CHAPTER TWELVE
SUNNY
I ghosted through the next few days that turned into weeks, passing through my life rather than living it. Honey tried her best to pull me out of my funk but more than anything I wanted to hide. Away from the drivers, away from the wreck of my personal life. Away from anywhere Hawk might be.
Which was everywhere.
While I tried to hide from the world, Hawk had taken it on.
His face lit the sides of buses, grinned manically at me from billboards.
Some part of my brain acknowledged the mask he’d spoken about, the public face he presented to the world. Hot as Hades as he had always been, I could see the lack of sparkle in each shot, the pure panic and determination that shone through to someone who knew him.
I knew him, and that broke my heart a little more.
Rather than focus on my own clients the way I should have prioritized my time, I found myself in my office in Benson’s building. Nothing about my relationship with Hawk had surfaced, which was a small miracle in itself. But working back on racing media, albeit away from Hawk, let me pretend the world was just fine and that nothing had broken.
I’d become an ostrich in leather and denim with her blonde curls planted firmly in the sand.
My inbox was half empty, I had jobs that needed work and I fully intended to submerge myself in it until the rest of the world either blew up in my face or Hawk retired from racing. My head knew which would come first even if my heart refused to acknowledge it.
“Sunny.”
I straightened my slumped posture over my keyboard at the voice, starting enough to slosh my coffee from its cup.
“Benson!” I threw my false smile on my face. “I’ve sent ad copy out along with the media kit for the first week of racing.” Which was fast approaching, and one of my favorite times of the year. Everyone had enthusiasm for the start of the season.
The image of two cars colliding then a third slid through my mind. I pushed the vision away and kept smiling until my cheeks ached.
Fortunately for me Benson couldn’t tell a fake expression from a real one.
“Thanks.” He waved away four straight days of work with a flick of his manicured fingers. “I wanted to see what you were doing this weekend.”
I blinked. My planning hadn’t gone beyond my inbox and the media releases. “Ah— let me see.” I flicked open my calendar. “Saturday is booked—there’s a shoot at the track with you, then the press afterwards, with you and Hawk…” Both of us grimaced, though I suspected it was for grossly differing reasons. “And Sunday…I have other work.”
“Your client list?” Benson’s jovial tone closed down somewhat.
I shook my head. “I’ve barely had time.” Or made time. “I’m working in my sister’s soup kitchen. They’ve had a shortage of workers and I promised I’d help.”
“Charity is good for the soul,” Benson intoned. “And for the reputation. Can I take you out to dinner afterward?”
“Oh, hell. Have I missed putting something in my calendar? Fuck,” I muttered under my breath. “I knew there was something I’d missed. You know when you have that thing—like a void in your head—when you know you haven’t written something down? One of those.” I opened Sunday’s calendar and poised my fingers over the keyboard. “Okay, ready. What’s it for and who’s it with? Oh, and the dress code. Please.” My head chose that most inopportune moment to be scattered as hell.
Large, smooth hands settled over mine, a body pressed to my back. “A date. Dinner, just you and me. Dress…” Benson paused long enough for me to look up at him. I tried and failed to hide my shock at his words, but the way his gaze coasted over me, how he licked his lips like I was a meal he was about to rip into sent a wave of revulsion through my body. Benson’s smile was nothing short of predatory, and not the good sort. “In something sexy.”
I ducked one shoulder and twisted out of his grip in a move that would have made my old dance teacher proud. “Thanks but…I’ll be exhausted after a day in the kitchen. And gross. I don’t know what time I’ll get off—” Great choice of words, Cooper. Benson didn’t miss the double entendre either, his smile widening as I backed away from his advance. “—and I’ll smell horrible. I’ll be terrible company.'' For every step I took backward Benson took two forward until my back hit the door.
I scrambled for the handle as he loomed over me and I closed my eyes.
This is it. This is where I walk out and ruin any potential my career has right now.
I hated working for Benson. The lightbulb moment drew away the veil I had used to cover my life for the last weeks. All it revealed was a heart broken girl trying to dodge the terrible boss she had worked with for far too long.
“Then Monday.”
What was Monday? “Nope. Press before the first race.” The handle of the door jarred my spine.
“Tuesday.” Benson’s smile grew wider as his hands slapped the painted door either side of my head.
I jumped, wrestling with the damn lock. “I think—” click “I have—” turn “something on. But I’ll be here in the office every day.” Until I can think of a way to get out of my contract with you.
The handle turned beneath my palm and I sent a silent prayer heavenward.
Cold air whooshed past me as Benson stumbled under the unexpected motion. Several figures I didn’t bother to focus on froze in the hall, watching our boss tumble out of my office.
