Hawke (Carolina Cold Fury Hockey #5)(54)
“You get the door,” Vale says, breaking me out of my thoughts. “I’m going to call Dad and let him know I’m staying the night.”
Placing my hands on the edge of the tub, I pull myself up and out of what little water remains. I manage to pull the stopper so it starts to drain and step out.
The doorbell rings again.
I lean forward and give Vale a quick kiss on her head. I then snatch the towel out of her hand with a grin. “Be right back.”
“Hey,” she complains, but I’m already wrapping it around my waist and walking carefully across the slick tile floor. The minute my feet hit the carpet of my bedroom, allowing them to dry, I pick up the pace as the doorbell rings again.
I jog down the stairs, retightening the towel around my waist. Whoever the f*ck this is better get ready to get gone soon, as I’ve got a sudden urge to let Vale ride my face for a bit tonight. After all, she did so well riding my cock.
I hit the bottom of the stairs, cut through the living room, and reach the entryway to the front door. I don’t even bother with the peephole, not worried about someone trying to fight their way in on me. I’m high on all kinds of things right now…mainly Vale, the truth, and great make-up sex. What’s to worry past that?
I turn the dead bolt and pull the door open, only about a foot so I can hide most of my half-naked body behind the large wooden frame. Peeking my head around, my eyes flare in surprise to see Michelle standing there.
“Hey, stud,” she says with a mischievous smile. Shocked, I pull the door open all the way, my mind absolutely frozen in a spastic state of disbelief and awkwardness.
Michelle reaches a hand forward and playfully pulls at the edge of my towel sitting against my hips. Her voice is husky, filled with seduction. “And look at you…absolutely ready for me. Guess this wasn’t such a surprise after all.”
It’s at this moment—this goddamn inopportune moment—that I hear Vale’s feet practically skipping down the stairs. “I’m starving, Hawke. I’m raiding your fridge, okay?”
I bow my head, utter a curse—or two—and then try to figure out what the f*ck to do with this new fiasco.
Chapter 20
Vale
I’m not sure why I feel so buoyant all of a sudden.
Wait…yes I do know. It’s amazing the metaphorical weight that can be lifted off your shoulders when you unburden a secret. Telling Hawke about the miscarriage and, more important, how bad that doctor made me feel about it, and even more important than that, how that drove my decisions…well, it was practically cathartic.
Hawke reacted exactly as I expected him to. The initial swell of grief for a life lost. Then the outburst of anger for not calling him. For not allowing him to be my man in all respects.
The horror over the doctor pinning the concept of fault on my young shoulders and his anger on my behalf that I bore that alone.
The revisited pain from my unilateral decision to cut him from my life because in a matter of just a few hours, I had gone from believing Hawke was the best thing for me to believing he was the worst.
Then he reacted in the way that defines the true essence of the man known as Hawke Therrien.
He comforted me.
Held me.
Told me none of this was my fault.
He accepted my reasoning, no matter how faulty it may have been at the tender age of twenty. He told me he understood and it was forgiven. I watched him cry tears for a baby that was never meant to be for us, the man wallowing in his own pool of grief, and yet he was most concerned about making sure I was okay.
Hawke told me he wanted to move forward, whatever that may mean.
He absolved me and was ready for us to give this another shot. The minute he gave me that cheesy grin, stuck his hand out for me to shake, and said, “Hi. My name is Hawke. Nice to meet you,” I made the immediate and absolute decision that I wasn’t going to bring any more hurt down upon either of us. I decided in that moment that I was letting all of my hurt go, just the way he was.
That meant I was not going to throw in his face and start an argument about his own abandonment of me after I reached out to him via phone and email. I couldn’t do that to him, not after I just dropped on his shoulders a baby created of love never meant to be and watched him reel from the misery of unfairness that he was just learning about. I just didn’t have it in me to dredge up more crap that only served to rake against us like barbed wire.
He said it was time to go forward, and thus I jumped on that progressive train.
I decided it was time to leave the past behind me.
Knowing Hawke the way I do, I was well aware that it wouldn’t do any good to put my clothes on. He said he wasn’t done with me, and that meant we’d remain naked until the next morning. So I grabbed another towel out of a small pantry closet that sat to the left of his vanity and wrapped it around me, securing the end into the top just between my breasts.
Dying of thirst and a little hungry, I headed down the stairs toward his kitchen, intent on finding something to alleviate both needs. Three steps from the bottom, I call out, “I’m starving, Hawke. I’m raiding your fridge, okay?”
He doesn’t answer me, and as I reach the bottom landing, my body turns left to the living room rather than right toward the kitchen. Just as I round the wall separating the staircase from the living room, where the entryway sits on the other side, I’m struck stupid by Hawke standing there in his towel, with another woman.