Savage Collision: A Hawke Family Novel (Hawke Family #1)(62)

A man like Savage doesn’t cry. At least, not in front of someone. Whatever this is, it’s killing him. I’ve never felt so fucking helpless. There’s absolutely nothing I can do because I don’t even know what the problem is.

Minutes tick by with complete, unnerving silence in the room. His pain hangs heavy in the air but I can’t seem to bring him back from wherever he is.

Come on, Savage. Talk to me.

I beg. I urge him to tell me what’s going on. I try everything with no response.

When he finally shifts, slowly releasing his grip on me and leaning back, relief floods me.

Finally.

His eyes are vacant, red, and puffy, and he doesn’t seem to focus on me, rather, some place behind me in the room.

I take his face in my hands, turning him until his empty eyes meet mine. “Savage, tell me what’s wrong.” He shakes his head and drops onto his back, resting his forearms over his eyes without a word.

Seriously?

Despair and anger create a volatile mix inside me. I slide off his hips and kneel next to him, taking a deep, cleansing breath before I try again.

“You aren’t going to tell me what’s going on?”

No response.

His arms remain draped over his eyes, his body motionless, except for the now-steady slow rise and fall of his chest. I watch him, waiting for him to acknowledge me, acknowledge anything, but he doesn’t, and it becomes abundantly clear to me he has no intention of talking to me about what happened.

Why, Savage? What can’t you just fucking talk to me?

The realization has me clutching my chest against the pain of my heart being torn open. I bite back the sob that threatens to escape. Tears slide down my cheeks before I even realize I’m crying.

“Savage, please talk to me,” I manage to eke out before I sob, “I need you to talk to me.” He doesn’t budge, and as the pain of knowing he can’t confide in me overtakes me, I shift back on the bed, away from him. I slide off the mattress onto shaking legs and have to grab the bedpost to stop from falling forward as another sob echoes in the too-silent room.

“I’m sorry.”

The words are so quiet, I’m not even sure I really hear them. Wiping my eyes, I turn back to the bed and find him in the same position, but his arms have moved up, revealing his red-tinged, hopeless gaze. He looks completely lost, but he won’t take the lifeline I’ve repeatedly offered him.

“Why won’t you talk to me? Please, tell me what’s wrong,” I beg, not even bothering to try to hide my distress.

What does it matter at this point?

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. When he refocuses on me, I know I won’t get an answer. Gone is the Savage who always promised to be an open book, who always said he would be honest with me. All that’s left is a brick wall of silence.

“I’m sorry…I just…can’t,” he whispers.

I drop my head, close my eyes, and try to breathe through the heaving of my chest. When I finally look back at him, a single tear slides from his eye and rolls back down his cheek to his pillow. I know what I need to do, but the pain of actually following through with it may kill me.

My eyes lock on his. I brush aside what my heart is begging me to do, and decide it’s time to listen to my head for once. “Then, I need to go.”

He flinches, but otherwise doesn’t move, and doesn’t respond. “I don’t know what is going on with you. I can’t believe I’m actually going to say this, but if you told me we couldn’t have sex because of something that happened with the accident, that would be okay. It wouldn’t be a deal breaker…because I love you. I don’t need…that…but this, this isn’t physical Savage, and you won’t fucking talk to me, so how the hell can we ever fix it? You not talking to me…that is a deal breaker.”

His vacant stare never wavers and I turn to the bathroom, confident I’m doing what I need to do, while, at the same time, sure I am making the biggest mistake of my life. I feel his eyes on me, but I don’t look back.

Looking back would break me further, and what is happening isn’t healthy for either of us.

Why the hell did I ever let myself fall in love with him?

I close the door behind me and slide down it until the cold tile of the floor hits my naked skin. I drop my face into my hands and give in to the relentless agony of what I’ve done.



I watch her disappear in the bathroom and hear her fall apart the second the door clicks shut. The sound of the latch falling into place might as well be a gun firing, because I’m pretty confident I just killed the best thing that ever happened to me. Even though my heart is no longer racing like I ran a marathon, my body continues to shake and I scrub my hands over my face to try to clear my head.

Fuck.

I can’t be here when she comes out. I can’t face her after that, after I completely fell apart in front of her, after I literally withered in her hand.

Getting out now is my only concern. I dress quickly in sweatpants and a t-shirt and grab Princess, who is waiting at the closed bedroom door. I cross the hall and pound on Gabe’s door. I know better than to open it without knocking, even though I know it’s unlocked. I have inadvertently walked in and seen his naked ass riding whatever girl came home with him that night. I love the guy, but love only goes so far.