“Great chatting with you,” I called as I closed the door behind me.
I contemplated the lock for a long minute but I judged the chances of Benson coming back after that ignominious exit were less than slim, and more in the realm of none.
My first step away from the door felt like freedom. Without Benson breathing down my neck and offering random dates, I could think. Naturally, the moment I stopped pacing and halted in the center of the room, my mind went blank.
I would have laughed at myself if the familiar edge of panic hadn’t brushed my heart. I had to find that contract, and find a loophole in it. I had to?—
A hand wrapped around my elbow and turned me in a dizzying circle. My shout died in my throat as the face of my assailant came into view. Thankfully, my brain recognized Hawk before my mouth did.
It didn’t work out so well for my hand. Or his face.
My palm cracked across his cheek before I could lessen the blow, my apology tumbling out of my mouth as I launched at him.
“Whoa, Coops. I didn’t know you hated me that much.” His tone was light as he swiped his knuckles over his cheek and sent me a sharp grin. “You’ve got a damn good swing, though.”
“For a girl?” I raised an eyebrow, all banter and sass.
How easy it was to fall back into this vein with him. Too easy. Tears rolled down my face as my heart broke all over again.
“For anyone.” He brushed my tears away, cradling my face in his hands. “I’ve missed you, Coops.”
A small hiccup escaped my lips. Was it really that easy? I searched his gaze but there was nothing closed, or predatory, or hidden in his eyes. “I missed. You. Too.” I punctuated each word with a thump to his chest. “My heart still hurts.” If he was open and honest, then the least I could do was repay the favor.
“Mine too, Sunny.” His gaze dropped to my lips a second before his mouth crashed into mine in a searing kiss that swiped the last few weeks of torment and heart break from my mind.
The door closed with a loud click behind him, and I suspected he had kicked it shut. The sound snapped me back to where we were.
“Hawk!” I pulled back from his kiss and realized my hands were linked around his neck. I held tight to him, despite the burning need to push him away. “You can’t be here! My God, he’ll be furious. He’ll— I— Hawk. I can’t be seen?—”
“Me. As I am, or nothing, Coops. I’m not hiding the most important part of my life from the world. I won’t hide you .” He growled the words against my lips, his voice raw with need and— fear? “Work with me if you like. Or don’t. I couldn’t care less. Or more. What I want is you. As you are, right now. Please,” he begged, cradling my body tight to his.
My eyes widened, read the desperation in his face, in his touch.
And when he lowered his mouth to mine I kissed him back, tangling my hands in his hair where it had lengthened at the back. My body remembered every part of his, pressing to the all the right places in a fervent desire to fill the empty gaps in my heart.
His kisses turned hungry and rough, his tongue lashing against mine as he lifted me off my feet and carried me across the room to my desk. Things crashed to the ground where he swept them to the floor. “I’ll replace them. Anything. I’ll do anything, Coops?—”
“You don’t need to buy me,” I whispered, tears tracking my cheeks again. “I make my own way in the world.”
“I know,” he murmured between kisses that made my head spin. “I know and I’d never have it any other way. Hell, Coops. I love you.”
“I love you, too.” My tears flowed in earnest as he cupped the back of my neck, holding me in place while he kissed me senseless.
So senseless, I didn’t hear the door open again.
I didn’t hear the footsteps that spelled ruin on my thinly industrial carpeted office floor.
But I did hear Benson’s bellow when he roared my name. I was pretty sure everyone on my floor—in the entire building and probably half the street below—heard him.
Hawk stilled, his shoulders a tight line as he broke the kiss. Any remnant of fear was gone from his dark gaze, replaced by blazing determination and something more?—
Pride.
“Get the fuck out of my building, KC.”
I held Hawk’s gaze, the memory they had once been friends—that Hawk had once thought they were friends—reverberating inside my skull.
“Not without Sunny.” Hawk held me tight, searching my face.
I nodded, the tiny movement of self-aware prey before it fled.
Between these two giants, I could be nothing else. My own self-doubts, the ones I buried beneath a thick layer of sand and another hole I’d hidden my head in, washed over me in a flood.
Not the time to freeze, Cooper. Hold your ground.
But that will I had employed for the last few weeks—for my life—failed me in a single swoop that sealed my fate.
“You can have her. She was only useful to me once she started fucking with you, fucking up her life, while I could get information out of her.”
Hawk’s gaze fell on me, weighing. Assessing.
