I snort aloud, immediately writing off what she’s just said because it hits a little too close to home. I feel alive and numb all at once but the feeling part is so intense I feel like I could sit down and write a thousand songs to get it all out and it still wouldn’t be enough.

And she’s up off her feet in an instant of my nonverbal rebuff and approaches me for the first time since we’ve been in the studio for who knows how the fuck long. She stands in front of me, her face pulled tight with anger, and her hands on my shoulders force me to turn away from the kit to face her. “When you write a song, when you play it on stage, can’t you feel it? Doesn’t it make you feel alive?” She’s not backing down and I’m a little shocked that she’s so in my head she’s confronting me with what I was just thinking myself. “Sure you lose yourself in your music, but you also find yourself, right? It makes you feel so that—”

“Don’t you get it?” I lash out, my anger resurfacing through the haze and unfortunately being directed at her, but I can’t stop myself. “Right now I hate him so goddamn much for doing that to me and in the same breath still love him. How is that not fucked up?” My blood is pumping and my hands start trembling from the rage inside me, my body wanting to shut down but my head refusing.

“Your dad did what he did and it had nothing to do with you.” The quiet calm in her voice stops my mind from spinning for the first time since we left Westbrook. “He may have cheated on your mom, but that’s on him. Your mom may have lied to protect you, to preserve his memory for you, and that’s just being a good parent. It might take a while for you to see it but do you really think she knew what he said to you that day? Do you think she knew by allowing you to keep him as an idol in your life that you’d be left with this burden?”

“It’s easier to live with the guilt.” I don’t know where the confession comes from but it’s out and I can’t take it back.

“Of course it is. You’re human, Hawke. Why should you deserve all of this,” she says, her hands out to the side, motioning at everything in general, “when Hunter can’t get his shit straight, when your mom is fighting with dementia, when your dad took his own life? Of course you feel guilt … but you know what? You worked your ass off to get here, you overcame odds, you do deserve it.”

She might be right but fuck if I want to hear it right now. I don’t care if it was for my benefit or not…. Maybe I do…. Fuck! I can’t process anything right now: good, bad, truth, lies, love, hate. I’ve toed the edge on some of them, but have always held the few ideals to be my grounding truth to find out they were all bullshit principles he never lived by himself. So I’ve lived a life full of empty connections because I was so fucking scared to end up a mess of blood and gray matter and hopelessness that I never allowed myself to love someone.

I just stare at Quinlan in front of me and recall how earlier I thought it was time to rewrite my own life some. I wonder why after all of this time I finally had thoughts of stepping outside my comfort zone and was feeling like in doing so I was going to let my dad down. And then this happened.

Fate’s a fickle, funny bitch sometimes.

“Hawke?” Quinlan looks at me and despite the hesitancy in her eyes she steps in between my legs and puts her arms around me, pulling me into her. I sit, kind of stunned because her touch, her compassion, physically hurts me. It’s like I don’t deserve this from her, don’t want to accept it, yet within moments I’ve tugged on her torso and am clinging to her, have dragged her against my chest, and am holding on for dear life. The need to need someone is so profound I can’t catch my breath.

I fight the ingrained thoughts that want to push her away, to not feel, but that’s all I can do right now is feel. My hand fists in the back of her shirt, my face is buried in her abdomen as I squeeze my eyes shut so goddamn tight because I will not cry but my body shudders with the force of trying to withhold it.

And Quin just holds me tight, giving me all of the comfort I’ve needed from my mom for so many years. I’ve found consolation over the years between the thighs of a willing candidate but not like this, not making myself vulnerable, not needing someone. As unsettling as it feels, I can’t let go, can’t pull away from her and her quiet murmurs of soothing and the silent support of her arms.

“It’s okay to need me …” she says and then falls quiet. I just pull her in tighter and I’m sure she can’t breathe but it’s okay because right now I’ll be her fucking air so long as she doesn’t let go of me.

And that thought … the immediacy of it as it runs through my head almost knocks me as far back as the confession from my mom’s lips.

The funny thing is that even with all the shit I’m trying to process, I don’t know why that one thing doesn’t scare the fuck out of me. Why of all of the revelations I’ve come to today, having Quin here with me feels more right than I ever could have imagined.



Chapter 28


QUINLAN

I watch Hawkin from the couch in the studio. He’s working through the lyrics of a song while I’m on my laptop getting into the heart of my thesis. This feels good. All of it, especially where we are right now when it could have gone in so many different directions after the past couple of days.

I love the opportunity to watch Hawke work. He gets this little crease in his forehead when he jots down lyrics and reworks them on the pad. He also does this thing where he bites his lower lip as he strums out the chords on the guitar with his eyes closed before he brings the words into it. Something about his process is most definitely sexy.

Every time I see him stare off into space in thought, I wonder how he’s really doing, and I can’t help but remember the look on his face as he stared at his mother, the hurt and shock and devastation in his expression. It was so brutal to watch, so heart-wrenching to stand by and not be able to do anything to ease his pain.

He’s shut down still, not really talking about it, and yet I know the truths he learned are making him question everything about what he’s grown up believing. Maybe that’s why he’s poured himself into his music the last couple of days.

