Chapter 9 #2
I opened my mouth, but a paralyzing chill went down my spine—Can’t you just picture them together?—and I was very afraid I might vomit, so I closed it again.
“You know…” Crys tapped her lip thoughtfully with one chipped fingernail.
“You might be onto something, though. Maybe Simon could go ride out the storm up there with him. You know Hawk has a thing for those books where the two characters are stuck sharing a room in a blizzard… What do you call those?”
“Forced proximity,” I said in a nearly inaudible whisper.
She snapped her fingers. “That’s it! And Simon probably knows tons about storm hazards since he’s an environmental dude. He might even be trained in CPR, so, like, if one of them got struck by lightning, he could perform mouth-to-mouth…”
I swallowed thickly.
“Hawk told me you recommended he carry lube in his backpack just in case he and Simon got an opportunity, so we know he’s prepared. That was thoughtful of you.” She beamed guilelessly, and I knew I was being played by a master.
But damn if it wasn’t working.
An embarrassing little choking sound gurgled out of my throat, and I coughed to hide it. “I said no such thing,” I argued, knowing it was useless. “I think Hawk should wait for the right person. Someone he really wants, not someone convenient.”
“And I think this topic is getting seriously old,” she said sweetly.
My eye twitched. She wasn’t wrong.
She pressed her lips together for a beat before patting my arm and preparing to stand up from the table.
“At the risk of getting fired on the spot, I really think you should go up there and fuck him, Jack. Dunno what kind of bullshit ethical problem is burbling through the wild brook in your brainpan, but he wants you. He chose you. And you want him just as badly. So have at it. As William Hale Thompson once famously said, ‘Fuck early and often.’”
“I think that was about voting,” I called after her in a choked voice.
She waved her hand over her shoulder. “Po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe. Now, go get your man.”
I leaned my elbows on the table and buried my face in my hands. Everyone in Little Pippin Hollow had lost their damned mind.
I lasted twenty hours before I caved.
In that time, I talked to Drew, who literally laughed out loud when I suggested he should drag Hawk off the mountain and muttered something about how “Janis Joplin saved the day again, rest her soul.”
I talked to Webb and Knox, who exchanged a look so long it seemed like they were having an entire conversation.
Knox raised an eyebrow at Webb, Webb glared at him worriedly, Knox folded his arms over his chest and tilted his chin toward me, and Webb finally looked away with his jaw clenched.
“We think Hawk’ll be fine,” Knox told me coolly.
“He knows exactly when and where to seek shelter, and he knows the evacuation routes. But we appreciate your concern.”
I even broke down and explained the whole situation to my mother, who scowled at me, sighed dramatically, and told the dog, “Apparently, certain adults need to learn the consequences of their actions the hard way, don’t they, Peony?
” which I thought was pretty unfeeling since she loved Hawk nearly as much as she loved me.
That morning, I’d been so desperate I’d actually considered approaching Helena Fortnum to beg for her help—the woman was quite spry for an octogenarian; surely a little hike wouldn’t hurt her—when Tom had casually mentioned something about how the National Weather Service no longer recommended using the Lightning Crouch, whatever the hell that was.
“Guess if lightning strikes,” Tom had continued, “you’re just supposed to grin and bear it. At least Hawk isn’t in a metal tent, right?”
Visions assaulted my brain of metal tent poles and trekking poles, metal cooking equipment and insulated water bottles gleefully conducting electricity all around Hawk’s tent.
Even the 1858 Flying Eagle penny his dad had given him that he wore on a chain around his neck for luck now seemed like a harbinger of doom.
And that was when I realized that I needed to bite the bullet and fetch the man off the mountain myself.
“Treat me like an adult, he says,” I muttered at my boots as I trudged up the trail. “While childishly ignoring dangerous weather warnings. What kind of adult risks himself in a situation like this? A stupid one, that’s what kind.”
But concern for his well-being didn’t explain my sweaty palms and jittery heart. Not when the only signs of the storm were a few intermittent raindrops. Not when there was plenty of time to convince him, pack him up, and get him safely home before the real storm arrived.
It took half the long-ass trail for me to realize that what was driving me, what was spinning me wildly to the edge of my comfort and sanity, was fear of seeing Hawk. Because I knew if I saw him… I wouldn’t be able to hold myself back.
