36. Kara
36
KARA
H awk and I left the compound before it got dark. I’d put on the nicest outfit I owned, a long floral skirt, paired with a long-sleeved top in a deep purple that matched the violets in the material that swished across my thighs. I’d thrown a light denim jacket over the top and brushed my long hair, deciding to leave it down instead of tying it back into my regular ponytail, since Hawk seemed to like it that way.
He’d picked me up from the cabin wearing fresh clothes and a knitted pullover instead of his regular beat-up Slayers jacket. I had been sucking in deep lungfuls of his cologne while we waited for our dinner.
“Sorry this place isn’t that nice,” he said awkwardly. “I should have taken you into the city.”
The diner was on the main strip in Saint View. It wasn’t exactly the nicest of areas, but I was just thrilled to be out of the compound. We sat in a booth for two, and it was warm and cozy, with a hum of conversation around us that gave the illusion of privacy .
“I like it,” I told him with a soft smile.
The restaurant reminded me of him. Beat-up and rough on the outside.
A little bit sweet on the inside.
Not that I would tell him that. I knew he’d be horrified if I said it out loud. It was a side of him he kept protected from everyone except me, and I wouldn’t ruin that by speaking of it.
It was enough for me to know it was there.
A young waitress came over and took our order. Burgers and fries for both of us. She left, and we settled back into watching each other.
Hawk drummed his fingers awkwardly on the table. “So. What do we talk about on a date?”
I gave a small laugh. “You, Hawk, who never stops talking, doesn’t know what to talk about?”
He shrugged. “I talk a lot of shit. I don’t want to talk shit with you though.”
That warmed something inside me. “Then tell me something that’s not…rubbish.”
The corner of his mouth turned up. “You can say shit.”
“I’d prefer not to. It’s bad enough you have me saying…other things.”
He leaned in, a wicked glint in his eye. “Like cock? I think you said you wanted to suck my cock earlier.”
I blushed pink but refused to be derailed into dirty talk. That was his safe zone. It was easy for him. Getting him to tell me something more than that he wanted to lick my pussy was the real challenge. “I did not, and we both know it.” I’d said I wanted him in my mouth and I would get down on my knees for him. But not that I wanted his cock. “Tell me something real.”
“Like what?”
The conversation I’d had with Hayley Jade earlier about the various jobs her dolls could have played in my mind. “When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?”
“A biker,” he replied. Except he said it so fast it was like it was the answer he’d been programmed with.
“You wanted to be like your dad?” I asked. “He was in the club too, right?”
Hawk nodded. “He was friends with War’s old man. I grew up with the club. Never wanted to be anything else.” He looked away. “Never had the chance.”
“Your family expected you to be a biker too.”
He shrugged. “Wasn’t even just my dad. It was War’s old man. The other members. My mom. The other women. It just is what it is. As soon as War and I were old enough to get a license, we were made prospects. I don’t remember anyone asking if we ever wanted to do anything else.”
I could relate to that. “Sounds a lot like the way I grew up. Nobody ever asked me if I wanted anything more either. Women don’t do anything in the commune, other than cook and clean and go to church and have babies. I had a vegetable garden. I did like planting seeds and watching them grow into food we could eat. But nobody ever asked me if I wanted anything more than a life inside the commune.”
Hawk watched me. “So what would you have been then? If those pricks had given you the chance?”
“I like helping people,” I replied. “So maybe I’d have been a schoolteacher or a nurse.” I sighed. “But you need an education to do those things. I don’t have that. Not an official one anyway.” We’d been homeschooled, but we’d never taken the SAT exams or had the opportunity to go to college.
Hawk let out a long breath. “Story of my life.” He watched me for a minute and then sat back in the booth. “I tried to get my GED a couple weeks ago.”
I widened my eyes at him. “Really? That’s fantastic.”
He shook his head. “I failed.”
He was so crestfallen I reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “Okay, so you failed. You’ll try again.”
He moved his hand away quickly, screwing up his face and shaking his head. “Not a fucking chance.”
I frowned at him. “Why not?”
“What’s the point? If I can’t even get a fucking high school degree, there’s no way they’re going to let me into any sort of medical program.”
“You want to do something medical?” I was surprised, as it was so far from his current life of bikes and machines and all the illegal stuff I didn’t want to know about it. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.
Years ago, when Rebel had first brought me to the club, I’d been a mess. I’d had a head laceration that had needed a hospital, but I’d been so traumatized I’d refused to go.
Even though I’d broken his nose, it was Hawk who had stitched my head up. It was him who’d fed me antibiotics and watched me for a fever and changed the dressings on my wounds.
“You’d be an incredible doctor,” I told him .
He shrugged. “I’m too old anyway. Can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
“Does that go for me too?”
He looked at me sharply. “You can do whatever the hell you want.”
“Then why can’t you?”
He set his jaw in a stubborn clench. “Because I’m thirty-five and can’t even pass a freaking high school equivalency exam.”
I hated that he’d written himself off so quickly. “I’ve never passed it either. We could do it together. Study. Pretend like we’re actually in high school. Might be fun?”
Our waitress reappeared and placed two plates of food down in front of us. We both thanked her and dove into our food. My stomach growled with hunger after working up an appetite with him earlier, and the meal, though simple, was delicious.
