30. Kara
30
KARA
A fter three solid weeks of wandering around the Slayers’ compound, it had begun to feel like as much of a prison as the commune had. While I appreciated that we were safe here, and that we had food and protection, I was quickly realizing those things, while satisfying basic human needs, couldn’t sustain me forever.
They weren’t enough for me. And they weren’t enough for Hayley Jade.
Who was getting more and more withdrawn, rather than getting better. She stared listlessly at an old iPad Rebel had brought over for her, a cartoon playing on the screen, but Hayley Jade’s expression never changed.
Rebel tried to bring Remi over as much as she could, and Hayley Jade did seem to perk up a bit in the presence of her younger cousin. But Remi couldn’t be here all the time. And when she left, Hayley Jade went right back to being listless and unenergetic .
Yesterday she’d taken a three-hour nap, even though she didn’t have a fever or any signs of a physical illness. That wasn’t normal behavior for a five-year-old.
Rebel was right. She needed to see a doctor. And we both needed to get out of this compound.
I’d been avoiding the outside world and all its terrors long enough. Staying here, hiding from them, was creating a bigger fear than all the others.
The fear I was doing my daughter permanent damage by keeping her inside these gates.
I left Hayley Jade on the couch with her cartoons and crossed the room, moving a little way down the hall to Hawk’s bedroom.
I’d been avoiding it ever since he’d vowed to give me the second orgasm he apparently owed me if I ever knocked on his door.
But I couldn’t avoid it anymore. The clinic at the hospital was today, and if I missed it again, it would be another week before I could get her there.
I honestly didn’t know if I could take another week of watching her deteriorate the way she had been.
I forced my knuckles across the heavy wooden door.
“What?” Hawk snapped from behind it.
My instinct was to shrink away or apologize for bothering him. But one quick glance at Hayley Jade reminded me I couldn’t. “It’s me.” I called out, trying to make my voice stronger than I felt. “Kara, I mean.”
The door flew open.
Hawk grinned at me from the other side, his smile so handsome it made my insides flutter uncontrollably. My tongue seemed to lose all control of itself as tingles surged across my skin at just the sight of him .
I hadn’t seen much of him since the police had come. He’d been busy with club stuff. I’d been busy hiding in my cabin or quietly watching my daughter from a distance.
Like the church mouse he’d correctly labeled me as.
I couldn’t be that person today. I needed to be stronger and to ask for what I wanted.
But he took my breath away every time and made it so darn hard to speak.
Hawk’s eyes darkened in the face of my hesitation. “Get in here, Little Mouse. Get in here and tell me what you want.”
His fingers circled my wrist, and he gave it a tug I was helpless to resist. He went to close the door behind me, but I knew in a heartbeat if he did, I would find myself naked and on the receiving end of that second orgasm. I couldn’t do that.
Not today.
I caught the door before he could close it properly. “I need you to take me to the hospital.”
Any dark, sexual desire that had been lingering in his eyes disappeared, and his gaze swept over me quickly. “Why? What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” His gaze darted to Hayley Jade. “Is she?”
I hushed him, not wanting to scare her. “I want to take her to the clinic they have there. Rebel said they have pediatricians and that they don’t ask for ID or payment.”
Hawk rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “Yeah, they do.” He glanced over at Hayley Jade. “You think she’s getting worse.”
It was a statement, not a question. Everybody knew she was .
I swallowed down a lump in my throat. “She’s traumatized from what I did…”
He grasped my chin so I couldn’t turn away. “She’d be traumatized a whole lot worse if you’d left her at that commune to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.”
Logically I knew that, but it didn’t make it any easier to bear.
My actions had caused her hurt, and there was nothing I could do to take that back. All I could do was try to help her now. “Please. Can you take us? I don’t know what else to do.”
“Clinic closes in an hour. If we’re going, we need to go now.”
I nodded, then cocked my head to one side. “How did you know that? About the closing time, I mean.”
He shrugged. “Not important.” He looked past me to the main recreation room. “Hay Jay! Wanna get out of here for a bit?”
