15. Hawk
15
HAWK
S pending all night in a holding cell at Providence Police Department was somewhere akin to sleeping on the floor of the clubhouse bathroom after an all-night party. The bench seat beneath me was hard and my shoulder numb from lying on it for hours. The toilet reeked of piss and vomit, though that was almost preferable to the chemical smell that clung to my skin and hair after that delousing wash-down we’d been so delightfully subjected to.
None of the other assholes in this cell seemed to have gotten the same treatment. I hadn’t bothered making conversation with the three other guys in the small room, but their street clothes and the stench of BO gave away that Chaos and I had been singled out for special treatment thanks to our gang affiliation.
Poor shriveled-dick Simon seemed to have been caught up as collateral damage. Though he’d been sprung almost as quickly as Chaos had.
Fucking asshole .
Must be nice to have a rich brother.
The locking mechanism on the door made a grinding sound, and a bored cop leaned on the doorway. “Hawk Robinson?”
I looked up from my rock-hard bench. “Yeah?”
He frowned. “Hawk is honestly your legal name?”
“That’s what it says on the fucking paperwork, doesn’t it?”
The cop chuckled in the face of my irritation. “Your parents really just set you up for this life, didn’t they? Giving you a name like that. Your ride is here. You’re out.”
My parents naming me Hawk was hardly the bad decision that had led me down this path. I’d grown up in the club. Never knew nothing different. If they’d wanted me to be a lawyer or a doctor, the first thing they probably should have done was make sure I actually went to fucking school.
If they had, it would have saved me the hassle of doing my GED now, at the ripe fucking age of thirty-five.
Speaking of… I jerked my chin at the cop. “Hey, what’s the date?”
He raised an eyebrow as he waited for me to leave the cell. “Why? You want to note it down in your journal or something? Dear Diary,” he mocked. “Today I met my life’s potential and found myself in jail. Won’t be long until I’m here permanently. Love…” He sniggered. “Hawk.”
He said my name like it was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. Which was fucking hilarious coming from a man whose nametag read Officer Nigel Buttsworth.
Normally I would have made some sort of smart-ass comment about that, but fuck, I really wanted to know the date. “Please,” I forced out through gritted teeth, hating the way that word sounded on my lips. I didn’t beg people for fucking anything. My old man would be rolling over in his goddamn grave if he’d heard me mumble those words.
But fuck that old bastard. I needed to know.
The officer checked his smartwatch. “It’s the eighteenth.”
Fuck.
“That mean something to you?” the cop asked as he guided me back to the processing room and passed me a clear bag with my name on it. Inside were the clothes I’d been wearing when I’d been picked up, but I had no doubt they would have been swabbed to within an inch of their life, photographed, and tested for who fucking knows what in the time we’d been apart.
Whatever. They weren’t going to find anything. The new chief could go fuck himself.
I snatched the bag of clothes out of the cop’s hand and ripped it open. “Just got something I need to do today. None of your business, Officer Buttshole.”
The man’s face purpled. “It’s Officer Buttsworth.”
I squinted at him, pulling my clothes on quickly. “Is that really any better?”
The cop flipped me the bird before turning around. “See you soon, Hawk. You might be writing down today’s date in your diary, but I’m just waiting on the one where I get to lock you up for good.” He banged a fist against a window that led out into the station. “He’s good to go.”
Fuck him. He sounded just like my old man.
I wasn’t spending my life in here like him.
This date did mean something .
Fang waited for me in the reception area, his arms crossed over his giant chest, a scowl fixed on the cops shoving papers at me to sign.
I scribbled something unintelligible in the places they indicated, my handwriting awful as always, and then I made my way over to Fang.
“You good?” he asked quietly, pushing off the wall. He was a couple of inches taller than my six foot two.
“Yeah, fine.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Why do you smell like that?”
The smell truly was disgusting. “There’s a new chief. Has it in for us apparently.”
Fang grumbled low in his chest. “I’ll talk to War. Slip him some stacks.”
I shook my head. “No, don’t worry. I’ll do it. After having my ass groped and being sprayed in this shit then left in a cell all fucking night, I’ve got a few things I’d like to have a word about. War is busy with his family. Bliss popped out that kid yet?”
“Not that I’ve heard. I think she still has a few weeks left. At least that’s what Rebel said.”
I nodded. “She’d know. Those two are joined at the hip and like mama ducks with their tribe of kids following them around everywhere. You all need to learn how to pull out.”
Fang’s mouth lifted a little in one corner. “Bliss makes Rebel happy. Rebel fat and pregnant with babies makes me happy. So fuck off.” But it was said with such good humor I snorted.
“You’ve changed, brother.” I shook my head. “Remember when you were all scowls and scary MC enforcer who never smiled and would snap the neck of anyone who looked at him wrong?”