I blinked at him. “I had no idea?—”
“That you were doing me a huge favor? Why do you think there were no reports of you seen together? I have an army of media, Sunny. I don’t need a little thing like you. Get out of my offices, both of you. And Sunny?” He waited until I peeked out from behind Hawk. “Remember your contract. You’re off the track for good.” Benson smirked. “Have fun using her, KC. She’s good for nothing, like the last things you’ve touched. Ten minutes. Then I call the police. What a fun media circus that will be.”
Hawk’s hands closed tight on my arms. Too tight. I let out a small yelp as the door clicked again behind Benson.
“What did he mean?”
“It doesn't matter. How did you come in? Did you park out the front in that God awful yellow thing you own? He’ll have a media storm waiting for you. He would have organized it before he came in here.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s what I would have done. I need my laptop and?—”
“Cutthroat.”
“Probably. Marketing is fun. Hawk, I’m sorry, we have to get you out of here. You need to?—”
“What did he mean about the track, Sunny?” Hawk’s knuckle lifted my chin.
I stopped fluttering about the desk, everything broken I had on it. “I’m banned. That’s the deal. My contract names you, specifically, but if I date or deal with any of his competition in a ‘less than a professional manner’ I’m banned from the circuit—” Breath lodged in my throat. “From the track, for life. That’s what fucking you cost me, but I did it anyway.” I glared at him, defiant.
It was so much easier to be angry than to feel the catastrophic level cataclysm opening beneath my feet. I swallowed hard and breathed out through my nose.
“Is that all,” Hawk asked, still holding my gaze. His thumb brushed over my cheek in a tender motion. “Damn, girl. I do love you.”
“You, too.” I hiccupped and tried to swallow that but the tremors started. “Help me, please. Grab my personal things. Forget the mug. And the cactus.”
“Why do you have a cactus? And why is it pink?” Hawk touched its tip gingerly and drew back fast.
“Because it was a big, spikey fuck you to anyone who walked in here with a problem.” I gathered the broken remains of my career in my arms and carried them to my office door, surveying the room for the last time.
Things I hadn’t noticed before stood out at me. The dusty blinds, the carpet tattered at one end of the room. The chipped desk. Everything about Benson was a facade. It was a surprise he didn’t recognize the false smiles that surrounded him, or maybe he didn’t care.
“Let’s go, Sunny.” Hawk’s voice filled with distaste as he wrapped his arm around my shoulders and drew me out of the office. “You don’t belong here.”
A week ago or even yesterday, those words might have hurt.
Today, they meant freedom.
The next weeks passed in a blur, but my ban wasn’t as painful as I’d expected. My personal clients appreciated the time I spent on their projects and began to recommend me. Hawk took my contract straight to his lawyer and sent a copy to his mentor’s legal team, assuring me they would find a loophole and use it.
I was glad of his company and my sister was relieved I wasn’t moping around the house anymore, or working myself stupid for a worse reason. Which left me time to spend with her.
“Are you sure you want to work in the kitchen today? Aren’t you still in the honeymoon period? The night shift probably runs into midnight with set up for the weekend, and I have a meeting so you’ll be closing up alone,” she warned me.
I smiled, the first genuine one since walking away from Benson. “It’s fine. I like to work. It makes me happy.” I shrugged, knowing how mad it sounded.
But surrounded by a mad keen driver and my equally determined sister and her charity, that wasn’t as silly as it sounded.
Honey kissed my cheek. “See you in a few hours then,” she called as she dashed down the stairs.
“Does she need a lift?”
“I gave her my car.”
Hawk raised an eyebrow. “Are you being serious?”
I grinned. “Yes. It looks amazing. Ryan and your team did an incredible job. Though they still won’t let me pay for it.”
“Never going to happen. Ryan’s a gentleman.”
“You definitely needed one on your team.”
“Damn straight. I can’t be perfect all the time.” Hawk struck a stoic pose at my breakfast table.
I rolled my eyes. “Give a girl a lift?”
“Always.” Hawk settled me on his lap and cupped the back of my head in his palm, angling me the way he wanted. His mouth grazed over mine in a possessive kiss that rippled all the way to my toes. “But if you have a few hours first…” His fingers trailed along the inside of my thigh tugging them apart.
I wiggled my ass against the hard ridge of his jeans. “I think we might be able to fulfill that.”
Hawk’s groan as his mouth descended on mine was the only answer I needed.
“I’ll see you at home!” Honey yelled as she backed out of the scarred wooden door of the soup kitchen. “Are you sure you’re going to be all right?” The door closed behind her before I could answer.
I let out a laugh, shaking my head. “Sure, sis.” Clean up was half done and our last few bowls for the night had gone out.