She glanced up at him with interest. Then her gaze landed on me, and she shook her head quickly.
I should have been used to her rejections by now, but each one still hurt.
“Nah, Little Mouse. You don’t take that personally. She’s hurting right now. That ain’t about you.”
Except it was. She didn’t know what Josiah had planned for her. All she knew was I’d taken her from the only mother she could remember and the only home she’d ever known.
Hawk picked up his jacket from a chair and shrugged it on. In the doorway, his boots sat waiting, and he shoved his feet into them, stooping to do up the laces. “Tell her we’ll get her rainbow ice cream,” he said quietly .
“Ice cream?”
“ Rainbow ice cream. Specifically rainbow. She doesn’t like the other flavors.”
I stared at him in surprise, and he sighed.
“Just fucking ask her, Mouse. The clinic ain’t gonna wait for us.”
“Ice cream,” I blurted out to Hayley Jade. “Do you want some ice cream?”
“Rainbow,” Hawk hissed.
“Rainbow flavor,” I clarified for Hayley Jade.
She sat up gradually, her gaze darting between me and Hawk, and then she slowly nodded.
Hope lit up inside me. It was the first time she’d responded to my gentle questions in days.
It was something. But it also wasn’t the full truth of where we were going, and I didn’t want to start rebuilding a bond with lies.
I knelt in front of her. “Would it be okay with you if we went to see a doctor first? I promise, he or she will be very nice, and I think they might be a safe person for you to talk to. If you want that, of course.”
I hoped with everything I had that she did.
She didn’t say anything or nod, but she did pick her shoes up from the floor and pulled them on her feet.
I glanced at Hawk.
He shrugged. “She didn’t say no,” he said loud enough so only I could hear.
She didn’t say no.
It was a start.
T he hospital clinic was overrun with people. Hawk, Hayley Jade, and I all stopped just inside the automatic sliding doors, joining the line of people waiting.
“Fucking hell. This is going to suck,” Hawk mumbled.
A harried woman behind the registration desk glanced up and shot him a dirty look, clearly not at all bothered by his MC jacket or the bad-boy scowl he wore effortlessly.
In fact, if anything, his appearance seemed to piss her off even more. She narrowed her eyes at him. “Did I just hear you whining no less than three seconds after you got here, when some of these people have waited hours without so much as a peep? You offering to volunteer your time to help out, Mr. Bad-boy Biker? No. I didn’t think so. Everybody is so willing to complain, but we’re all volunteers here, so listening to people whine isn’t on my to-do list today.”
Hawk blinked as the woman went back to taking the details of the patient at the front of the line. He nudged me. “Who pissed in her Cheerios this morning?”
I hushed him. Clearly the woman had supersonic hearing, and I didn’t want to risk her turning us away. “We can wait like everyone else. You don’t have to stay.”
His eyes darkened. “You think I’m going to leave you here alone in a room full of strangers?” His laugh was humorless. “Not a fucking chance.”
I tried to hide the breath of relief I let out.
I didn’t want him to go.
I didn’t want to do this alone .
We got to the front of the line, and the woman gave Hawk a glare then turned to me. “Name?”
I cleared my throat and tried to find my voice. “Um. It’s for my daughter. Her name is Hayley Jade…”
“Last name?” The woman’s fingers hovered over her keyboard, waiting for my reply.
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to give my last name, or even Shari’s. I didn’t want there to be any record of us being here. I couldn’t really imagine Josiah having a contact at a hospital hundreds of miles from the commune, but fear made me paranoid. Fang had promised to get fake IDs for both me and Hayley Jade, but his contact hadn’t come through with them yet.
I had no idea what to say.
“Robinson,” he replied, giving his last name. “Hayley Jade Robinson.”
The woman looked between the two of us, her thinly plucked eyebrow raised. “That so?”
I glanced at him, not wanting to lie, but my heart doing weird things at hearing my daughter with his name.
I pinched myself through my skirt, the sharp stab of pain a reminder it didn’t mean anything. Nor did I even want it to mean anything. He’d just been helping me out when my brain had frozen.