Fang unlocked the club van as we approached the parking lot. “Do I need to snap your neck right now to prove I’m still capable?”
I grinned at him. The man was pure muscle. A wall of intimidation. I knew for a fact he’d taken out three guys in the last month without so much as getting a scratch in return. He was different because he was happy. More often than not, he had a kid in his arms or was using the club van to pick the twins up from preschool. But it hadn’t made him any less lethal when it counted.
I didn’t need him to prove it. When we called on him, he was there. Just like he always had been.
“Nah.” I gripped the holy-shit handle and pulled myself up into the passenger seat of the van. “We waiting on Aloha and Ice to be released too?”
Fang shook his head. “Cops didn’t book ’em. Let them go with a warning.”
My mouth dropped open. “Fuck off. Seriously? They put me and Chaos through the wringer.”
Fang shrugged. “You’re the VP… He’s the leader of the Sinners. Or was. I don’t know who’s in charge over there anymore, if anyone. The cops are making an example of you. Why waste their time booking all of us when they can send the same message by getting to the top of our ranks?”
I eyed him. “Doesn’t sound like something the old chief would have done.”
“The old chief was an idiot. Maybe this one isn’t.”
I leaned back in my seat, leaning an arm on the windowsill. “We’ll see. ”
We drove in silence for a few minutes, Fang steering the van back through Providence and into Saint View.
“You nervous?” he asked quietly.
I glanced at him sharply. “About what?”
He concentrated on the road, not twisting his head to make eye contact with me. “Your results are out today, aren’t they?”
I let out a breath. “I hate that you know about that.”
“I can pretend I don’t if you want?”
I shook my head. “As long as nobody else knows. I don’t need everyone giving me shit.”
“I don’t think they would…”
I raised an eyebrow at him.
He chuckled. “Okay, fine. You’re lucky it’s me who collects the mail and saw all those enrollment papers you had sent. I still don’t know why you sent them to the clubhouse. You could have just downloaded them.”
Easy for him to say. “Yeah, well, I went and bought a laptop after that, didn’t I? It’s not like I’m a computer genius like you are.”
Fang rolled his eyes. “Having an email address and a Facebook page doesn’t exactly make me an IT whiz. I don’t know how you made it to thirty-five without either.”
I smiled at him, making it overexaggerated and sickly sweet. “Was too busy fucking your sister.”
Fang flicked up his blinker and spun the wheel to take the bluff road that would eventually lead to the woods. The clubhouse was nestled behind thick trees, deep inside them, surrounded by an even more robust fence line. Fang didn’t even bother replying to my barb. We both knew I’d never met his sister. If he even had one. I didn’t fucking know. I wasn’t in the habit of going around the club and asking all of the members about their mommies and daddies and how many offspring they’d birthed.
It was hard enough to keep up with the amount of devil spawn the club members had produced over the past few years. Half the time the clubhouse was like a fucking nursery.
At least during the day. No kids were allowed after dark unless we were in lockdown, and thankfully, we hadn’t had one of those in ages. I couldn’t think of anything worse than being trapped at the club with kids twenty-four seven.
I mentally urged the van to hurry up, my results waiting for me on the shitty old laptop I’d bought when I’d first decided to take the course. It had my login details saved on it. Once I got home, I’d be able to check my results. They should have come in at nine, and it was already eleven.
I can’t believe I’d fucking gotten arrested. Of all fucking days.
Fuck Chaos. If I’d known it was him getting his ass kicked at that diner last night, I would have left him to become hamburger. Walked right on past him dying on the floor, the way he had when the fucker had sent a bullet straight into my goddamn leg.
By the time Fang drove us up the tree-lined road and waited for the massive iron gates with the Slayers’ emblem to open, my leg jumped with nerves and excess energy.
“Settle,” Fang warned. “Getting there faster ain’t gonna change what’s on those results.”
Easier said than done. I’d spent four fucking months taking this class. I’d never studied for anything in my life, and learning how to do that at thirty-five had felt like pushing a boulder up a hill.
But I’d done it because it was the first step in getting into medicine.
I clamped down on my bottom lip, despising that the stupid fucking dream was even in my head when it was so ridiculous to begin with.
Even Fang didn’t know about that. I’d told him I was bored and just wanted to take the GED to prove to myself I could. I’d told him I hated that I felt like school had beaten me and I wanted to prove I could beat it right back now that I was older and hopefully slightly smarter than I’d been at fifteen.
Though that was probably debatable.
But I hadn’t dared tell him the real reason I’d wanted to do it was because medicine and healing had, somewhere along the line, become all I could think about. It had started long before Chaos had been scraped off the side of the road and left in our basement for me to fix. I’d been sewing up minor bullet wounds and gashes the club members had come back to the house with for years. Somebody had to, and most of the guys were too busy fainting or gagging over the sight of blood. I’d found it an oddly interesting rush to have someone’s life in my hands without having a gun pressed to their head.
