite his tongue, but involve that man’s woman, and it’s on.

And I just called her my woman. FUCK! Can anything be more of a mess right now than my head? I scrub my hands over my face as Hunter finally answers Vince.

“Not biting anything,” he muses, smirk still in place. “Just making an observation is all.”

We all stare at one another, the animosity vibrating between the three of us and just once I want to see my brother and be happy. Just once I don’t want to question his appearance and try to figure out what he wants from me, how he’s trying to stab the knife in my back while reaching his hand out with the other.

When I step closer, I can see red in the whites of his eyes, notice the delayed response of his tracking, and bite back the reprimand on my tongue. “You high?” He stares at me like he’s offended I asked. Is he fucking serious? “Answer me,” I demand through gritted teeth.

“So a party, huh?” he says, ignoring my question and ratcheting up the tension. “That ought to be fun.”

“You using, Hunter?” I ask again, the straw slowly breaking. My hands fist at my sides and I’m a millisecond from grabbing the front of his shirt and throwing him the fuck out of the house.

“Naw, man. Just drunk and wanting to party a bit myself, but I seem to be outta cash. Can you help a brother out?”

“Fucking unbelievable.” Vince snorts behind me.

“Don’t you have somewhere else you need to be right now, Vinny?” Hunter sneers at him.

“Nope. He lives here. You don’t,” I say to cut off his power play as well as his drunk tough-guy routine. “How’d you get here, Hunt?” I ask, emotion roiling inside me as I see his keys on the floor by his feet.

“Can’t a guy just visit his brother when he wants?” He laughs and it grates on every nerve I have right down to the very last one.

“You drove, didn’t you?” It seems we’re on the repeat-each-question-twice routine here and my patience is done.

He just throws his head back and laughs. “What’s so fucking funny, Hunter? A DUI?” Vince growls as my brother keeps laughing.

“It’s okay,” he says, holding a hand to his gut. “My brother will take the rap for me.”

And I snap. Every pent-up emotion I’ve had over the past few years, every ounce of hatred, resentment, guilt, balls up in my clenched fist and is the driving force behind it as it connects with my brother’s face in an unsatisfying crunch.

He goes down for the count with my first hit. His drunk ass is sprawled on the stairs and I’m so angry, so pumped full of hatred that I want him to wake the fuck back up so that I can keep going. My body is vibrating and my mind is a constant slide show of the years and all of the shit I’ve let him hold over me.

“It’s about fucking time,” Vince murmurs.

I rock back and forth on my heels before looking over my shoulder to find him wide-eyed and staring at me, asking me with the look if I’m all right with what I just did. And fuck yes, I am, and hell no, I’m not, all in the same damn breath. “I gotta get out of here,” I tell him, suddenly restless, unsettled that I’ve just gone against everything I’ve ever told myself I couldn’t do.

But fuck does it feel good.

“I’ll take care of him,” he says. And I know he will; it’s just that I feel guilty for making him. Fuck that, Hawke. Fuck the guilt. It’s not on you.

Well, shit. Guess there’s not going to be any calm before the next storm. I look at my brother and sigh.

I hit the road, drive for what feels like hours. I don’t know where I’m going or what I’m looking to find, but as long as I keep moving, my past can’t catch up to me.

At least it’s a good idea in theory because I can’t outrun this shit. The stuff I want to and the stuff I don’t want to.

I end up the one place I used to go to be alone, to think, and as I stare at the Hollywood sign from my seat on the grass at the Griffith Park Observatory, I love the feeling that I’m this little person in this big world. The idea comforts me some. The notion that on the grand scale of things my problems are minute. Someone out there has it way worse.

And no one expects a rock star to be here so with my hat pulled low on my head, I’m able to disappear.

I stare down below to the city where as a little boy, scared and traumatized, I wondered how all of the dreams inside my head could ever see the light of day when I felt like I had the responsibility of the world on my small shoulders. But I did. And I made it.

So why do I feel like I’m still not enough? For my brother? To make my mother better? For Quinlan to even want me beyond the killer sex we have? For the fans who scream and sing my lyrics like they live them when they have no fucking clue the meaning behind those words and the damage within from them.

I scrub my hands over my face, needing a drink, craving an ice-cream cone, and wanting the feeling of Quinlan’s arms wrapped around me as she silently sits there and just is with me.

My mind veers to Hunter. To the look on his face as I threw my punch. I push the guilt away, hold on to my gut-check rationalization that he deserved it, and realize that’s the trouble I’m having here. Going with my gut versus going with the bullshit promises I’ve lived by forever.

My stomach churns and my head feels like Gizmo’s banging the hell out of it with his sticks. I shove up off the grass, needing to get the fuck out of here, my heart and head in conflict, and for the first time in forever I dare to think what could happen if my heart finally won for once.

After I start my car, I sit there for a moment, trying to figure out where to go next. I feel like nothing has changed in my day to day, absolutely nothing, so why when I look back do I feel like everything is different?

