20. Chapter 20
Chapter 20
“Well Hawk, you certainly know how to keep things interesting,” Katya said as I walked her to the front door. In the short time I was in my bedroom, she’d dressed, fixed her makeup a bit, and ordered a ride service.
I flashed her a weak smile, my mind still on Mallori. “Sorry about all that. I thought she would be out longer.”
“She’s a really sweet girl. Don’t be too hard on her, okay?”
It took me a second to figure out what she was implying, and I frowned as I opened the door for us. “It’s not like that with her. We’re just friends.”
We stepped out onto the porch, and Katya turned to face me, her head tilted in contemplation. “Do you want it like that with her?”
Stuffing my hands into the pockets of my shorts, I stared at the street, relieved when I saw headlights rounding the corner. “I think your car is here.”
I could sense her amusement at my deflection. Hell, I had no idea why I was even deflecting. The answer should have been a simple and emphatic no .
As a white Prius pulled to the curb, Katya placed a hand on my chest and stood on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek. “Go take care of your Little Bee, Hawk.” Then she patted me twice and strolled down the steps without looking back.
Grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge, I guzzled it in one go, trying to ease the burn that was still stinging my throat. I couldn’t believe Mallori fucking pepper sprayed me.
I was pissed at first. Until I realized why she did it. It was a pretty fucking gutsy thing to do, and a grudging admiration quickly overtook the anger.
Making my way back to my room with a couple beers in my hand, I found Mallori pacing back and forth, mumbling to herself as she chewed on the tip of her thumb. I leaned my shoulder against the doorframe and watched her for a while.
When she finally noticed me, her feet halted, and she dropped her hands to her sides. “I am so, so sorry, Hawk.” She swallowed hard. “I interrupted your… thing. And then I sprayed you. I… I don’t know what else to say except I’m sorry.”
I fixed her with a stare, holding my position in the doorway with my eyebrows lifted. “I understand why you did it. What I don’t understand is how you think I would be capable of something like that. Help me out here, Bee, because that part pissed me off a lot worse than the pepper spray. ”
Mal dropped her gaze and nodded at the floor. “You’re right. That wasn’t fair to you. Can I… Is it okay if I get my stuff out tomorrow, or do you want me to leave tonight?”
A short time ago, I had been waiting for the day Mallori Fitz was out of my house so I could have my precious privacy and solitude back. So why did the thought of her leaving now cause a lump to rise up and wedge in my throat?
Pushing away from the door, I crossed to her and set the bottles on the nightstand. “Bee, when did I say you have to leave?”
She peeped up at me from beneath her lashes. “I just assumed…”
“You know what they say about assumptions,” I said, jerking one eyebrow upward.
Her lips rolled inward. “It makes an ass out of you and -umption?”
I was unable to hold back my laugh. “Something like that.” Reaching forward slowly so I didn’t startle her, I pushed one of her long braids behind her shoulder. “I’d like it if you’d stay.”
She furrowed her eyebrows. “Why?”
“Who else is going to make me eat salad and tell me dumb Chuck Norris jokes?”
The hint of a smile teased at the edges of her lips. “Did you know Chuck’s tears can cure cancer?”
My lips twitched, and I finished the punchline. “Yeah, too bad he’s never cried.”
Her aqua eyes closed, and she shook her head. “Stop being so nice to me. I feel like shit.”
“So you want me to make you feel shittier?”
She popped her lids open. “Yeah, actually. That would be great. ”
I huffed out a sigh. “Stop beating yourself up, Mallori. It’s not like I’ve never been pepper sprayed before.” At her querying look, I explained. “We had to do that as part of our training.”
“Oh.”
“And for the record, I would never force myself on a woman. I may not be the king of morality, but that’s a hard and fast rule of mine.” I reached out and lifted her chin with my fingers, needing to see her eyes when she answered the next question. “Have I ever made you feel afraid or uncomfortable before?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head vehemently. “It wasn’t you; it was me.”
My heart skipped a few beats, and my voice turned to ice. “What does that mean?”
Wrapping her arms around her waist, Mallori’s already small frame seemed to shrink about three sizes. The sight of this usually happy, vibrant woman closing in on herself was like a knife to my gut.