Though having the muzzle pressed up against Chaos’s skull last night had been pretty fucking sweet too.
I’d watched hours of YouTube videos on all sorts of medical topics. Whatever I could find. It was all fascinating to me.
I watched until watching wasn’t enough. I itched to learn more. To learn in a real setting where I could actually develop proper skills.
I’d never wanted a nine-to-five job, but suddenly there was something in my life worth more than going on gun runs, riding my bike, and fucking women.
So I’d enrolled in the stupid GED class because I needed that in order to get into any sort of medical course.
But first, I had to pass.
“You’re going to pass,” Fang said, like that big fucker could read my mind.
“I know,” I quipped back, trying to sound like the cocky prick I normally was.
But it was hard with this. I was so far out of my depth, and I knew it.
I’d studied so damn much though. I had to pass. There was no other option. Without a pass, any hope of getting into a medical job was gone.
The van twisted through the dirt road toward the large, ugly rectangular building me and a bunch of the club members called home.
I groaned at the sight of a full parking lot and people everywhere.
Not just club members.
Wives. Children. Ew.
“Is it seriously fucking family day?” I complained. “Again?”
Fang looked over at me warily. “It’s the third weekend of every month. It’s not like this should be a surprise to you.”
I screwed my nose up at the damn trampoline that had been pulled out of the storage shed Fang and War had made a few years back once their brats were all walking and talking. The two pussy-whipped fools had filled that shed with all sorts of useless kid crap. Swing sets. Jumping ropes. Barbies.
There was a fucking Barbie Dreamhouse in the middle of the Slayers MC. And one day a month, big burly guys like Aloha and Ratchet crawled around outside like they were ponies while four-year-olds giggled hysterically on their backs.
Our enemies would have a field day if they knew that.
Fang parked the van. “You going to join us?”
“Nope.”
He flinched slightly, like I’d managed to hurt his feelings. “Come on. You never come to family day. The twins always ask why Uncle Hawk doesn’t want to hang with them.”
“Did you tell them it’s because I’m not actually their uncle?”
Fang narrowed his eyes at me, but I wasn’t in the mood for his guilt trips. He wasn’t the prez. He didn’t get to make demands on my time. And War was smart enough not to give me a hard time about it.
I didn’t have a fucking family.
Why the hell would I go to an event literally called family day?
Fang had that “disappointed dad” expression on his face. Again. “Whatever. Don’t come. All the more chili for me.”
My stomach grumbled. I hadn’t even gotten to finish my dinner last night at the diner before I’d had to go save Chaos’s stupid ass, and it’s not like they’d served up a buffet breakfast at the police station. Chili sounded fucking amazing. “Never said I didn’t need to eat,” I relented.
Fang shook his head, rolling his eyes. “Thought it might go like that.”
We walked side by side to the doorway of the clubhouse, dodging ankle biters and Tonka trucks. Fang paused in the doorway and put a hand out to stop me.
“Listen, though. Something happened last night you should probably know about. Rebel’s sister—”
I didn’t even need to ask which one.
There was only one I recognized, and she was sitting right in the middle of my clubhouse, as uncomfortable and out of place as a nun in a whorehouse.
But, fuck, she was beautiful.
Long dark hair. Big brown eyes. Tits that strained at her top like it was several sizes too small to contain them.
It had been years since I’d last seen her.
Years since I’d felt that same jolt of lust just from one glimpse of her sweet curves.
My fingertips tingled like they had the first day she’d crashed into me in the woods, alive at just the touch of my skin against hers.
I stormed across the room and stopped right in front of her.
She glanced up, and fuck me, standing above her like this, with her gaze locked on mine, all I could think about was how she’d look naked, on her knees, her mouth open for my dick like the good girl I wanted her to be.
“You.” The seething word fell from my lips, so different from how I felt inside. “You fucking broke my nose. Twice .”
A hush fell over the group, all eyes focusing on me .
Rebel was quick to defend her sister, rushing over from the side of the room. “That was five years ago, Hawk! Get over it.”
I ignored her, staring down at Kara some more because I couldn’t drag my fucking eyes off her. She barely looked older than she’d been the last time I’d seen her, but her curves were even more pronounced in clothes that had to be Rebel’s because Paramore was printed on the T-shirt fighting to contain Kara’s tits.
I wanted to rip that shirt off her. Bury my face in the swells. Lick her creamy skin until her nipples pebbled beneath my tongue.
Kara shrank back into the couch, cowering away from me like some scared little daisy.
I blinked.
That was unexpected. Sure, the last time I’d seen her she hadn’t exactly been full of confidence either, but that hadn’t stopped her from swinging her fist right into my nose. Or using the back of her head to break it again when I’d just been trying to fucking help her.
Watching her shrink away from me now sent a jolt of self-loathing through me.
