Hawk's Mirage (Coastline Kings MC #7)

Prologue

Lena

The night Hawk disappeared, I stood on my balcony until the sky turned the color of a bruise.

I told myself he'd come back before sunrise. That was the kind of thing I believed back then. I believed a lot of things back then.

His bike had been parked outside The Anchor an hour before, chrome catching the last orange light off the water.

I'd watched him talk to Reaper in that low voice men use when they don't want anyone reading their lips.

Reaper's face had gone still in a way I'd never seen.

Diesel had put a hand on Hawk's shoulder like he was saying goodbye.

I didn't know yet that he was.

He came to me after. Climbed the stairs to my apartment two at a time, the way he always did, like the world would end if he wasted a single second not touching me. He kissed me at the door before I even got a word out.

"Something's come up," he said against my mouth.

"What kind of something?"

"The kind I can't tell you about." His thumb traced my jaw. His eyes wouldn't stay still, flicking to the window, the door, anywhere but me for more than a heartbeat at a time. "I need you to trust me."

I did trust him. That was never the problem.

"How long?" I asked.

"I don't know."

"Tomas." I said his real name, the one only I used, the one that cracked something open behind his ribs every single time. "How long?"

He didn't answer. He kissed me again instead, longer, like he was trying to press something into my memory that words couldn't carry. Then he was gone down the stairs, and I heard his bike start, and I heard it fade toward the coast road, and that was that.

Three weeks. That's how long I told myself I'd wait before I let the fear in.

He didn't call. There was no number to call even if he had wanted to — that was the arrangement, he'd told me once, half joking, half not. Some things were safer left unreachable. I hadn't understood what that meant until there was an entire ocean of silence where a man used to be.

I went to the garage. Diesel wouldn't look at me straight on.

"He's fine," he said, in the voice men use when they don't actually know.

"Where is he?"

"Can't say."

"Can't, or won't?"

Diesel had wiped his hands on a rag that was already black with grease, taking his time, the way he did when he wanted to choose his words carefully.

"Both, probably. Look, Lena — Hawk's the best there is at not getting found.

If he's dark, it's because he needs to be dark.

That's not him leaving you. That's him keeping something from landing on you. "

I wanted to believe that was a comfort. Some days it almost was.

Six weeks after he left, I sat on the edge of my bathtub and stared at two pink lines until they blurred, and I understood that whatever Hawk had ridden into, I was going to be facing an entirely different reckoning without him.

I thought about the garage. I thought about walking in and saying it out loud, letting Reaper and Diesel and everyone who loved him carry the news like they'd carry anything for a brother.

But then I thought about what Diesel had said — dark because he needs to be dark, not him leaving you, something that could land on you — and a colder thought followed right behind it.

If whatever chased Hawk out of Cala Sirena was dangerous enough to erase a man completely, what would it do with the knowledge that he had a child?

I made the decision alone, in that bathroom, with the tile cold under my knees and my own reflection watching me from the mirror like a stranger.

I would keep this. I would keep it safe.

I would keep it secret, from the club, from the town, from anyone who might carry the word back to whatever door Hawk was hiding behind.

I would keep our son alive by making sure no one ever knew he existed.

The months that followed had their own strange mercy — the body doesn't wait for the heart to catch up.

I let people believe what they wanted to believe.

Cala Sirena is a small town, and small towns write their own stories when you don't hand them one.

I moved to my aunt's old house above the harbor before I started showing, told the ones who asked that I needed the quiet.

Nobody pushed. Grief makes people polite.

I was alone in that house in March, the wind coming hard off the water, when Nico arrived four days early and furious about it, like he already had his father's impatience baked into him before he'd even opened his eyes.

I held him in the gray hour before dawn, and he looked up at me with an expression so serious it startled a laugh out of me through the tears, and I whispered the only vow I had left to give.

"I've got you," I told him. "Whatever happens. Whoever comes or doesn't come. I've got you."

Years passed the way years do when you stop watching the road for a headlight that isn't coming.

I built a life out of what I had — a son with a gap-toothed grin and his father's exact stubborn line at the jaw, a house that held both our laughter and small quiet griefs I never let him see, a town that wrapped around us without asking too many questions, because in Cala Sirena, everyone already carries a story or two they don't tell.

I told myself I'd made peace with it.

I told myself a lot of things.

I didn't know yet that the mirage on the horizon — that shimmer of a life I'd stopped letting myself want — was about to ride back into the harbor on two wheels, wearing the same leather jacket, with the same reasons and the same silences, and that this time, the secret wasn't going to hold.