I exit the parking lot and begin the long descent down the hill to reality. And I know without even directing the car that I’m headed to Quin’s house. She may have told me she needed to work on her thesis to get the space I saw in those panicked eyes of hers, and I might be heading there with a head fucked up and a heart still in tumult if it can actually love without ruining me, but I need to see her.



Chapter 25


HAWKIN

When she opens the door, I feel like I can breathe for the first time in forever. Her lips part in surprise and then turn upward in a slow smile, but I also can see her hesitancy, the guard that’s up in her eyes. A shudder of panic darts through me and I feel lost, unsure what has changed between the two of us. The world beneath my feet seems to be shifting—beliefs, promises, truths, all of it in doubt—and I can’t have whatever is causing these changes—her, us—not be okay.

“Hey,” she says and motions for me to come in but then holds her hand up in the air in a one minute gesture. I see the phone in her hand as I follow her into her family room. She motions for me to sit on the couch but I’m too restless to sit because all I want to do is pull her toward me and kiss her senseless. It’s like I can’t get enough of her, and I need to abate this burning in my gut.

She leans against the kitchen counter with a smile on her face from whatever the person on the other end of the line says. “Well, that sounds like a great idea. I’ll have to take you up on that,” she says before falling silent while the person speaks again. She laughs affectionately, and I can’t tear my eyes away from her. “Well, I’ve got to get going—someone’s here…. Uh-huh, but I’m glad you called. Bye, Luke.”

What? Talk about whiplash. I stare at her as she takes her time setting her phone down before she walks toward me. “What a nice surprise!”

I don’t know if it’s all of the shit in my head and my fight with Hunter mixed with my sudden want for her to be only mine, but my temper flashes without forethought. “Who the fuck was that?”

“Luke. Is there a problem?” She stops and places her hands on her hips.

Quin has every right to be annoyed by my question. Hell, she’s probably playing me and pushing my buttons on purpose, but I’m not in the mood for games. I’ve dealt with enough shit as it is today and am at that point where my confusion and emotional turmoil and need for her all crash together into a perfect storm waiting to explode.

“Yeah, there is. I thought we … I mean we … What are you talking to him for?” I grit the words out, frustrated at myself for being so flustered and playing into her game if she is in fact playing one.

“Because I want to.” And the way she says it, challenge mixed with what are you going to do about it, has me angling my head and questioning myself again.

“Not when you’re with me, you won’t.”

She stares at me, arms crossing over her chest and that fuck-you lift to her chin. “I’m with you? Because unless I’m mistaken being with someone means that you don’t hide shit that’s a need-to-know. We’ve never talked about being exclusive so I’m free to do what I want, right?”

“We’re exclusive.” I react without thought, my own answer surprising me.

Quin stares at me for a beat, eyes wide, lips parted before shaking her head in disagreement. “No we’re not. Being exclusive means closet doors are open so we can peek at the skeletons inside … and yours? Your doors are locked shut and that’s not okay with me.”

Is she rejecting me? What the fuck am I missing here? Fear that I’m going to lose her when I just realized I want more with her hits me. “What are—”

“You’re pissed I’m talking to Luke … so I can be pissed you haven’t told me about Helen, right?”

Her words take me by surprise. My mind stumbles, panic replacing my anger again—but of a totally different kind than when I knocked on the front door minutes ago. I must look like a deer in the headlights trying to figure out how she knows about my mom because she answers the question for me.

“You and Vince were talking about her in the kitchen the other morning, and I overheard,” she says with a quiet, resigned hurt in her voice.

And things start to click into place for me. Her sudden departure after we had sex. The flustered excuse to work on her thesis that didn’t match the deception in her eyes. Almost like she’d fallen into the lust of the sex with me and once it was over, she realized that it was all too much … but in reality she was thinking I was cheating on her or double-dipping or what-the-fuck-ever with the person we were talking about in the kitchen.

I’ve held my mom’s privacy so close for so long that my chest constricts when I think of letting an outsider in. And even though that person is Quin, trusting someone to know about my mom, the one person I love more than anything, my one and only weakness, paralyzes me.

I hang my head down and squeeze my eyes shut from the hurricane of emotion that is whipping inside me. “Helen’s not who you think she is, Quin.” The words are so quiet I’m not sure if she even hears me but when I lift my head to meet her eyes, I know she has. “Come with me somewhere?” The offer is out of my mouth before I can stop it.


We drive in an awkward silence toward Westbrook. Quin must have sensed my distress when I asked her to come with me because she stared at me for a beat before grabbing her purse and climbing in the car beside me.

I glance over at her, eyes shadowed behind her sunglasses and hands folded in her lap, and wonder what she’s thinking. Does she have any clue what my insides feel like right now? Like they’re being churned and twisted and filled with acid. She can’t possibly because I haven’t said a word and yet she still sits there in silent reassurance, allowing me the space I need to work through my inner turmoil.

“I knocked Hunter out.” I’m not sure why I choose right now to confess this to her other than to break the silence.

“Well, he probably deserved it,” she says matter-of-factly and asks nothing more. No how could you punch your brother? No you don’t do that to your family. Nothing.