Chapter 3
Hawk
Not tonight. Please.
I read the text about forty times before I finally put the phone down and forced myself to sleep, and even then it followed me into my dreams, four words doing a lot of heavy lifting for a woman who used to tell me everything.
Used to.
That was the part that kept snagging in my chest. Six years ago, Lena and I hadn't had secrets between us — or so I'd believed, right up until the moment I watched her face go carefully blank in a fish market and understood, with total certainty, that I'd believed wrong.
I gave her three days. Three days of working the garage with Diesel, three days of getting reacquainted with a town that had kept moving without me, three days of not showing up on her doorstep like some kind of stalker even though every instinct I had was screaming at me to do exactly that.
"You're doing better than I expected," Diesel said on day two, watching me methodically overhaul an engine that didn't strictly need overhauling. "I figured you'd have camped outside her house by now."
"Working on the restraint."
"How's that going?"
"Terribly."
He laughed, handing me a wrench I hadn't asked for but needed anyway, the way he always used to before I left, like some part of his brain still ran on the same rhythm as mine even after six years apart.
"For what it's worth, brother, restraint's not really your strong suit.
Never has been. You're a man who runs at things head-on. "
"Ran into a wall pretty hard the last time I did that."
"Which wall?"
"The one where I left for six years because I thought head-on was the responsible choice." I set the wrench down, frustration bleeding into my voice despite my best efforts to keep it out. "Turns out running at things head-on doesn't work so well when you don't know what you're running at."
"So find out."
"I'm trying."
"Try harder. Subtly, though. Nothing that looks like surveillance. Women tend to notice that."
On day two, Marco cornered me in the garage break room with two sandwiches and the particular directness of a man who'd been through his own version of this.
"Heard you're seeing Lena tomorrow," he said, sliding a sandwich across the table.
"Heard from who?"
"Diesel. Diesel heard from Juliet. Juliet heard from Esme.
It's a very efficient gossip network, this club.
Faster than actual radio." He unwrapped his own sandwich, entirely unbothered by my glare.
"I'm not here to pry. I'm here because I've got some relevant experience with running from something and coming back to find the woman you left has a whole life you don't know anything about. "
"Your runaway bride situation isn't exactly the same as mine."
"No, it's not. Yours is worse, probably, given the look on your face." He took a bite, chewing thoughtfully. "But the part where you're terrified you don't know the whole picture and you're going to find out something that changes everything? That part I know real well."
"Any advice? And don't say 'bring flowers,' because I already thought of that and it felt insane given the circumstances."
"Wasn't going to say flowers. Flowers are for first dates and funerals, this is neither.
" Marco considered a moment, genuinely thoughtful now.
"Don't run again. Whatever it is." He said it simply, without drama, the way a man says something he's learned the hard way and doesn't need to dress up.
"And don't overthink your first sentence either.
I rehearsed a whole speech before Juliet and I sorted things out, and when the moment came I just said her name and forgot every word of it.
Sometimes the plan doesn't matter. You just have to show up and stay.
" "Juliet kept things from me too, for good reasons at the time, same as I'm guessing Lena's got hers.
The only thing that actually fixed anything was staying put long enough to hear the whole story instead of just the parts that scared me. "
"That's the plan."
"Good plan. Stick to it." He clapped me on the shoulder on his way out, pausing at the door. "For what it's worth, Hawk — whatever you find out tomorrow, this club doesn't scare easy. We've absorbed worse surprises than whatever's waiting for you at that kitchen table."
I didn't sleep well that night either, turning his words over alongside my own. The only thing that actually fixed anything was staying put. Simple advice. Harder, I suspected, than it sounded, especially once I actually had a name to put to whatever I was staying put for.
By day three I couldn't stand it anymore. I found myself walking the harbor path at the hour I'd started to notice was hers — market in the morning, home by early afternoon, some kind of routine she probably didn't even realize she'd fallen into so predictably.
I saw her from a distance first, that same burnished gold hair catching the light, a small figure walking beside her that I hadn't clocked before.
A kid. Small, maybe five or six, holding her hand, the two of them deep in some conversation that had the boy gesturing wildly with his free hand about something that mattered enormously to him.