My feelings for him were so strong they felt like steel bands crushing my solar plexus.
Even though I’d told him I couldn’t be what he wanted, what he needed, I couldn’t stop imagining being with him in exactly that way.
His bright, familiar face had filled my dreams for the past two weeks when I was lucky enough to sleep, and the thought of touching his warm, naked skin filled the nights when I couldn’t sleep at all.
I’d slept with him a thousand times in my mind, taking him fast and hard against the wall in the diner’s storeroom… slowly and sensually in front of a crackling fire… quick and sweet in a stolen moment in the middle of the night. I wanted him so badly I couldn’t think straight.
I sucked in a deep breath of the cool, humid air. The temperature was already dropping now that the sun was behind heavy clouds.
If I followed my own advice to Webb and tried treating Hawk like an adult, maybe I could accept his proposal for the two of us to sleep together without it having to mean anything more than that.
Yeah, right. As if I could get naked with him and not have it mean anything.
I’d told Hawk that he couldn’t possibly want sex without romantic strings, but it was me—me—who knew we couldn’t be together that way without being together in all the ways. And I…
I had no idea how to do that, and I didn’t want to let him down. He was infinitely precious. Breaking him would break me.
Hawk’s words from our last hike sounded in my head. The only reason you don’t know about relationship stuff is because you haven’t tried relationship stuff, just like you weren’t born knowing how to play the damn tuba.
But life wasn’t that easy. It couldn’t be…
Could it?
“What the fuck are you thinking?” I muttered. “Of course it’s not.”
My stomach turned over again. Hawk was emotional these days. Impulsive. What if putting sex on the table between us was just another bad decision he’d made? What if he regretted it? What if giving in to what we wanted was the thing that broke our friendship apart, this time for good—
“Jack?”
My head snapped up to find Hawk standing a few yards down the trail.
He looked rough and rugged from several days camping.
His hair stood in sandy-brown cowlicks, and a long smear of dirt trailed over his cheek and down the front of an Averill Union Bears T-shirt that looked a couple of sizes too small for him.
He’d never been more gorgeous.
My heart knocked against my rib cage, my body ready to run to him, take him up in my arms, hold him tight, and kiss his fucking face off.
My mind froze my feet to the ground, and I could only stare at him, swallowing hard.
“Hi,” I croaked.
“You…” Hawk licked his lips, looking wary and confused. “What are you doing here?”
Right. Yes. I had a purpose. I hadn’t come here to gawk.
“There’s a storm coming,” I said.
Hawk looked up at the milky sky and the very evident, impossible-to-miss clouds that had gathered on the horizon. “Yep. Sure seems that way. And you… decided to hike in it?”
I moved closer, weighing the pros and cons of touching him just a tiny bit—just enough to assure myself he was alive and well and this was not, say, the beginning of a strangely conversation-heavy wet dream.
Then again, touching him was exactly what dream-me would do, so that wouldn’t clarify anything.
I fisted my hands at my sides and focused on pressing my nails into my palms. “I came to help you pack up. There’s still plenty of time to get back down the mountain before… anything happens.”
I wasn’t sure, at that moment, which terrible outcome I was trying to avoid—the one where lightning struck and burned one of us to a crisp… or the one where I let myself have him, and both of us got burned.
“Oh.” Hawk’s confusion cleared, and he raised his chin. “You should probably go, then. I’m staying.”
How was it possible for him to surprise me when he said exactly what I expected him to say?
Or maybe what surprised me was how straight and strong he stood, how confident he looked, as he said it.
His eyes, which had been storm-tossed and emotionally ravaged for weeks, now glowed with certainty and determination.
His lean muscles flexed as he folded his arms over his chest defiantly, and the movement made light glint off the scruff on his jaw.
He looked every inch like a man who knew what he wanted…
and that knowledge made my stomach flip and my cock stir.
For maybe the first time between us, I was the unsure one of the two of us. The one with questions and no answers. The one who was drowning in a churning sea of want and sinking for the third time. The one whose patience was coiled together with his longing and annoyance…
The one who lashed out.
“That’s beyond foolish. What would your father say?” I demanded.
The hurtful words landed on the hard, damp ground between us in an ugly lump. Tension crackled in the air, more potent than the coming lightning. But instead of responding, Hawk sighed, and his shoulders slumped. Then he turned and disappeared up the trail to his campsite.