15. Cassie
CASSIE
We spent the first two days after Hawk came home from the hospital in a kind of cocoon.
Vigo was more or less fine other than his still-healing ribs, and Jagger’s back and arm were healing, but Hawk still tired easily and the burn on his right side was painful, so we lounged around the house, ordering takeout, watching movies, and sleeping.
It was more than enough for me. I’d come so close to losing them, I was happy just to have them close enough to touch.
Alive.
“What are we ordering tonight?” Vigo asked, his eyes on the video game he was playing with Jagger.
“I was thinking Indian,” Jagger said.
“Indian sounds good.” I looked at Hawk. “What sounds good to you?”
He stared at me from the opposite end of the couch, his eyes smoldering, his hand stroking my bare foot, and I was pretty sure whatever it was that sounded good wasn’t on a takeout menu.
I understood, felt it in my bones: the need to feel his naked body on mine, to feel him inside me.
Proof that he was really alive.
But he was still recovering, and as badly as I wanted him to fuck me — as badly as I wanted them all to fuck me — I didn’t want to cause him more pain or delay his healing.
“Anything,” he said.
I knew he meant it. Hawk had never been as carefree as Vigo, had never seemed particularly attached to his life, but he was less rigid now — about everything — and seemed happy just to be alive.
“Let’s do Indian,” I said.
Jagger picked up his phone to place the order.
“Anything from Bram on that phone?” Vigo asked, still focused on the video game.
“Not yet,” I said, "but he said it might take a few days.”
“Fucking frustrating,” Vigo said, pressing the video game controller forcefully like it might give him the answer he wanted. “Those fuckers tried to blow us to pieces and we don’t even know who they were.”
Jagger typed our order into his phone. “We know Kaprolov sent them.”
“Not for sure,” Hawk said. “Anna made it sound like Imperium Fratrum was loaded with guys like Kaprolov. It might have been him, but it might have been someone else who thought we were getting too close.”
“Or all of them,” Jagger said, setting down his phone.
A knot formed in my stomach when I remembered Anna’s words about Dimitri Kaprolov.
… a dangerous man surrounded by other dangerous men, all of them wealthy and influential beyond your imagining.
It had been bad enough worrying that Dimitri Kaprolov had painted a target on our backs. The possibility that Imperium Fratrum was after us chilled my blood.
“What about the tape recorder?” Hawk asked.
I bit my lip. “I… I haven’t listened to it.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “Not even once?”
I shook my head. “I wasn’t…” I took a deep breath.
“I started playing it for Bram but didn’t get very far.
We were in the cafeteria at the hospital.
There were a lot of people around, and… well, I wasn’t ready, I guess.
I just wanted him to know it was real, that our parents had been working on something big when they’d died, that someone had murdered them to keep it quiet. ”
Hawk held my gaze from the other end of the couch. “You can’t run from it forever, Cass. We don’t let the darkness control us. Remember?”
I nodded. “I’ll be right back.”
I climbed the stairs to the second floor and went to my room.
It felt like a relic from another time. I’d dumped my stuff there after we’d brought Hawk home from the hospital, but I hadn’t spent a single night in my bed.
I slept with the Hawks in one of their beds instead.
I didn’t even shower in my bathroom anymore.
I dug through one of my bags, removed the mini tape recorder we’d found in the ceiling of my dad’s old office at the paper mill, and brought it back downstairs.
My hands were shaking when I sat down on the sofa.
“I don’t… I don’t know if I can do this,” I said, looking at the tape recorder in my hands.
Hawk sat up and pulled me toward him.
“Your stomach…” Between the incision from his surgeries and the burn on his side, I was afraid to get anywhere near his torso.
“My stomach is fine,” he said, tucking me against the unburned side of his body.
I settled against him carefully, still holding the tape recorder.
Hawk kissed my forehead. “You can do this, Cass.”
“Yeah,” Vigo said, turning off the TV, "whatever is on that tape, we got you.”
I took a breath and pressed play.