Hawk (A Stepbrother Romance #3)(79)

"Jacob and Jennifer say it's okay. They know the agent you'll be talking to. It'll be done here. You don't have to go to court and you don't have to see him again if you don't want to."

"Is Tom going to go to jail?"

Hawk scrubs his fingers through his hair. "Yeah. Yeah he is. He's in a lot of trouble, Alex."

"Lance?"

"I wouldn't worry about him," Hawk says, smirking.

"What did you do?"

"Me? Nothing, I just relayed a message to him. He'd better not come back to this town, ever, or somebody, and not me, somebody he's never seen before, will pay him a visit."

I stifle a laugh and it makes my throat hurt. Hawk offers me a drink.

"I want to walk. Just a little bit. Please?"

He nods and helps me sit up, and practically lifts me out of the bed. My legs feel like two overstretched rubber bands, and I take a few steps out and down the hallway and back. It feels good just to be on my feet, even if I have to lean on Hawk and he ends up carrying me back to the bed. He lowers me onto the pillows, pulls the blankets up around my neck, and touches my chin lightly to check the bandages.

"You're good," he says, and sits down with me again. "You're one tough bitch to get your throat cut and live."

"How bad was it really?"

"Bad," he says. "If you didn't have a navy corpsman handy you would’ve died. Those ambulance guys couldn't have handled it."

"At least he didn't cut my leg like he said."

"Yeah. I gotta give him that. I'll give it to him after I finish choking him to death."

I grab his hand. "Hawk."

"I don't care if he wasn't the one who killed my mother. He knew. He hurt other people. He stole my life. He hurt you."

"He's going away and we won't have to worry about him anymore, right?"

"Hopefully. He still has to have an actual trial."

I shift a little on the bed.

"Hawk," I murmur. "Get in the bed with me."

"Uh," he says, scratching his head. "Alex, I don't think we should-"

"I just want you to lay with me, you pervert," I roll my eyes.

It's a tight fit. He has to lay on his side, but that works for me. He drapes his arm over my stomach and nestles his face in my hair. His breathing slows, and he starts to fall asleep. I don't. I watch him.

It's strange to me now how familiar and different he looks. Sand and sun have aged his face. His physique has taken away the softness of his youth, but his face is still the same, warm and open and peaceful as he sleeps. The face that smiled at me while we worked on homework, the face that walked with me in the woods, the face that looked at me that day at the water park like he had never seen me before.

He doesn't stir as I trace out the outlines of his tattoos with my fingernails, studying the patterns. His arm tightens around me a little and I rest my hand flat on his bicep, feeling the warmth, feeling his pulse as he breathes against me.

He makes me feel safe.

For the first time in a long time, I may actually be safe.

No one disturbs us that first night until morning, when May trudges in, a haunted look in her eyes, and sits down. I can tell at a glance that she hasn't slept much. Hawk sits up and swings off the bed, and leaves us alone.

Neither of us speak until he comes back carrying a big tray; Jennifer follows behind him and we all eat breakfast in the bedroom, and May is quiet as a grave.

There has to be something I can do for her.

After three days, they let me get up and walk down the stairs. Almost walk. Hawk half-carries me down, and I lean on him the whole way. My neck doesn't feel bad, but I just feel exhausted all the time, no matter what I do. Still it feels better to sit at the kitchen table an eat, and Jacob is an amazing cook.

By the end of the week, May is starting to show some color again. Whenever Hawk isn't with me, she's hanging around his neck, asking him all sorts of questions about the Navy, and he answers her with a patience that reminds me of how he was before he left, before all of this. I sit in a chair in Jennifer's living room watching them talk. The future feels so uncertain, but for right now I'm almost content.

When the Federal Bureau of Investigation finally arrives, May is looking at colleges, planning to apply for the school year after this one. It's too late in the summer to worry about it now. She sits on the floor in the living room while I sit in the chair, brochures spread out in front of her.

"What should I major in?"

"Undeclared," I sigh. "Find something you like by doing it and do it. Trust me."

Jacob actually answers the door, and greets a man in a dark suit with a military-style haircut. Hawk appears from upstairs, watching silently as the two men speak on the porch. They seem to know each other from the way they talk. I can't hear what they're saying.

Hawk helps me move to the kitchen table, where the FBI agent wants to talk to me alone.

He says his name is Denton and he has some questions for me.

I answer them all as best I can. I describe the men we met with in the restaurant, Eli, some of the other things I've overheard or seen. He never asks me about the computer, or the information I was supposed to be gathering from it. The questioning goes on until I can barely keep my head up.