After this past week, I know my mom’s old adage describes Hawkin perfectly: Sometimes the strongest people are the ones who love beyond all faults, only truly grieve behind closed doors, and fight battles that nobody knows about. My only hope is that by losing himself in his music, he’s been able to process everything.

Besides leaving the house for his last lecture today, he hasn’t really left the studio much according to Vince. But in Vince’s eyes that means Hawke’s coping, he’s working through it with music, and that’s a good sign.

Hawke glances up and smiles softly, the guitar falling silent. It takes a moment for me to realize I’ve been caught staring at him and the smile on my lips is out of pure reflex.

“Hey, how’s your paper going?” he asks as he grabs a handful of M&M’s.

“If it included a hot rocker guy writing a song, then I’d say it was going great…. You’re distracting, Play.”

My stomach flutters at the full-fledged grin he gives me in return. “I can distract you in other ways if you’d like.” He raises his eyebrows and my heart squeezes at the comment because it’s the first time he’s pseudo flirted with me since everything happened.

Maybe Vince is right, maybe the music is helping.

“I’d like that. Maybe I can inspire you with my wicked ways to write a dirty song.”

“Sweetness, every time I touch this guitar I’m reminded of you.” He smirks, my eyes drawn to the guitar and my body reacts viscerally. “But there are plenty of other instruments in here; we can try to add another one to our sexed-up band.”

I start to clear the papers from my lap, not one to turn down the look in his eyes or the hints of what they say he wants to do to me. My old, playful Hawkin has emerged from hiding and a part of me sighs in relief. He reaches me the same time I have a clear lap and drops to his knees between my legs.

Leaning forward, he bestows a tender kiss that causes that sweet, slow ache to burn in my core. He slips his tongue between my lips, and I swear to God I can taste the next sixty years when his mouth connects with mine.

The thought startles me. Shocks me enough that I break away from the kiss. A tide of panic flutters within me but at the same time, I know what I just felt was real. With our faces inches apart I stare into his eyes, my hands smoothing over his jaw as I let the idea settle some.

“I know, I’m sorry,” Hawke says throwing me for a loop.

“What?”

“You have every right to question me right now with everything and how I’ve been acting and—”

“That’s not … I’m not questioning … I just …” My voice trails off as I realize he thinks I’m hesitant to kiss him, to be intimate with him, because of how closed off he’s been the past few days, when in reality it’s because I’m so overwhelmed with feelings. How do I tell him that and not freak him out? I can’t. Not with everything he’s going through.

“Hawke, it’s not you at all. I—”

“You guys gonna come out of your sex studio long enough to join the party?” Vince asks as he barges in the room. A knowing laugh falls from his mouth when he sees our positioning. “See, I knew it. Shit, I owe Rocket ten bucks. I told him that there was no way—”

“We’ll be there in a minute,” Hawke shouts over his shoulder. “We’re kind of busy.” He leans in and kisses me again, a little piece of Heaven amid the chaos that’s been surrounding us as of late. I slide my hands up his torso, anxious to feel him and touch him, show him somehow, some way that his past is his past, and that his future is wide open.

I moan into his mouth as his strong hand slides up under my shirt, rough to soft, and finds my breast, thumb grazing over my nipple as his mouth seduces me. I sink into the feeling, the emotion surrounding us, and can’t think of any other place I’d want to be.

Hawkin’s phone buzzes with a text and we ignore it as my hands start to tease and tempt and taunt his bare flesh, loving the heat of him beneath my fingertips, the bunching of muscles, the connection being made. His hands work wonders on my breasts, his fingers finding their way beneath my bra so his calloused fingers pleasurably scrape across my sensitized flesh. My head falls back as I lose myself to the sensation and he moves his mouth to the span of skin on my neck to place openmouthed kisses there.

His phone alerts another text. “Such a popular guy. I guess I should feel lucky to be in your presence,” I tease breathlessly, my senses in overdrive.

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be than right here, right now,” he murmurs with his lips against my neck. His phone alerts again and he mutters, “Jesus Christ!”

“It might be your …” And my voice fades off, afraid to bring up his mom, but I’m already worried.

He swears again and leans back to the table he was writing lyrics on and grabs his phone. God he looks sexy with his hair all mussed up by my hands. He looks at his phone and scrunches his face up momentarily before slamming his phone down. I cringe at the sound and worry what’s wrong.

“Fucking Hunter,” he grits out. “The lecture’s over so he must be back on the prowl for drugs again. How is it possible he’s asking for money? He gets more than enough. Goddamn it!” He shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair before raising his eyes slowly to meet mine. “I’m sorry—this is … this is just how it is with me. I’m trying to change this—how I need to fix him and help—so it’s going to take me some time to not react … to not enable him. You deserve better than this….” His voice trails off and he lowers his head.

I scurry over to where he sits on his knees and mimic his posture. I force his head up with my hands and stare into those gray eyes of his that do funny things to my insides, even now when he’s looking at me with regret. “Hey, rocker boy … I don’t want anybody else though, I want you.” I love this hitch in his breath from my words, love knowing that it can affect him that way because maybe one day he’ll be able to tell me what I see in his eyes … that he feels the same way about me.

“Quin …”

“Look … I’m here, okay? I’m not going anywhere. It’s going to take time and I get that.” I lean forward and use my lips to reinforce the words. He pulls me into him and uses his tongue meeting mine to tell me he understands.