Hawk (A Stepbrother Romance #3)(30)

Tap.

What the hell?

Tap, tap, tap. It sounds like something hitting my window.

I turn, and there’s Hawk, hanging upside down and grinning, rapping on the glass with his knuckle. Tucking my robe tighter around my body, I turn and throw up the sash. A wave of warm air flows in.

“Hi, can I come in?”

“No.”

He does anyway, crawling through the window and bouncing on my bed until his legs are in and he swings them around and sits up.

“Get. Out.”

“That’s not the response I was hoping for.”

I turn to face him. “I heard what your father said. You need to stay away from me. Somebody might hear us. Go back out the window. How did you even-”

“I’m a master of sneaking out of this house, trust me. Come on, Alex.”

“Don’t ‘come on Alex’ me, Hawk. I told you, we’re done.”

No matter how many times I say it, I still feel a flutter in my chest when he looks at me, and more than that, heat rising from between my legs. My robe doesn’t show much. It’s a big white fluffy monstrosity that’s a size too big. I got it after I got tired of Lance leering at me in my old one, and bought one for May, too. All he can see is my neck, but his eyes on my throat make me press my legs together and squirm on the bed.

It’s not helping that I can’t take my eyes off him. His chest is just huge, and when he leans forward his arms flex and the big triceps muscles go rigid. The tattoos draw my eye naturally, my gaze flowing along the length of his powerful arms to his big hands, but it’s his eyes that draw me the most. Blue eyes like clear skies.

I am very, very angry with him, but I can see he’s been hurt. There’s sorrow in those eyes, and shame, and something else. Part of me, a big part of me, wants to throw my arms around him and bury my face in his neck. After all these years and everything that happened I want to help him.

I stand up and tighten the belt holding my robe and grab a Coke from my mini-fridge. I offer one to Hawk, too, and he takes it. His fingers brush mine, warm and rough against the smooth cold surface of the can.

He cracks it open and takes a long pull and says, “After I left here, I went into the Navy. Recruiter told me I’d be on a nuclear submarine. I thought that was ideal. Long periods away from civilization, no contact with the outside world.”

Hawk stares at the can, turning it in his fingers. “Instead they sent me to corps school.”

“What’s that?”

“Corpsman is like a medic,” he sighs. “After I went through the program, I spent six months at the naval hospital in Philadelphia. I became a corpsman technician. Sort of a mix between a physician’s assistant and a nurse practitioner.”

“Did you have to do, like, surgery on people?”

He takes another drink and smacks his lips like he just took a pull of whiskey.

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

“After that I was attached to the Marines.”

“Don’t they have their own guys?”

He shakes his head. “No, they’re our own guys. Marines are technically in the Navy. Anyway I was sent to Afghanistan, did a year there, then a year in Iraq.”

I swallow a cold mouthful of soda, but it doesn’t seem to do anything for my dry throat, or the growing sense of dread, like a heavy ball of tar in my stomach.

“Did something happen?”

He looks at me, then looks down at the floor.

“I decided I want out in Iraq. The unit of Marines I was with was on patrol, and a firefight broke out. Couple of our guys got hit, but not bad. The other side got it worse. We practically knocked down the building they were using for cover.

“I went in. I found a kid in on the first floor, he couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen. There was a rifle right by his hand, blood on his palm, blood on the stock where he was holding it. He took a shot to the stomach. Bad.”

He sighs, and it turns into a shudder.

“Gut shot is a bad way to go. If the bullet hit him a few inches away, he might have lived-he’d need a bowel resectioning, and it’d have been touch and go, but the way he was hit with the time it would take to evac him after our own guys there was nothing I could do.

“He said stuff in Arabic, but I only knew a few words, basic stuff. I had no idea what he was saying. Five minutes ago this kid was shooting at me, trying to kill me. Now he was just lying there saying the same things over and over again. I pieced it together later. He was praying. Then it changed. He started asking for his mother over and over again.”

“He-”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

I sit down on the bed next to him. He stares at his soda can, turning it in his fingers. Slowly, I take one hand and rest it on top of his. His skin is warm. He turns and looks at me and I feel a warm heat slide down my back, like I’m starting to melt. The hurt in his eyes burns.

I lean over and touch my lips to his cheek.

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I.”

His breath tickles my lips when he talks.

“I think about all the things I should have done. I should have stayed. I should have fought, but I couldn’t. I had to leave.”

All I want is to be taken in his arms. It’s like being hugged by a fortress. The shaking stops. My breathing slows. Hawk runs his hand lightly over my damp hair and touches his lips to my forehead.