Unbeloved (Undeniable #4)(38)
“I never thought I’d see you or Christopher again,” he said quietly. “I never thought I’d be able to . . .”
He trailed off but kept his eyes on me. Locked on mine.
I didn’t say anything, didn’t know what to say. And it seemed to me that either did Hawk. He just continued to stare at me in that dark and assessing way of his, his shadowed eyes boring into me, holding me captive like a deer frozen in the face of blindingly bright headlights.
The world is full of untapped potential; everyone has experienced it. Glances across the room. Locked gazes. Secret smiles. Silent conversations. When it comes to lust, words are never needed. You feel something inside you stir, your body begins to warm, and you just know. You can feel something buried spring to life, and just like that a connection is born. You’re strangers, then suddenly you’re something more . . . kindred spirits, like-minded in your attraction for each other.
I’d had that with both Jase and Hawk.
But there was only one who could steal your soul, that untouchable, unreachable place inside you that existed only in your mind, that warmed and cooled, fluttered and shook without rhyme or reason, and make it theirs forever. Someone who could take your breath away with just one look, who makes all those past secret smiles and glances from afar pale in comparison to the way he looks at you.
The way Hawk used to look at me. Stealing glances from across the room as he stood in the shadows, his gaze running up and down the length of me, deliberately slow, drinking me in.
The way he was looking at me now.
I’d forgotten how exposed and vulnerable that look had once made me feel, yet at the same time, how wanted. Needed. And excited.
How free.
Feeling emotion welling up inside me, I swallowed hard and whispered, “I never thought I’d see you again either.”
A lengthy silence followed my words as Hawk’s gaze bored into mine, and I dropped my gaze to my feet, suddenly unable to face him.
I didn’t know what I’d been thinking. After my blowout with Jase, I’d had it all worked out in my head that once Hawk was home again, I’d tell him how I felt, how I’d always felt. And somehow that would make things right again, that the ever-widening span of years that we’d kept our distance from each other would instantly close.
That wasn’t the case. If anything, now that he was here and conscious, I felt even more awkward than before. As if my realized feelings were new ones, instead of the old and buried ones they were, and I was afraid of what would happen if I let them blossom, let them grow. Would he return them, feeling the same? Or had too much time passed, and would he toss them away?
“I’m sorry, Dorothy,” Hawk said, breaking the silence.
Surprised, I lifted my eyes to find his expression had fallen further, and his features were creased with pain.
“What I did,” he said, “f*ckin’ with you, takin’ what wasn’t mine, that was wrong. I never said I was sorry ’cause I thought feelin’ sorry for what I did meant I felt sorry that we had our boy, but I know that ain’t true now. And I am sorry. Most of all, I’m sorry I left. If I never would have left, you wouldn’t have been shot. I would have been there and you would have been safe.”
I stared at him, speechless. Hawk had always been a man of very few words.
“I pushed you away,” I eventually said. “I don’t blame for you leaving.”
“We both made mistakes,” he said.
A small, nervous laugh escaped me. What was he trying to say? That he didn’t regret Christopher, but everything else? That he regretted me and us?
“I thought you didn’t believe in mistakes,” I said, hating the tremor in my voice that betrayed my feelings.
“I’m forty-five years old.” He lifted one brow. “Got a kid of my own too. It’s about time I took responsibility for my own actions, don’t you think?”
I pressed my lips together, willing my tears not to betray me now. Staring at Hawk, I shook my head. “I don’t understand, what are you trying to say?”
His eyes narrowed, his brow drew together, causing his forehead to furrow even more. “I’m sayin’ that I’m sorry, that’s—”
“Stop it,” I cried out, unable to hold it in another second.
It was all too much. Not knowing what had become of him, then learning who he truly was. The agonizing wait to find out his fate, and the realization of my feelings for him. Then seeing him beaten, bloody, and broken, and all the while I was caring for him, envisioning the moment when I would tell him the truth. And now this, an apology from him, telling me he regretted what we’d done, it was all too much and released a torrential downpour of emotions that I was powerless to stop.
It seemed that the floodgates of emotion that Jase had forced open, had yet to fully close.
“You never showed up!” I shouted, swiping at the tears on my cheeks. “You never showed up and I kept calling and I called Eva and then Deuce called me back but he wouldn’t tell me anything, no one would tell me anything and then I had to find somewhere for Christopher to stay and then my flights were canceled and I had to drive all the way home in a snowstorm and Deuce told me about you and who you are and I just . . . I just, I didn’t know what to think, none of it seemed real, and then I thought Preacher wasn’t going to help but he did and then I beat up Jase and I told him I loved you and then he left and then Deuce left and they brought you back and I was here when the doctor came, and Hawk, oh my God, your leg, it was so bad, really infected, and you were so sick and you looked so bad, you were so beat up, and I thought you were going to die, even though everyone kept telling me you weren’t going to die, and I couldn’t understand anything you were saying and I was so scared that I was going to lose you again, that I wasn’t going to have the chance to make things right and I couldn’t . . . I didn’t . . .”