But a little part of me had melted into a puddle.
“Yes, please, ma’am,” I said quietly.
The woman watched me as she typed in the name without even looking at the screen. “What’s a nice girl like you doing with a man like him?”
Irritation prickled at the back of my neck. Hawk was abrasive and rude sometimes, but this woman didn’t know him. She’d judged him solely on the fact he had an MC jacket on.
I tried to defend him. “That’s not your—”
But she was already leaning around us to address the next patient. “Follow the green line to go on through to triage. Next!”
I tried again. “No wait. Excuse me, but you don’t even know him—”
Hawk’s fingers fit around my elbow, and he firmly steered me away from the desk before I could say anything more.
“I ain’t worth getting kicked out over, Little Mouse.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “Cute of you to try to defend me, but you don’t know me either.”
We followed the green line painted on the linoleum, Hayley Jade walking a few steps ahead of us, her feet sticking to the line religiously, like she was walking a tightrope.
“I know you aren’t as awful as you let other people think you are,” I argued when she was out of earshot, though I kept my eye on her determinedly.
He laughed. “Got any proof of that?”
“You let me stay at the club when I had nowhere else to go.”
“That was War’s call.”
I blinked. “Fine. You cleaned out that cabin for me. That was nice.”
He gave me a grin. “You’re right. I am nice.” He put his arm around my neck and drew me in close, so his lips brushed my ear when he spoke. “I remember you thinking I was real fucking nice when I had three fingers buried in your pussy and my tongue on your clit.”
I pushed him away, horrified he would talk like that in a public place. “Stop it!”
Only, my nipples had instantly hardened.
And my clit tingled like it might want a repeat.
His voice sounded thick when he spoke again, like he knew the effect he was having on my body. “You haven’t come to my room to claim that second orgasm I owe you, Little Mouse.”
“And I won’t be,” I promised, side by side again.
“Unacceptable answer,” he quipped back. “When getting my tongue to your pussy again is all I can think about. Not just your clit, this time, Kara. I want to taste you everywhere. And I mean, everywhere. All the places I didn’t put my tongue last time.”
I widened my eyes at him. “What does that even mean? You already…”
I blushed hot pink at the memory of his tongue between my thighs. And the realization that although he had licked me there, he hadn’t once kissed my mouth.
Something silly and girlish lit up inside me at the thought of him kissing me the way Fang or Vaughn or Kian kissed Rebel. It was the same way men kissed women in movies, sweeping them into their arms, and her melting into him while their mouths fused.
I’d never been kissed like that.
All I knew of kisses were ones I’d never wanted.
I could barely imagine what it was like to sink into a man’s embrace, to wrap my fingers around his neck and actually want his mouth on mine.
But with Hawk, I could imagine it .
My breath hitched at the thought of him wanting me like that.
“I already what, Kara?” he murmured, keeping his voice low so the people passing us and Hayley Jade ahead of us couldn’t hear. “I already licked your clit, but you haven’t ridden my tongue. I haven’t thrust it inside you until you screamed. I haven’t slid it down your sweet slit until I got to your ass.”
I stared at him. “My what?”
He chuckled. “He never touched you there either, huh?”
“Of course not. Why would he?”
His look was smug. “Because you have no fucking idea how good it feels.” He winked at me.
I couldn’t breathe for thinking about it. Did people really…do that?
I couldn’t even imagine. I needed to ask Rebel. Or Bliss. Or anyone but Hawk because I already felt like an immature, inexperienced child in his presence.
We caught up with Hayley Jade at the triage station, where the green line ran out.
It was only as Hawk gave Hayley Jade’s fake name again that I realized Hawk hadn’t once mentioned kissing me.
He’d talked about putting his mouth to my pussy and to my…
But he didn’t want to kiss me.
I couldn’t deny the way that hurt. Even though I had no business kissing anyone.