“The whole situation… it just triggered something.” Her gaze skittered away, and she mumbled. “Doesn’t matter anyway.”
Oh, Little Bee, but it does.
“It’s been a long night. Do you mind if we sit?” I asked, gesturing to the bed. “If you’re uncomfortable here, we can go to the living room.”
I found some measure of relief when she climbed on my bed without hesitation and leaned against the headboard.
After following her lead—leaving some space between us—I picked up the bottles and twisted the tops off. We sat side by side, sipping our beers for a long while before the silence pressed around me like the walls were closing in .
Staring straight ahead, I asked, “Who hurt you, Little Bee?”
I heard her intake a shaky breath as her thumb swiped at the condensation on the neck of the bottle. “You probably wouldn’t believe me.”
Glancing over, I found her staring at me, pain glowing in those gorgeous eyes of hers. “Try me,” I challenged.
Her tongue slid over her upper teeth as she assessed me. Instead of answering my question, she asked one of her own. “Have you ever had something happen, and then someone blamed you for the way you handled it?”
It was a vague and complicated question, but it hit home, and I nodded. “Yeah, I actually have.”
“Will you tell me?”
I paused. “It’s not something I’ve ever told anyone. Not for years anyway.”
A small hand wrapped around mine. “Okay, you don’t have to.” I felt the unconditional acceptance in her words and in the squeeze she gave me.
Fuck. I sensed this was a test. A kind of you trust me, and then I’ll trust you thing.
Taking a fortifying glug of my beer, I started talking. “I was twelve the first time I realized my mother was cheating on my dad.” Mallori didn’t say anything, so I continued. “She would apparently go out at night after my sister and I were asleep. Meet whoever she was fucking that week, and then come back home.”
“Where was your dad?”
“On deployment. He was a Marine. ”
“That’s pretty shitty,” Mal commented, and I snorted a humorless laugh.
“Agreed. So one night, I woke up about midnight with my stomach hurting. It was really bad. I could barely walk, and when I didn’t find my mother in her room, I woke up Jennifer.”
“So she was fourteen then?”
“Yes. My fever was sky high, and my sister didn’t know what to do. She tried to call our mom, but she’d left her cell phone at home. This was over twenty years ago, so people weren’t as attached to their phones as they are now.”
Mallori’s tone was soft, one of comfort. “What happened?”
“Jen gave me some Tylenol, but an hour later, the pain and fever had gotten worse, so she started calling our mom’s friends. One of them lived close by, so she came over, took one look at me, and called an ambulance.”
Picking at the label on the bottle with my thumbnail, I said, “My appendix burst on the way to the hospital. I almost died, and they took me immediately into the operating room when I got there.”
“Shit, I’m sorry, Hawk. That must have been so scary.”
“Mostly for Jennifer. I was kind of delirious at that point.” Draining my bottle, I pushed off the bed. “I’m getting another. You want one?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m good.”
In the kitchen, I threw away my empty bottle and pressed my hands against the counter, my head hung low. This next part was the hardest, but I found myself wanting to tell Mallori the rest. I had no idea why, but I did. I only hoped it wouldn’t make her hate me .
Pushing back, I snagged another beer and walked back to my room. As soon as I sat, Mal closed the distance between us, resting her head on my shoulder.
“You all right?” she asked, and I bobbed my head up and down before resuming my story.
“My dad arrived three days later, the same day I got home from the hospital. He sat in my bedroom for hours, holding my hand. It was the first time I’d ever seen him cry.”
“That had to have been hard on him, being away like that during an emergency.”
“It was. He and Mom had a lot to hash out as well. They tried to keep their voices down, but my nosy sister was listening at the bedroom door. Mother blamed my dad for being gone and leaving her lonely, and he blamed her for my appendix bursting. He said if she’d been at home with her kids where she belonged, it wouldn’t have been so bad.”
“He’s got a point,” Mal said, wrapping one arm around my waist and leaning into my chest.
“They separated for a few months, but then he took her back.” The bitterness was evident in my voice. “I have no fucking idea why he would do that.”
