Savage Collision: A Hawke Family Novel (Hawke Family #1)(63)

He doesn’t answer so I pound on the door again, anxious to get gone before Danika tries to leave the condo. Finally, the door opens, and a very haggard looking Gabe glares at me.

“What the fuck dude? It’s 3:30 in the morning.”

“I know,” I say, handing Princess to him, “but I need you to come to the gym with me.”

He pets her and lets her lick his face before he gives me an annoyed look. “The gym? Now?”

“Yes, right now. Go get changed and let’s get out of here. Leave Princess at your place. You don’t have someone here with you, do you?”

He rolls his eyes and sets her down. I follow him into his place. “No, she left an hour ago. Want to tell me what’s going on? You look like shit.”

Fuck no, I don’t want to tell you what’s going on. That’s the last thing I need right now, my best friend knowing I’m a fucking failure in bed.

“No, please, just go change.”

He throws up his hands in resignation and disappears down the hall, Princess following closely at his heels. I know she’ll settle in, probably in the middle of his feather bed, and sleep until we get back.

At least that’s one female I know I can please.

Fuck.

I run my hands back through my hair and squeeze my eyes closed, trying to shut out the vivid image of the look on Dani’s face when she told me she loves me…and that it’s over.

It doesn’t help, but maybe banging the weights or hitting the bag will.

Gabe reappears, looking just as annoyed as he did a minute ago, and grabs his gym bag and the keys.

We ride down in the elevator in silence. I know he’s dying to ask me what’s going on, but he keeps his mouth shut, probably sensing he would lose his head if he asks again. I pull myself into the passenger seat and he puts my chair in the trunk before we set out in continued silence.

Halfway through the ride to the gym, I finally can’t take him glancing over at me anymore.

“She told me she loves me.”

He jerks and swings his head to look at me, then quickly returns to looking at the road. “What? Well, that’s great, isn’t it? Why are you so upset?”

I pause before answering, trying to figure out how much to tell him. “Because I blew it.”

“Shit. How? What did you do? What did you say?”

I release a deep sigh and slouch down, resting my temple against the cool glass of the window. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” The surprise in his voice is more than evident, and I can only imagine what is running through his head right now. “What the fuck, Savage?”

“I know. I fucked up everything.” An unfamiliar tightening in my chest has me reaching up and rubbing it.

What if I can’t fix this? What if it’s too late?

We pull into the parking lot of the gym and Gabe throws the car in park, turning to look at me. “Do you love her?”

My head snaps around to face him. “Of course I do. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Then why didn’t you tell her that?”

The million dollar question. Why didn’t I tell her anything? Why, in that moment when the only thing keeping me here, keeping me together was her, couldn’t I tell her? “Because, I’m so fucked up, Gabe. I don’t know what to do.”

“What happened?”

My mind races through the evening, how much fun we had at the gallery, despite the run-in with Andrew and Becca. The car ride home, my fingers buried in her heat when all I wanted there was my throbbing dick. The way she tasted when she came against my mouth, screaming my name. The almost-painful throb of my cock as she pressed her wet pussy against it and started to slip it inside. Then, the pain and tightness in my chest, suffocating me while my mind spun out of control.

“I panicked.”

His brow furrows. “You panicked when she said ‘I love you?’”

“No,” I say, closing my eyes against the memory and shaking my head, “I panicked when she tried to have sex with me.”

I chance a glance at him. I can practically see the cogs of his brain spinning. “What? I don’t understand. You two have been together for like three or four months…”

The greatest months in my entire fucking life.

“Yeah, we have. We just haven’t been ‘together’ together.”

He drops back against his seat, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “Is this because of the accident? Can you not…you know?”

I groan. “No, that’s the fucking point. I have no problem getting hard when I’m with her, or when I am alone for that matter, but I haven’t been able to ‘seal the deal,’ so to speak. It has never been this bad though, the panicked feeling. Today, I completely lost my shit.”

“What did she say?”

Dropping my head back against the headrest, I stare at the ceiling of the car, wishing this morning was just a bad dream instead of a very real-life nightmare. “That’s when she told me she loved me, and I just laid there, and said nothing. It was like I was completely numb and mute, I couldn’t say anything.”

He sighs and turns off the car. “You know you need to get your shit figured out so you can fix this, right? Danika is fucking perfect for you. You belong together.”