Chapter 5
5
Grayson Hawk
The loud pounding on my door wakes me from a nap. I’d spent the day helping Dad and Uncle Issac chop firewood and repair the fence that separated their properties. Cows on one side and horses on the other. The two bought neighboring properties, acres upon acres of land that they treat as if it’s a shared property. They may not be brothers by blood but from the moment my dad’s sister Sheri married Issac he became the closest thing my father ever had to one. The two of them separate are a riot, but you get them together and watch out.
Two peas in a pod, sometimes I swear they share the same brain.
More pounding echoes over my apartment and I look at the clock to see it’s a little past six in the evening. I’d been sleeping for a few hours, but I could’ve slept for a few more. Back on duty tomorrow morning at seven I was gearing up for whatever the Nashville community threw at me.
Again with the pounding. I push up off the couch and walk toward my front door. “Damn, I’m coming,” I holler just as I flip the lock and slide the chain. But before I get the chance to twist the handle the door opens and I have to take a step back.
“Really?” My cousin Scarlett steps inside scowling at me. Her eyes are narrowed, her nose wrinkled up. All she’s missing is a growl.
“I swear Gray I am going to beat you with a firehose then hang you out to dry.”
And there’s the growl.
“Gia,” she snares, “of all the willing women you have to keep going to the one I’d love nothing more than to ship to Alaska and freeze her permanently in a glacier. She is a,” Scarlett places her hands on her hips and opens her mouth three times to continue only to lose her words each time. Suddenly she stomps her feet and throws her hands up in the air.
“She is a flesh-eating bacteria and if you keep going back your pecker is going to fall off, Grayson Thomas Hawk. What in the hell is wrong with you?”
I try not to laugh, but I’ve rarely gotten the chance to see Scar so flustered. But if there is one person that gets her riled up it is Gia.
“Do not laugh at me.” She shoves my chest and slams my door behind her. “You do know she purposely targeted you because you are my cousin and she knows we are close. Ever since she banged Johnny in the bed of his Chevy and I punched her in the nose she’s had it out for me.”
Gia walked around after that incident with two black eyes for weeks. Johnny had a bruised lip and bruised balls, because when Scar was done with Gia she’d turned on him. I’d sat back amongst others and enjoyed the show. The asshole cried like a bitch.
“It’s just a hookup.”
“Just a hookup.” She laughs and then her hand collides with the side of my head. “There is no such thing as a hookup with that disgusting boil.”
Gia is far from disgusting, but I don’t bite back.
“You do know when she leaves Nashville and goes off to another town or city she has a man at each stop right?”
I shrug.
“So when you decide to sleep with her you don’t care that you are sleeping with half the universe too?”
“First off we don’t sleep.” I waggle my brows and get hit once again, this time in the stomach. “Jesus,” I say in a huff.
“You are nasty and part of me wants to throw a bowling ball at your head. What is wrong with you?”
“There is nothing wrong with me.” I move around the table positioning it between us so that I don’t get hit again. “Gia is easy.”
“Ain’t that the truth.” She crosses her arms over her chest and stares at me.
“I don’t mean easy in that sense.” Scarlett shrugs as if to say well too late. “I meant that there aren’t any expectations, no I’ll call you in the mornings, or us worrying about what the other is doing or who. We scratch an itch and nothing more.”
“I’m surprised that itch of yours hasn’t turned into a festering rash.”
No matter what I say or do, Scarlett will never accept the arrangement that Gia and I have had and used for more than a year. Archenemies, the one person my dear cousin will never like even a little, that is what Gia is to her.
“She’s gone now so.” It’s my turn to shrug.
“Please that oozing puss bag will never truly be gone.”
Scarlett gives up and walks toward my couch, flopping down onto the plush cushions. “Don’t you get sick of it, Gray?”
I join her and kick my feet up on the coffee table. “What?”
“The continuous variety of girls.” I arch my brow and she rolls her eyes. “I’m serious, the chitchat, the unknown, the awkwardness. Don’t you just wish you had that one person that knew you better than you knew yourself? The one opposite you that you could be yourself with no matter what and they’d still love you.”
“You need to tell me something, Scar?”
I watch her as she takes in a deep breath and looks down at her hands that she twists nervously in her lap.
She is quiet for too long in my opinion, but I sit and wait, giving her time.
“Justin is back.” Her words are low but the second I hear his name my shoulders tense. “He decided not to reenlist and last night when I came home, there he sat on the curb outside my apartment.”
Justin, the guy that I swear took a piece of Scarlett the day he decided to join the Army. I watched her slowly fall to pieces after he left and I think we all know that he is the reason she’s pushed away every guy she’s been involved with since.
“No one has ever known me the way Justin has,” she adds.
“Not because there haven’t been those who’ve tried.” She doesn’t attempt to argue, because she knows I’m right.
“Would I be a complete idiot if I let him in again?” I’m not going to deny that Justin loved Scarlett, hell he still may. But to see the way she hurt in his absence is something I don’t want to see again.
“I can’t tell you what to do.” Even though I want to. “You’re the only one that knows what you want, or don’t want. You are the one that has to forgive and forget.”
“Do I sound like a sappy fool to say that I never stopped loving him?”
“Yes.” She turns to look at me and narrows her eyes making me laugh. “But I already knew that.” Everyone has, but none of us ever mentioned it. Scarlett is stubborn, if there is something she doesn’t want to discuss she won’t no matter how hard you push.
“Just do me a favor and take it slow.” I reach out and place my arm over the back of the couch. Hooking her shoulder I pull her closer and she sinks into my side. “If he hurts you, I may have to tie him to tieback of the rig and drag him through Nashville with the emergency lights flashing.”
I feel the shake of her shoulder against me and know I’ve lightened the mood.
“So about Gia,” Scarlett adds and I let my head fall back with a sigh. “Be honest with me, do you like her?”
“I like her, yes.” It’s Scar’s turn to sigh. “But not beyond a friendship, I meant what I said. There is nothing there. There won’t ever be anything more.”
“So you won’t force me to sit through holidays dinners with that retched human?”
“I would never.” What Scarlett doesn’t know is that her opinion means the world to me. There are very few people that she dislikes, or those that dislike her. “If you want me to let that shit go, then I will.”
“What I want is for you to find someone that makes you laugh and feel good for more than a few hours.” She twists her neck looking up at me. “I want you to find a woman that deserves you because you are pretty great.”
“I know.” She pinches my side making me scoot away.
“I mean it,” she insists. “You are the guy that will run into a burning building to save a little boy’s puppy. You’re the guy that carries an elderly woman down three flights of stairs and gives her your mask so she doesn’t inhale the smoke swarming through the halls.” Scarlett’s eyes shine and I have to look away. “I know you don’t like to hear the word hero in reference to yourself but that’s what you are.”
“I’m doing my job,” I correct her.
“Yes, I know. A job that many don’t have the courage to do. All I’m saying is at the end of those shifts, after you’ve given this city and its people your all, I’d love nothing more than for you to have someone to come home to.”
“I don’t need to come home to someone.”
“You may not need it, but deep down, beneath all that stubbornness, you want it.”