The woman was too confusing, and I didn’t need this bullshit today. Didn’t need to be reminded about what a piece of shit I was. I already had my dad’s voice in my head telling me I was too stupid to pass that test and why would I even bother when I knew I was too dumb?
I turned to Rebel. “Get her out of here. She’s not welcome.”
Rebel gaped at me. “She’s my sister, jackass! If anyone’s not welcome, it’s you!”
Blood pounded in my head. I was so fucking tired. I reeked of jail. And all I could think about was the goddamn GED test results that were going to determine the rest of my life.
I didn’t need Kara curling in on herself like the last five years had beaten her into a pulp and one hard word from me was going to send her over the edge.
Amber, my favorite club girl, strode across the room, pressing herself against my side. “Hey, baby. Come on. Let’s go to your room.”
With effort, I dragged my gaze from Kara to Amber. Amber was so familiar. Her blond hair had been wrapped around my fist hundreds of times. Her fake, overly round tits had been in my mouth just two days ago. She’d come on my tongue and screamed my name while she bounced on my cock more times than I could count.
I’d never felt a thing.
Which only made the lust in my blood for Rebel’s curvy sister all the more fucked-up. She was a scared little church mouse who I would destroy in seconds.
Amber was the opposite. She could take my shit. With Amber, I wouldn’t feel like a lion devouring an injured fawn.
I strode down the long hallway, leaving the party and everyone at it staring at my back.
“He’s such a fucking asshole!” Rebel complained, and there were multiple other voices of agreement who chimed in with her.
Each one sent a tiny jab of hurt through me, but it was only because I hadn’t slept and those test results were burning a hole in my computer.
I’d get my walls back up. I didn’t need the club wives to like me .
Didn’t need Kara to like me. Whatever she’d gone through in the last five years that had her curling into the fetal position wasn’t my problem.
I unlocked the door to my room as Amber caught up to me. I didn’t stop her when she slipped inside and started taking her clothes off.
Ignoring her, I grabbed my laptop from the floor by my bed, but before I could sit, Amber was tugging at the fly of my jeans. “You look like you need to come, baby,” she practically cooed, dragging down my zipper. “Let me help you out.”
I didn’t want her there. I just wanted to check the fucking results alone. But she already had her fingers around my cock, stroking the length.
I wasn’t getting hard.
Because it wasn’t Amber’s hand around my cock that I wanted.
Fucking hell, I hadn’t thought about Kara in years.
Liar.
Fine. I’d thought about her. Not every day. And never enough that I couldn’t get hard with Amber’s mouth wrapped around my dick.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
I sat hard on the bed, dislodging my dick from Amber’s mouth, but she scrambled forward, pushing her way between my knees and bobbing over my cock like it was an Olympic sport.
“Come on, baby. Relax,” she murmured. “What’s got you so tense?”
“You fucking talking,” I bit back.
It was mean and I knew it. But she laughed, pulling off to gaze up at me. “You’re such a grump today. ”
I pushed her head down and flopped back onto the bed, resting my laptop on my chest. I hit the power button and waited for the piece-of-shit computer to whiz and whir its way into life.
I closed my eyes while it did its thing.
Kara’s image flashed to life behind my eyes.
Her staring up at me.
Like something out of every wet dream I’d ever had.
My dick got hard.
I pretended Amber’s mouth was Kara’s. Pretended it was her naked in my bedroom, ready and willing to let me touch her. Kiss her. Fuck her sweet holes with my tongue and my fingers and my dick.
I groaned, precum beading on my tip.
I opened my eyes and logged on to the online class dashboard, where a small envelope notification in the top right-hand corner told me I had one new message.
I knew exactly what it would be.
For the tiniest of seconds, I wished there was someone here to hold my hand.
Someone who wasn’t Amber.
“Just fucking do it,” I muttered to myself.
“Do what?” Amber asked.
“Make me come,” I told her, though that wasn’t what I’d meant at all.
She lowered her head, licking my balls and making my eyes roll back with how good it felt.
I clicked on the notification.
Skimmed over a bunch of lines about how the scores were worked out.
Scrolled lower to the actual results page .
I slammed the laptop closed. My erection instantly dead. I sat up and pushed Amber away.
She rocked back on her heels, her forehead furrowed in confusion. “What’s the matter? You were so close.”
“Get out,” I muttered.
“You don’t mean that.” She reached for me again.
I flinched away because I so fucking did. “Get out!” I roared.
She blinked at the tone I’d never used with her before, scrambling back, grabbing her clothes, and clutching them to her chest as she ran from my room.
That rush of self-loathing cloaked me again. This time it was half because I’d managed to upset yet another woman. And half because I should have known better than to think some dumb-ass kid from Saint View had a hope in hell of passing those tests.
Thinking I could do anything in medicine had been as stupid as my body wanting Kara.
Neither were going to happen.