Chapter 5
HAWKE
It took us more than an hour to finally get on the road since I’d vastly underestimated the amount of stuff one kid needed.
While Tate just had a small bag, he’d packed as many of Matty’s books, toys and stuffed animals into my car as he could, leaving only just enough space for Matty in the back seat.
Which meant Tate was sitting in the passenger seat next to me. And the fact that his close proximity bothered me was a problem. A big one.
I hadn’t meant to touch Tate when he’d broken down about Matty’s condition.
But as his voice had cracked and then finally broken, I’d found myself desperate to take away his pain and I’d pulled him against me.
His arms had wrapped around me like a drowning man, but instead of trying to extricate myself from his hold like I should have, I’d held him tighter.
His tears had seeped through my shirt and my own eyes hadn’t been immune.
And then Matty had appeared and everything had gotten more fucked up.
Because the harder I tried to maintain my distance from Tate and Matty Travers, the more they sucked me into their lives.
And the guilt of what I was doing was eating me alive.
My threat to turn Tate’s DNA over to the cops had been an empty one, but I’d made sure he wouldn’t know that.
I’d gotten what I wanted, but I couldn’t get the image of Tate’s look of betrayal out of my head.
Which was ridiculous because I owed him nothing.
I didn’t give a shit what he thought of me.
I didn’t bother to wait for Revay’s voice to whisper in my ear that I was a liar because I already knew I was. Just like I was lying to myself about what Tate’s body pressed up against mine had done to me.
I’d wanted him. I still wanted him.
A man.
A fucking man.
My entire life had only ever been about women…
well, one woman. Sure, I’d noticed other women in the years I’d been with Revay, but not one of them had stirred even an ounce of the same desire in me that my wife had.
Even in the years since I’d lost her, there’d been no one that had made me burn with need.
Until now.
I’d been around plenty of gay men and women in my life.
Hell, the man I considered the closest thing I had to a best friend was openly gay and I’d spent the last couple of weeks protecting the man he’d been in love with for several years.
It wasn’t something that was foreign to me, but feeling my body react to Tate’s hard body definitely was.
I hadn’t even once looked at a man in the same way I did a woman.
There was no way what I was feeling was real…
it was some kind of fucked up fluke. It had to be.
Because not only could I not be attracted to a man after a lifetime of wanting only women, I could not be attracted to the son of one of my wife’s murderers.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, I’d had to contend with Matty when he’d shuffled into the kitchen this morning in his superhero pajamas.
I would have expected him to be afraid of me after what I’d done to him and his father that first night, but instead, he’d studied me for a moment, his Spiderman doll hanging loosely in his hand, and then he’d climbed up into the chair across from me and just stared at me.
He’d then announced that he didn’t think I was Captain America because my name was Hawke.
That meant I must be more like Hawkeye and he’d begun asking me why I carried a gun instead of a bow and arrows.
I’d managed to use his hunger as a distraction and had taken him down to a small grocery store a block from Tate’s apartment.
And while he’d gotten off the topic of me being a superhero in hiding, he hadn’t stopped rambling from the moment we’d left the apartment.
Worse, he’d grabbed my hand as we’d walked and simply looked up at me and said, “Daddy says.” I’d taken that to mean Tate had a rule that Matty needed to hold a grown-up’s hand, but I hadn’t had a chance to ask him that because he’d started in on explaining who he thought would win if Spiderman and Captain America got into a fight.
It wasn’t until we’d gotten back to the apartment and I’d slid a bowl of Cheerios in front of Matty, that I’d managed to get a few snippets of information out of him.
Like that his father did dishes in a restaurant, slept on the couch and they moved around a lot.
The latter hadn’t been described that way of course – Matty had made it sound like a game where winning was about being quiet and quick.
It was a telling statement of what Tate’s life was like.
And that should have made me feel better about what I was doing.
It didn’t.
Because even if Tate and Matty got what they needed out of the deal, I’d still taken Tate’s choice away.
I’d terrorized him, threatened him and used his kid to get what I wanted.
And then I’d reveled in the way his body had lined up perfectly with mine as I’d held him.
