Savage Collision: A Hawke Family Novel (Hawke Family #1)(67)

Grabbing my phone, I open the last message she sent me, right before she arrived at my place to head to the gallery opening.

> Be there in ten! Can’t wait to see you in a tux…and out of one ;) <

Fuck.

I take a deep, cleansing breath, and try to shake off the fear making my heart race just thinking about talking to her.

Suck it up, you fucking pussy!

I start typing, not even sure what I am going to write.

< I’m sorry. I know that in no way begins to make up for what happened last night, but I don’t know what else to say. I’m fucked up, Danika, in ways you can’t even imagine, ways I didn’t even realize until recently. It isn’t fair to you to put you through this. I need to figure my shit out, and I am going to try to do that. But I don’t know when, or if, I’ll ever be in a place to be with you again. I just need you to know that I’m trying, and that I love you. I’m sorry I didn’t, couldn’t, tell you the other night, but I need you to know that. >

Staring at what I wrote, my finger hovers over the green “Send” button. Once I send it, there’s no taking it back. Maybe it’s wrong to tell her I love her. It certainly isn’t the most romantic thing in the world to do it via text message, but I need her to know. I need her to understand this isn’t about her.

Clicking “Send” feels like pulling the pin on a grenade. Once it’s done, there’s no going back. It could explode in my hand.

I close my eyes and drop my head back against the headboard, staring at the bright moonlight shining across the off-white ceiling. When my phone vibrates in my hand, I jerk up and scramble to open the message.

> Figure it out. I will be here. <

Seven words. But those seven words speak volumes to me about Danika, and who she is. She hasn’t given up, and that’s all that matters right now. That’s all I can ask of her, all I can expect after what I put her through.

I just hope it’s enough.





I fucking hate that brown chair. The leather creaks every time she moves, and it’s like nails screeching on a chalkboard, giving me a fucking migraine every single time I’m here. She moves a lot, constantly crossing and uncrossing her legs, adjusting her glasses, taking a drink of water. For a shrink, she clearly has some issues of her own if she can’t sit still for an hour-long session.

Three weeks of this has driven me almost to my breaking point.

“Savage? Did you hear me?”

Shifting my eyes up from the arm of the chair, I find her watching me intently, eyebrows raised. “What? Sorry.”

She smiles. She isn’t an unattractive woman, not really my type, but pretty, in that nerdy librarian way some men drool over. But the only woman I care about is tall, blonde, and not currently speaking to me, by my own choice.

“It’s all right. I said that you have been coming here twice a week for the last three weeks and I still feel like I know nothing about you.”

I internally roll my eyes at her. If I actually did it, she would call me out on it. I’d end up getting talked in circles about why her comment annoyed me.

“What do you mean? I told you all about myself.”

She smiles again, but it doesn’t reach her eyes and she jots something down on her notepad. “You’ve told me about your work. You’ve told me all about your relationship with Danika. You’ve told me about it, in great detail. I feel like I know Danika extremely well. She sounds like a wonderful woman. What I don’t know, is anything about you outside the relationship, and you haven’t told me why you are here other than that you said you ‘blew things’ with her.”

Shit.

She’s right, of course. I’ve spent weeks telling her how I met Dani, how we started dating, how our relationship progressed, but I never actually told her what happened. I’ve danced around the subject just like I’ve avoided talking about me and my family when she’s asked.

“So,” she continues, “today, you are going to tell me about you, and then you are going to tell me what went wrong with Danika.”

I hate talking about myself—truly. I’m sure there are people who love it, those vain people who get off on the attention, but I’m not one of those people, never have been. But, I guess if I really want to figure out how to fix things, I need to play along.

“What do you want to know?”

She smiles again. “Everything. Start by telling me about your family.”

I launch into the family tree, giving her the run-down of my parents and siblings as quickly and succinctly as possible. No need to volunteer too much information.

“You mentioned one of your sisters passed away. Can you tell me about that?”

My chest tightens. I should have expected she would ask. It’s only natural for her to wonder about that, and I should have been prepared to talk about it. She hasn’t asked about the chair either, probably waiting for me to mention it.

“Um, well, it was a car accident, three years ago. I was with her.”

“Is that how you were injured?” she asks, leaning forward slightly in her chair.

Creak.

I cringe. “Yes.”

Don’t volunteer information.

“I can see you’re uncomfortable talking about this, but sometimes the things we’re most uncomfortable discussing are what we really need to.”