Something in my chest went very still.
I didn't approach — not with the kid there, not without knowing more — but I watched a moment longer than I should have, and even from that distance, something about the shape of the boy's face nagged at me.
I told myself it was nothing. Kids look like kids.
I was seeing shadows because I was primed to see them, because six years of hunting men in the dark had trained my brain to find patterns whether they were actually there or not.
I made myself walk away before either of them noticed me, though I caught one more fragment of their conversation on the wind as I turned — the boy's voice, bright and certain, saying something about a motorcycle, and Lena's laugh in response, warm and a little sad in a way that made no sense to me yet.
Back at the garage, Diesel took one look at my face and set down the part he'd been cleaning.
"You saw something."
"I saw a kid on the harbor path with her."
"Ah." Something careful crossed his expression, gone almost as fast as it appeared, and I filed that away too, another small piece of a puzzle everyone in this town seemed to already have except me.
"You know something."
"I know Lena's private, and I know it's not my story to tell." He picked the part back up, not quite meeting my eyes. "Whatever it is, brother, you'll hear it from her tomorrow. That's how it should go."
"That's a very diplomatic non-answer."
"I've been practicing." He almost smiled, but there was real weight behind it too. "Go easy tomorrow, Hawk. Whatever she tells you — however it lands — go easy. She's spent six years handling something alone. That takes a toll on a person, whatever the something turns out to be."
"I hear you."
"I know you hear me. I need you to actually do it.
There's a difference." He held my gaze a beat longer than usual, making sure it landed, before the usual easy humor crept back into his expression.
"Alright. Enough seriousness for one day.
Go home, get some sleep if you can manage it, and try not to wear a hole in the floor pacing. "
That evening, I texted her again.
Me: I'm not trying to push. But I meant what I said. I'm not leaving.
Lena: I know.
Lena: Coffee. Tomorrow. My place, after Nico's at school.
Nico. The kid had a name now, and something about seeing it in text, plain and simple, hit different than seeing him from a distance on the harbor path.
Me: I'll be there.
I lay in the small room above the garage a long time that night, staring at the ceiling, running through every version of tomorrow's conversation I could construct, and none of them landed anywhere close to peace.
Diesel found me at the garage the next morning looking, according to him, "like a man walking to his own execution."
"Coffee with a woman shouldn't look like that," he observed, handing me a espresso I hadn't asked for but needed anyway.
"It's not just coffee."
"No kidding. You've been staring at that wall for ten minutes like it owes you money." He leaned against the workbench, arms crossed, studying me with more seriousness than his usual banter let on. "You want backup?"
"For coffee?"
"For whatever this actually is." His voice dropped, genuine concern replacing the usual teasing. "Hawk. You've had a look on your face since you got back like a man bracing for a hit he can see coming but can't dodge. Whatever she tells you today — you good for it? Whatever it is?"
I thought about the boy on the harbor path. The shape of his face. The way something in my chest had gone still and hadn't quite settled since.
"I don't know," I admitted. "But I'm going anyway."
"That's the guy I remember." Diesel's grin came back, softer this time. "For the record, I've got a good feeling. Don't ask me why. Call it enforcer intuition, minus the enforcing."
"That's not a real thing."
"It's absolutely a real thing. I've been right about worse odds than this."
"That's usually how the important stuff works.
" He clapped my shoulder, steering me toward the door.
"Go. And Hawk — whatever it is, this club's got your back.
Whatever shape it comes in." He paused, then added, deadpan, "Also if you throw up on her porch, that's on you, I'm not covering for that one. "
"Noted."
I rode to Lena's house with my stomach in knots I hadn't felt since the worst of the dark years, since standing in doorways I wasn't sure I'd walk back out of.
Her house sat above the harbor, small and well-kept, flowerpots on the windowsills that hadn't been there six years ago, a child's bicycle leaned against the porch rail with training wheels still attached.
I stared at that bicycle a long moment before I made myself knock.
She opened the door already looking braced for something, dressed simply, her hair pulled back, and for a second neither of us said anything at all.