“Maybe he really loved her.”
“Yeah, that’s what he said,” I scoffed. “I was so pissed at him and told him I would never be that stupid. I swore I was never going to fall in love because it made you blind.”
“I agree,” Mal said, shocking the hell out of me. “My dad is crazy about my mother. They’ve been married twenty-four years, and he has no idea how she really is. How can you ever truly know another person when they only show you what they want you to see?”
We stared at each other for a long moment, our faces only inches apart, and I felt like I’d found a kindred spirit of sorts, someone who was as cynical as I was about all the love bullshit.
“Anyway,” she said, looking away and resting her cheek on my chest once again, “sorry I interrupted. Are your parents still together?”
“No, something else happened after that. It’s… well, it’s not pretty, Bee.”
“Life isn’t always pretty,” she said so softly I almost didn’t hear her.
Draining my beer, I set the bottle aside and shored up my resolve to get through this. “I don’t know when my mother started fucking around on my dad again, but she did.” Mallori’s hand rubbed absently against my chest, and the movement soothed me a bit. Which I needed because sharing this shit was hard.
“I was seventeen, and Jen was nineteen. She was home from college for the weekend.” My eyes closed as I remembered the events of that fateful night. “I guess my mom had learned her lesson about leaving the house to meet whoever she was fucking. Instead, she apparently thought it was a good idea to bring them to our house after me and Jen were in bed.”
“Oh my god,” Mal whispered. “In your dad’s home?”
“Yes,” I bit out, so much bitterness coating that single word. “I woke up in the middle of the night and heard a noise. It was coming from Jen’s room.” Mallori’s breathing picked up, harsh and ragged, and I curled my arm around her, stroking her shoulder as I rested my lips against the top of her head. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay. Go ahead.”
I gritted my teeth, as I did every time I thought of that sonofabitch. “His name was Howard Bailey. After he was done screwing my mother, he decided to go into my sister’s room and—”
I couldn’t push the words out. They were too hard.
“Did he?” Mallori’s voice trembled, and I pulled her just a bit closer, unsure if it was to comfort her or me. Maybe a bit of both.
“He didn’t rape her.” Fuck, this is so goddamn hard. “He had torn her sleep shirt open and was on top of her though. I’ll never forget the fear in her eyes when I walked in, like she was begging me to help her.”
“And you did.” It wasn’t a question.
“I almost beat him to death,” I whispered, looking down at my hand. At the fist that had borne the scars for almost a year. “And I would have if mommy dearest hadn’t woken up from her post-sex slumber and heard all the noise.”
“That’s what you were talking about when you said you almost went to juvie?”
I nodded my head. “There was no covering it up. I’d fucked him up too badly. They took him to the hospital and me into custody.”
“But… you were defending your sister. In your own home!” Mal’s voice was indignant on my behalf, and I smiled against her hair as my chest tightened with affection.
“The fucker was in a coma for three months. I should have felt guilty, but I didn’t. I’m too fucking cold-hearted to feel remorse.”
Mal jerked her head back, blue-green eyes blazing. “Don’t you say that, Tate Gentry. You are not cold-hearted. It’s obvious you love your sister. ”
“I do, but still…” Closing my eyes, I looked away in shame, but she clutched my jaw and brought my head back around. “Stop it, Bee.”
“No, you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I should have stopped. A normal person would have stopped.”
The softest lips I’d ever felt brushed against mine, light as a feather. “No,” she whispered. She kissed me again with a tenderness I didn’t deserve, but I craved it. Damn, did I crave it. I practically melted against the pillow behind me when she repeated the sentiment against my mouth. “No.”
Such a softly spoken word, but it held more emotion than any I’d ever heard.
Little Bee pulled back and lifted her chin even as a lone tear trekked down her cheek. So much strength shone through her vulnerability, and I was a bit in awe of her.
“Bernard Moreau,” she said, swallowing as if the name hurt her to say. “He was my professor and the man who tried to hurt me, and I wish like hell I’d had someone like you there to back me up.”
I didn’t hesitate, and I sure as fuck didn’t think. Instead, I gripped the back of Mallori’s head and crushed my lips to hers.