Chapter 21
HAWKE
“Here.”
I put down the towel I’d been using to dry my hair and took the picture Tate handed me.
After kissing Tate last night, I’d pulled him back into my arms and held him until we’d fallen asleep.
I’d woken up with him in almost the same exact position and had lain there for nearly an hour before I’d forced myself to release him and get out of bed.
For the first time since we’d left my house three days ago, I wasn’t eager to start the day.
Because by the end of it, Tate would be on his way home and I’d be alone again.
I looked at the picture and stilled when I saw the two men kneeling on the ground, rifles in hand as they held up the head of a dead deer with huge antlers. Both men were dressed in camouflage outfits, but it was their faces that I focused on. “Buck and Denny?” I asked.
Tate nodded. “I was just looking through the photos I had developed yesterday. They made me take this picture a couple of months before I left. I’d forgotten all about it.”
I glanced up at Tate and shook my head in disbelief. He’d made it clear that he didn’t want me going after Buck and Denny in Laredo, but he’d still given me the one thing I really needed to help me find them. “Thank you,” I said.
Tate nodded and I could see that he wanted to say more, but he didn’t.
Instead, he turned and left the bathroom and I turned my attention back to the picture.
Pain slashed through my belly as I took in the faces of the men who’d brutalized my wife and murdered her and my son.
Buck looked nothing like what I’d imagined in my head.
He was remarkably clean cut and good looking for his fifty odd years.
He was a large man, but clearly took care of himself.
But his eyes were cold and empty and my gaze fell to his big hands.
Hands that had rained down on Tate’s body over and over again. Hands that had held my wife down…
I shook myself loose from my thoughts and focused on Denny.
He looked nothing like Tate as I would have expected.
His grimy blond hair was long and stringy and his pockmarked skin was drawn tight over the sharp bones of his face.
Like Reggie, the years of drug addiction had taken their toll on Denny and he almost looked as old as his father.
And like his father, there was nothing in his dull eyes.
I put the picture down on the counter and lifted my eyes to look at myself in the mirror.
My gaze fell to Revay’s words and I let my finger trail over each sentence as I read them to myself.
But it wasn’t her voice I heard in my head.
Not Tate’s either. It was my own. And it wasn’t Revay I was thinking of when I finally reached the last word.
“Yeah, thanks Daisy. Let me know what you find.”
I hung up the phone and reached for my bag when I noticed Tate standing near the entrance to the bathroom. I hadn’t heard him come out as I’d been speaking to Daisy about seeing what she could find on Ricardo Davos. But I could tell from Tate’s worried look that he’d heard me talking to her.
“Does she work for you?”
“Who? Daisy?” I asked, focusing my attention on getting my bag repacked. My fingers hit on the picture of Revay and I realized it had gotten buried near the bottom of the bag.
Because I hadn’t looked at it even once since the night I’d begged Tate to say my real name for the first time.
“Yeah.”
“No, she works for Ronan.”
“Do you work for him, too?”
I knew we were treading on dangerous ground so I said, “We should get on the road so you’ll be able to drive over the pass tonight before it gets too dark.”
The idea of watching Tate drive off caused a pain so sharp in my chest that I actually had to stop what I was doing so I could try to catch my breath.
I heard Tate moving around behind me, but I didn’t turn around as I grabbed my bag and left the room.
I tossed my bag in the backseat of the truck and got it started.
Tate appeared a moment later and climbed in beside me.
“You hungry?” I asked.
Tate didn’t look at me. He just shook his head.
I drove the truck across the street to a fast food place and ordered him a breakfast sandwich anyway, along with some coffee, but neither of us touched our food.
Lunch was a repeat of breakfast, but when I told Tate he should try to eat something, he sent me a pained glance before turning his attention back out the window.
We were making good time until we hit rush hour traffic in Denver and then a major traffic jam on one of the mountain passes that added several hours to our trip.
The sun had just started to set behind the mountains when we finally pulled in front of my garage.
Tate was out of the car the second it rolled to a stop.
I got out and went around the truck to watch him pull his bag from the backseat.
He began rifling through it for a moment and then pulled the car keys for his rental out of one of the inner pockets.
