Chapter 6
My body reacts before my mind can, a startled gasp sputtering over my lips. I don’t know what makes me turn around faster, my name or the familiar voice that said it.
Christopher fucking Hawkins.
Ten years, and there he is. Every emotion I’ve ever felt for him stirs at once, with anger and hate rising to the top.
He looks the same, but older and with far more ink covering his skin.
Lines dig into the corners of his eyes, and gray hair peppers his hairline and the scruff along his jaw.
His shoulders are broader, and his presence fills the room, like it always did.
He isn’t in uniform—at least not a military one—but everything about him still screams soldier.
I stare up at him from my seat like an idiot with my heart in my throat, unable to pull my stare from the man who once held it in his hands before he disappeared without a word.
For a second, the world narrows to just the two of us.
The men behind him shift, their boots scraping against the plywood floor, drawing my attention to their murmurs.
My pulse is so loud in my ears that it drowns them out.
Willing myself to tear my eyes from him, I wrap my fingers tighter around the edge of the table. “Are you still there, Reese?” Carl’s voice pulls me back to reality through the speaker phone on the conference table.
“Absolutely fucking not, Carl,” I snap, turning my back on Hawk before he can read my face.
Carl gruffly exhales on the other end, groggy but stubborn. “Reese—”
“No. Nope.” My voice is sharp and desperate, but I can’t help it. “I changed my mind. You’re not going to saddle me with—” His name catches like glass in my throat, and I choke. “With him.”
“After yesterday, I need to know you’re safe over there,” Carl insists, calm as ever.
“Fine,” I huff my annoyance. “Find someone else. Anyone else. I don’t care who. Just not… him.”
Carl doesn’t budge. “I asked around, and no one else comes with the same recommendations. Everyone says they’re the best.”
The best? Ha!
I laugh—bitter and broken—out loud. “He’s definitely the best at upping and disappearing from my life. That’s for sure.”
The line falls silent for a moment before Carl continues with a softer tone, “I’m not bending on this, Reese. You can take this detail or get on their plane and get your ass back to New York.”
“Carl…”
“They’ll keep you alive,” he asserts. “That’s all that matters.”
But it isn’t. Not to me. Not when every cell in my body remembers what it felt like to be held in his arms or to wake up alone and realize he was never coming back. Not when Christopher Hawkins is standing in front of me like a beefy, tattooed ghost dragged out of the desert.
I turn, my gaze locking with Hawk’s. His men are trying not to stare, though one—Jagger, if I remember his name correctly—looks like he’s eating this up.
Hawk, though? He’s unreadable, like he always was.
It used to drive me crazy, but now it just hurts.
“Carl,” I grouse into the phone, not breaking eye contact with Hawk.
“I’ll take my chances. I will be just fine on my own. ”
“God damn it, Reese.” Carl sighs, exasperated now. “You’re so fucking stubborn. I’m paying them to protect you, whether you want them there or not. I’m going to keep your stubborn ass alive.”
My mouth falls open with shock. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” he gruffs before abruptly ending the call.
“Unbelievable.” I stare at the now-silent speaker, fury bubbling hot in my chest.
With a smooth, and infuriatingly calm, tone, Hawk chimes, “Sounds like you’re stuck with me, bab—”
“Don’t!” I snap, whipping around to face him. “Don’t you dare stand there like nothing happened. And don’t you dare call me that. Ever!”
“Well, this is cozy,” Jagger comments, leaning against the wall with a smirk. “Should we all get some popcorn and pull up a chair, or…?”
Hawk cuts him off with a look that could burn through steel. “Jagger.”
“Fine, boss.” Jagger raises his hands in surrender, a grin still plastered across his face.
“You don’t get a free pass from me either.” I glare at him, before my eyes flit to Damon and Gunnar. “None of you do. Because I know damned well, you all knew exactly what he did.”
Hawk’s jaw tightens, a tiny crack in his armor. His eyes flicker, just for a second, before the stoic mask slams back into place.
I drag a hand down my face, fighting the urge to scream. My chest is tight—too tight—and I can’t breathe. “Here’s how this is going to work. You stay out of my way. I’ll do my job. You do yours. And we never have to acknowledge that this”—I aggressively gesture between me and Hawk—“ever existed.”
Hawk doesn’t flinch. He barely even blinks. “I’m not going to let your job get you killed, Reese.”
“At least I’ll die on my terms.”
“That’s not okay with me.”
I laugh, choking as it bubbles up from my chest. “You don’t get to decide what is and isn’t okay for me anymore.”
The silence that follows is worse than the shouting I was expecting. It’s heavy, charged, and filled with everything unsaid. Ten years of questions claw at the back of my throat, begging to be asked, but I refuse to give him the satisfaction.
I push through the four of them for the door. I need air. Space. Anything but the suffocating tension in this room. “Stay out of my way, Hawk.”
His voice follows me, quiet but unyielding. “Not a fucking chance.”
The early morning air is already hot and heavy. It’s dry, and I can practically taste the dust and diesel on my tongue as I rest against the rough wall of the operations hub. I close my eyes, sucking in a deep breath that does nothing to help.
He’s here.
Hawk is here.
A decade of silence, at least three years spent hating him—and myself for still missing him—and now he’s been thrust back into my life. I press my palms to my face, furious at myself that after all these years I feel anything for him at all.
Boots crunch on the hard, dry sand beside me, and I don’t have to look to know who it is. “Reese.”
“Did you practice that the whole way here?” I scoff. “Saying my name like I mean anything to you.”
“I didn’t know it was you. Not until I stepped in that room.” he confesses as I slowly look up his broad chest until our eyes meet. “But I would’ve come anyway.”
“Don’t…” I shake my head and fight back the lump in my throat. “Don’t stand there acting like the last ten years didn’t happen. Like you didn’t vanish and leave me picking up the pieces of what was going to be our life.”
Something flickers across his face—regret, maybe—but it’s gone far too fast for me to be sure. “I had orders,” he states, finally.
“Orders?” I mockingly laugh. “You had plenty of orders when we were together. None of them kept you from calling for weeks, months, or years.”
“I had to leave.” His voice is low and rough.
“I’m not mad you left.” I swallow hard, forcing myself to stay strong. “It’s that you didn’t come home.”
He lets out a heavy sigh, and for a second, I almost expect him to explain.
But he doesn’t. I frustratedly push past him, heading toward the barracks, needing to leave before I drown in old ghosts and feelings I want to rebury.
He follows, his boots crunching a few steps behind me.
“You don’t have to like me being here, baby. But I’m not going anywhere.”
This time…
I don’t look back. If I do, I might completely fall apart.