“Okay, Hayley Jade,” the nurse said with a smile. She was a lot friendlier than the woman at reception had been, though this one hadn’t heard Hawk complaining the minute he’d walked in the door, so that was probably understandable. “My name is Freya, and I’m going to do a few checks while I have a chat with your parents. Is that okay? First one, all we need you to do is pop this monitor on your finger. Do you think you can do that for me?”
Hayley Jade nodded and held a finger out.
Nurse Freya smiled. “Great job. Just sit for a moment and let that register, then we’ll move on.”
The nurse focused on us and explained, “The doctors know that patients who come to this clinic often haven’t seen a doctor for a long time, or maybe ever. So we run a few basic tests while we chat about what brought you in today.”
Hawk glanced at me, letting me take the lead.
I drew in a breath. “Hayley Jade went through something quite traumatic a few weeks ago. She hasn’t spoken ever since. I thought it was just shock, and that it would just take her a few days, but it’s been weeks, and if anything, she’s getting worse, not better.”
The nurse’s eyebrows drew together. “Can you tell me more about the event you believe triggered this?”
“Um.” I wanted to. I wanted to tell her exactly what had happened so they had all the information they needed to help Hayley Jade. But every time I thought about it, I wanted to shut down too. My heart rate picked up until it was uncomfortably fast. My breathing turned shallow. And my throat felt like it was closing in on itself.
I could only imagine it would be so much worse to be five years old, trying to make sense of that night, and all the nights that had come after.
If that was what was going through Hayley Jade’s mind every time she thought about speaking, I understood exactly why she didn’t.
The feeling was overwhelming, and I just wanted to make it stop.
Hawk glanced at me and then at the nurse. “Kara’s husband is a prick,” he said bluntly. “Your imagination can probably fill in the rest.”
The woman nodded slowly and then turned her attention back to Hayley Jade. “Right! Let’s take a look at that reading then, shall we?”
Hayley Jade let her take the monitor off her finger and fit another around her skinny arm.
But I was still firmly back there.
Running through the darkness.
Terror gripping me.
Josiah’s voice calling my name.
Across the room, someone dropped a metal tray of instruments, and the clanging noise sent a shudder through my system.
A hot sweat flushed across my skin, and the room suddenly felt too hot, even though the air-conditioning blew gently across my skin.
I tugged at the collar of my shirt, the fabric choking me.
“Breathe, Little Mouse,” Hawk said quietly beneath his breath. “She’s watching.”
I snapped my head up to meet Hayley Jade’s dark-eyed gaze staring at me intently.
The relaxed expression fell from her face, and she suddenly shook her head, pushing at the nurse.
Nurse Freya fought to keep the blood pressure cuff on her patient. “No, no, sweetie. Just gotta keep this on a few more moments. I know it’s not very comfortable…”
Hayley Jade yanked at the arm cuff, her eyes wide, her gaze firmly stuck on me.
The nurse glanced over at me, taking in my clammy skin and the way I was breathing. “Mom, how about you go get a cup of water? There’s a waiting area just around the corner there that has a dispenser.”
I nodded and backed away.
I was clearly not helping here. I was clearly making her worse.
“Kara,” Hawk warned, one hand already wrapped around Hayley Jade’s trying to reassure her, while they both stared at me.
“Stay with her,” I told him. “I’ll be fine. I’ll be back in just a minute after I get some water.”
I could tell he didn’t like it.
His expression said he hated the idea of me walking around the hospital by myself, where he couldn’t see me.
Couldn’t protect me if Josiah or one of his guys had followed us here from the clubhouse.
But I was hurting Hayley Jade.
And I was going to keep hurting her until I faced everything I’d done.
That meant reliving it all. Not just the escape. But every day of the past five years. The thought alone slammed closed doors in my brain, stopping the flow of images. “Stay with her,” I said again, imploring him to listen to me.
I needed to know she was safe.
He reluctantly gave a short nod.
As if I hadn’t been able to move my feet until he let me, they suddenly unlocked. I hurried from the room in search of somewhere I could repair the mental walls that kept me from breaking down in front of a hospital full of people, and the one little girl who needed me to be stronger than I was.