We ate in silence for so long it took me by surprise when he paused, his burger halfway to his mouth. “Would you really want to do the test with me?”
I nodded honestly, excitement flickering inside me at the thought of doing something like that. Josiah had never wanted me to have a single thought about anything, other than providing him with a baby. The idea of studying and learning and bettering myself because I wanted to, not because he controlled me, was so incredibly appealing. “I very much would. I’m so grateful for the safety and protection of the Slayers. Please don’t take this to mean that I’m not. But I can’t hide in there forever either. Hayley Jade needs to go to school. I don’t want to homeschool her the way I was. I want her to have all the opportunities I didn’t have. I want her to go to a classroom and have friends and learn things that aren’t just about the Lord and what He wants from us.” I picked up a fry, tapping it against my plate to knock off the excess salt. “I want that for myself too. I don’t know anything. We studied a lot, but so much of it was religion. I was taught to read and do basic math, but I know nothing of anything more. I watched a documentary on leeches the other day, and did you know they still use them in modern medicine?”
He swallowed the bite of hamburger he’d been working on and shook his head. “I didn’t.”
“I found that fascinating.”
“Everything about medicine is fascinating,” he murmured, trying to hide the earnest tone in his voice but doing a poor job of it.
I watched him. “You know the hospital clinic needs volunteers. I saw the poster in the waiting room when we were there the other day.”
Hawk scoffed. “What would I volunteer to do there? Disinfect the tables? Roll bandages? I’m not doing that. I’m not qualified to do anything that would actually help anyone.”
“Neither am I. But I’ve been thinking about applying.” It was a lie. I hadn’t really been thinking about it.
But it was right up Hawk’s alley. Who cared if he had to do the grunt work? The clinic clearly needed help, and it would be a foot in the door to the career he wanted.
The life he led…it was dark and hard and dangerous. If it wasn’t what he wanted, if it wasn’t what got him up in the morning, then how long could he do that for? How long could he waste his life doing something that didn’t br ing him any joy, just because he’d never been given the chance to do anything more?
His eyes darkened. “You are not going back to that hospital with that creep doctor there.”
I’d barely had a chance to think about what the doctor had said, except now it all came back in a rush.
With a clear head, in this safe spot in a diner, without fear paralyzing me, and Hawk punching people, I considered the warning.
“He said his wife had been killed the same way Alice had and that I was in danger too. What if he’s right?” I asked quietly. “The cops think there’s a serial killer. That doctor clearly does too. What if we’ve been barking up the wrong tree by assuming Josiah is responsible for Alice’s death?”
Hawk put his burger down and breathed out a long rush of air. “It seems incredibly coincidental, don’t you think?” His eyes darkened. “That doctor prick gives me the creeps. I don’t want you near him.”
But he hadn’t seemed like a creep. He’d seemed like a nice man who’d tried to make me laugh. And one who didn’t want to see me end up in the morgue with my sister.
“You don’t want anyone near me,” I argued with a sigh. “Hawk, I need to leave the compound. Keeping me there, keeping me behind those fences is exactly what Josiah did to me.”
He froze. “Don’t fucking compare me to him.”
I grabbed his hand, squeezing my fingernails into his palm to make sure he was listening. “You aren’t like him,” I promised him. “God, Hawk. You’re so different from him in so many ways. He kept me behind bars because he wanted to own me. You do it because you want to protect me.”
His mouth flattened into a tight line, and he accepted my explanation. “But at the end of the day, the result is the same.”
“I’m a prisoner,” I said softly.
He looked away and swore low under his breath. “Fuck. That’s not what I want. I just want you to be safe.”
“I know.”
“The medical thing at the hospital,” he said slowly. “The volunteer thing. You really want to do that?”
I hadn’t even truly considered it. But it did tick a lot of boxes for me. Hayley Jade would be in school soon. She had to be. She needed friends to play with and to learn.
And maybe so did I. There was so much suffering at that clinic. So many people who needed help, and the people there were doing their best.
I couldn’t believe a man who studied medicine, who gave up his time to care for people who couldn’t afford medical treatment, could be all that bad.
Gray hadn’t hurt me.
If anything, he’d been trying to warn me. Trying to keep me safe.
That made him no different, no more dangerous than the man who sat across the table from me now. If I could trust him, then I could give Gray a chance to explain.
At the same time, I could give Hawk something he clearly needed. If anyone needed this program, to be surrounded by medicine and healing, it was him.
If that was what inspired him to get his GED and take the next steps to chasing his dream, then that was what we’d do .
I was so sick of having dreams crushed. “I want to volunteer.”
He eyed me. “You want me to let you wander all over that hospital with some jackass doctor who thinks there’s a serial killer after you, while Josiah the Lord and Savior of fucking nothing is still out there, probably waiting to drag his wife back home by her hair and sell her into slavery? That’s what you’re asking me to do?”
It was that or I went back to sitting alone in that cabin, day after day, for how long? Forever? “That’s what I’m asking you to do,” I told him.
He sighed. “If you’re volunteering, then so am I. You aren’t doing it alone.”
I smiled down at my plate and put another bite of food into my mouth before he noticed what I’d done.