I hadn’t cared that all the places where I’d been touching him were hard instead of soft.
Or that he hadn’t smelled like flowers and that his muscles had rippled beneath my fingers.
Or that his hold on me had been desperately tight instead of soft and comforting.
I could easily end this when I got them to Seattle. I could keep my end of the deal because the money for Matty’s care meant nothing to me. I could entrust them to Ronan’s care and be done with this whole thing.
But I wouldn’t be done because I’d have to live with knowing I’d failed Revay in every way. And I couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t .
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck standing up and I glanced over to see Tate watching me. I cursed the fact that my dick twitched at the momentary flash of need I saw in his eyes. “What?” I bit out a little too harshly.
“Nothing,” Tate murmured as he shook his head and turned his attention back out the window. We’d been on the road for a couple hours, stopping only once to buy a booster seat for Matty along with some snacks that I never would have even thought to buy for a little kid.
“What?” I repeated, forcing the irritation from my voice because, strangely enough, I wanted him to talk to me.
Tate turned back to me and then glanced at the back seat. I looked up in the rearview mirror and saw that Matty was asleep, his head resting on his shoulder and Spiderman clutched to his chest.
“Who was it?”
“Who?” I asked.
Tate hesitated and then finally said, “Who did Buck and Denny kill?”
I felt pain shoot through my chest. Since I needed a moment to recover, I managed to get out, “You don’t seem surprised they did it.”
Tate dropped his eyes to his hands. “I stopped being surprised by the things they did a long time ago.” Tate began twisting his fingers around each other. “Who was it?”
I blew out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “My wife.”
I was surprised when Tate didn’t look at me. He barely even acknowledged that he’d heard me. The only change in his tense frame was that his fingers had stopped moving. “When?” he finally asked.
“September, 2005.”
“What was her name?”
More pain bloomed in my chest. I rarely said her name out loud and I always felt a searing pain on the few occasions that I did. “Revay,” I managed to whisper.
Tate fell silent. Most people always apologized to me when they learned I’d lost my wife, but Tate said nothing. It was strangely comforting. Like he knew that telling me he was sorry would solve nothing, would do nothing to even make a dent in the agony that consumed me.
“Did they ever say anything about her? About that time?” I forced myself to ask.
Tate didn’t need to ask who I was talking about. “I don’t remember. I learned a long time ago not to ask questions.”
“How old were you then?”
“Thirteen.”
“What about your mom? Was she around?”
Tate was quiet for a moment before saying, “No, she wasn’t.”
“So your parents were divorced?”
Tate shrugged. “No idea.”
I figured the conversation was over when Tate turned his head to look out the window. But to my surprise, he started talking again.
“I don’t remember her, but I used to dream about this woman when I was little.
It was always the same dream. She had this really bright, long red hair and she was wearing some kind of uniform…
a nurse maybe. It was just her and me and Denny sitting around this small table, holding hands, and she was saying grace.
That’s it…that’s all I ever see.” Tate glanced down at his hands again. “That was how I picked Tate.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“When I left home, I knew I needed a new name. She used to always call me Tate in the dream.”
I wanted to ask him what his real name was, but I held back because I could see by the way he’d started twisting his hands again, that he was already tense. He cast a look over his shoulder at Matty who was still asleep. Then I felt his eyes on me and I could tell he wanted to say something.
“What?” I asked, keeping my voice low and gentle.
“I wish I’d been stronger back then,” he said quietly. “Maybe she’d still be alive if I’d said something…anything.”
I tensed at that because I knew who the she he was referring to was, but when I shot Tate a glance, he was once again looking out the window.
I fought the urge to reach my hand over to grab one of his so he would stop clenching them together.
But my body refused to listen to my brain and before I knew it, my palm was settling over his warm skin.
He stilled instantly and I heard the slightest intake of breath.
Electricity fired through my blood when I once again felt his eyes on me.
I’d intended to tell him that it wasn’t his fault, but I got lost in the sensation that was coursing through my body and what it meant. My brain could deny it all it wanted, but the fact that my dick was even now swelling with need was proof that it wasn’t some fluke.
I wanted Tate.
Badly.
And I had no idea what that meant.