I’d parked his rental car next to the garage so I had no trouble seeing him as he went to the car, opened the trunk and tossed his bag in.
My chest felt like it was going to explode as he walked around it to the driver’s side and I realized he was actually going to leave without speaking to me.
It took everything in me not to move forward and stop him.
To demand he say something…anything that said these last three days had meant something to him…
that they’d changed him the way they’d changed me.
But I couldn’t ask that of him. Because even though being with Tate had changed me, it hadn’t changed what I needed to do. It hadn’t changed the fact that I couldn’t let go of the one thing that I would need to in order to be with him the way I wanted.
Tate reached the door, but didn’t open it.
He just stood there staring at the handle like he didn’t know what it was for.
He finally looked up at me and even from where I stood, I could see the agony in his eyes.
I moved a few steps forward without even thinking about it, but stopped myself when I was still several feet away.
Because if I touched him…
“She wouldn’t have wanted this for you,” Tate said so softly, I barely heard him.
But I did hear him. And I knew who she was. I couldn’t help the flash of anger that went through me. “You have no idea what she would have wanted. You didn’t know her.”
Tate shook his head and dropped his eyes again. “Don’t you get it, Hawke?”
I flinched at the use of my nickname…it sounded wrong coming from his lips after all the times he’d called me by my real name.
“Get what?” I asked.
“I know her because I am her.” The strange statement made no sense to me, but I held my tongue as Tate turned to face me.
“I love you,” he finally said and I felt my heart drop out of my chest. “I love you like she loved you. With everything I am. And that’s how I know she wouldn’t have wanted this life for you.”
My mouth felt dry at the same time that heat flashed through my entire body. Tate loved me? I was so overcome that I almost didn’t notice Tate shaking his head as he reached for the handle. I was on him in two strides and I slammed the door shut before he could open it all the way.
“No,” I snapped angrily. “You don’t get to say that to me and then just walk away!”
I pushed away from Tate and took several steps back as I tried to get control of my emotions. A maelstrom of them were going through me all at once. Joy, dread, confusion, fear.
Bone-wrenching fear.
Because I absolutely and completely believed Tate. And because it changed nothing. Except that I was going to end up hurting him again.
“It doesn’t change anything, does it?” Tate asked quietly, eerily voicing my own thoughts.
“No,” I finally managed to say.
“You could have something different, Hawke. With me…with Matty,” Tate whispered desperately.
I felt like I was having a panic attack as the pain in my chest increased. Why the hell hadn’t I just let Tate go after he’d made his admission?
“I can’t just let her go, Tate,” I said with a shake of my head. “What if every time I looked at you, all I saw was her? What if I only see the child I should have had when Matty’s talking to me about something? He deserves better than that. You both do.”
“We do,” Tate agreed. “Goodbye, Hawke. Just…just stay safe, okay?” Tate said, his voice breaking as he turned back to the door.
I shook my head in disbelief at what was happening. And I knew in that moment that I wasn’t ready.
I wasn’t ready to tell him that I did love him. I wasn’t ready to tell him how much I wished there was a place in my life for him and his son. But more than anything, I wasn’t ready to let him go.
I closed the distance between us and used my body to press Tate’s front against the car door. “Don’t,” I whispered in his ear as I wrapped my arm around his chest and dragged him back against me.
Tate was shaking in my hold as his hands came up to grab my forearm where I was holding him, but he didn’t try to push me away.
“One more night, Tate,” I begged, wrapping my other arm around his waist. He stiffened against me and I knew it was because I hadn’t told him what he needed to hear.
What I was asking was cruel, but I couldn’t will myself to watch him walk away.
I couldn’t bear the idea of not feeling his body beneath mine one more time. I couldn’t not taste him again.
The last time I’d begged for anything was the night I’d been in that ER watching Ronan work on my wife. And my desperation was just as clawing now as it had been then. “Please, Tate.”
Tate let out a harsh sob and then he nodded and turned his head and searched out my lips.
My whole body went weak with relief as Tate twisted in my arms until he was facing me and crushed our mouths together.
And then his arms went around my neck and he buried his face against the crook of my shoulder. “I love you so much. So much, Michael.”
I wanted so badly to say the words back.
But I couldn’t.
I just fucking couldn’t.
So I did my best to show him.