The last stragglers stayed for the heat that filled the small shop front. I couldn't begrudge them the last remnants of warmth as I cleaned up for the night. Finally I closed up, my last chores done as I handed out a few biscuits I had brought from home. I’d started cooking again and it gave me pleasure to know a few extra someones would fall asleep with a full stomach.
“Thank you, Miss Sunny.” Gray Bob held out his empty bowl. The chipped plastic trembled in his grip.
I took it with a smile. I’d fast become a favorite with the regulars of the neighborhood.
“I’m sorry I don’t have more,” I apologized, helping him to the door. I was sorry I didn’t have a place for them all to sleep. Maybe that could be the next stage of Honey’s plan.
“It’s more than enough for my bones. You stay safe, Miss Sunny,” Bob croaked as he gave me a small wave and tottered off into the night.
I wondered if he would speak to another soul before he returned tomorrow night.
“I’m almost done,” I said into my phone as I closed the front door and locked it. “Back’s open. Come through when you’re ready. I’ll be twenty minutes, so don’t rush.”
“Be safe,” Hawk said softly on the other end of the line. “I’ll be there soon.” His voice was slightly rough, and I knew exactly what that meant for the rest of my night.
A shiver ran down my spine as I ended the call, unable to stop the smile spreading over my face. I turned all the chairs upside down onto the long bench that lined one end of the small room. Bins, or mopping first? I wrinkled my nose at the thought of the bins and opted for that, leaving the mop against the wall.
A door banged at the back as I tied the bags up.
I straightened, swiping my hands on my damp apron. “That was fast. You must be keen tonight.” I wiggled my eyebrows.
The kitchen was silent.
I swallowed, retreating a step to grab the mop where I’d left it and turned to face the back room. “Hawk?”
A shadow stepped out of the back room, his bulk too different to be anyone I expected.
“We’re closed.” I gripped the mop tight as the figure advanced. Shadows covered his face, but I peered beneath the hoodie anyway.
“You’re right. You do smell filthy. But what more would I expect when you have sullied yourself with him?” Benson’s hatred filled voice slammed into my chest, shock knocking the air from my lungs.
I didn’t hesitate as I swung the mop at full extension with all my strength.
It was a mistake.
Benson slashed one arm out, catching the mop head with an easy that left my stomach somewhere on the dirty soup kitchen floor. He yanked mop from my grasp as he closed the distance between us.
I swiveled on my heel, aiming for the front door, but a second behemoth stepped in front of me. Breath sawed in my chest as I screamed at the figure lunging toward me.
Hands coiled in my hair from behind, yanking me backward, away from the doorway. Away from the street and its bright lights.
Twenty minutes. Why did I say twenty minutes?
Could I last survive long? “What do you want, Benson?” I shrieked the words, kicked and thrashed to a silent room.
“I tried to get you away from him. I tried to make sure you wouldn't end up like the rest of the girls KC throws away, but you didn’t listen.” Benson shook his head as he dragged me from the shop into the darkened, dead end alley behind. “I told you, I told you, I told you .”
My legs tangled beneath me, flopping and skittering and utterly useless. I fell to my knees but still Benson dragged me along, his not so friendly shadow following along behind.
“Help me,” I croaked, terror stealing my breath, but the shadow said nothing. “Benson, please. I’m— sorry.” I forced the bitter words out, shaped by desperation. “I?—”
“You’re worthless.” Splittle sprayed my cheeks as he threw me against a wall.
I vaguely noted the bricked corner at my back, how far the streetlights were from us, distant hazed orbs. The back light behind the shop had been kicked out or smashed leaving the alley shrouded in an all consuming darkness prepared for dark deeds.
My palms scraped the wall behind me, leveraging my body up only to slide back as my feet scrabbled at the loose gravel beneath my gummy boots. Glass tinkled with each kick.
“Oh, you don’t like living in muck?” Benson’s hand closed around my throat tight, lifting me up a few feet.
I stared into the black pits of his eyes, finding no humanity there. Terror bloomed inside me, obliterating everything else from my field of vision.
After everything, someone’s whacked out vision of the world was going to mean the end of mine.
No.
I lashed out with every last remnant of energy I possessed, lashing at him with my fists. Something solid grazed one, and my next hit connected hard. A slice of pain shot up my arm.
I dimly hoped the thing I had hit was Benson, and I hoped it had hurt him as much as it hurt me. Unfortunately, it didn’t lessen the closing grip on my throat. I swallowed, or tried to, but nothing happened. My stomach heaved from below, but all that achieved was to block my nose with an excess of bile that trickled down my chin.
The scent of vomit filled my shrinking world as a pair of pinprick lights pierced the darkness that narrowed my field of vision to Benson’s leering face.
And then that was gone, too.