72. Hawk
The waiter returned balancing a tray loaded with the ridiculous amount of food that I’d ordered, dancing between the tables with plates filled with delicious smelling dishes. Once he’d placed them all on the table, Wren and I settled in to sample them all, finally just talking to each other. She asked about my mom, and I told her a bit about growing up in East Los Angeles. She shared more about Cooper, what she was like as a baby and how things had worked when they had lived with Sabrina, just the three of them against the world.
Then Wren pulled out her phone, bringing up a treasure trove of photos she had stored on there. Sitting at that table, I stared in awe at a slideshow of Cooper’s life, from first steps to first words, and I couldn’t hardly breathe past the lump in my throat. Seeing all those photos, those smiles and tears captured forever, moments held in stasis for me to see, just about had me breaking down at the table.
I was so fucking grateful for them.
As the evening wore on and the pile of dinner plates was swapped for every item on the dessert menu, I realized that I’d never had a better night in my entire fucking life.
Sold-out shows around the world. Parties at the hottest clubs in every town I went to.
And still, none of that compared to sitting across the table from my girl, talking about our kid.
That shit was fuckin’ wild, man.
Watching Wren talk about Cooper, you could just see the love she had for her. Every word she spoke was infused with pride and excitement. When she talked about Cooper’s love of sports, or the way she cried at the ending of all the princess movies, Wren’s adoration for our daughter shone bright with every word she spoke. She was a mother who loved hard and fierce, and it turned me the fuck on.
I couldn’t think of a better way to end the night than to take my girl back to my place, and show her what I’d been picturing since the moment she walked out in that stunner of a dress.
And how fuckin’ great it was gonna look on my bedroom floor.
I was just about to ask for the check, more than ready to get the hell out of there, when a couple entered the restaurant, the hostess ushering them to their table.
Right past ours.
“Wren?” came a shocked voice, the woman stopping short next to our table. As she spoke, I watched Wren’s entire demeanor change. She went from relaxed and comfortable to tense in a heartbeat. Her whole body froze, and all the color drained from her face, her cheeks that had just held a sexy pink glow from the two glasses of wine she’d consumed with her dinner turning ashen before my eyes. “That is you. For a minute, I thought I had entered a parallel dimension.”
The woman laughed, her cackle setting my teeth on edge.
“Hello, Denise,” Wren replied woodenly. Her face was smiling, but it was nothing like the smiles she’d been gifting me with all evening. This one was brittle and painful looking, her eyes dull and lifeless.
“It’s so surprising seeing you here,” the woman went on, either completely oblivious to Wren’s discomfort or reveling in it.
Either way, that put her on my shit list.
“Jason and I come here every week,” she went on, her gaze moving to the man who had come in with her, but hadn’t seemed to notice she’d not followed him to their table. “But in all the years we’ve been eating here, I’ve never seen you. But that’s hardly surprising, though, is it? I mean, this type of place isn’t exactly your scene.” Her smile widened, and the gleam in her eyes turned positively evil.
I knew it was coming; it was a look I’d seen numerous times on Tori’s face, when she was about to humiliate someone and was absolutely thrilled by the prospect.
And sure enough, the next words out of her mouth were weaponized to perfection.
“They must be having a coupon night or something, right? How else would Grand Rapid’s resident trash whore be able to even get through the door?”
“What the fuck, lady?” I said, standing from my chair. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
Denise stared at me, her eyes wide as I stood, glowering down at her. For a fraction of a second, I could see the fear in her eyes, but like any professional bitch, she hid her weakness and doubled down on the bullshit instead.
“Oh, how cute. You found yourself a trashy little boyfriend, too.” Denise eyed me, her gaze bouncing from my long hair to the leather boots I was wearing under my dark wash jeans. I could read her assessment like a book, and I could see the minute she began to doubt herself. Any socialite worth her salt would recognize designer clothes when they saw them. “Looks like you might have snagged one with at least some money.” Turning back to Wren, she asked, “He’s not married like the last one, is he?”
“Listen, lady,” I started, ready to lay into her. Wren may be willing to let this bitch talk to her like that, but I sure as hell wasn’t. But before I could even begin, another voice interrupted me.
“Holy shit!”
It was the woman’s husband; he’d finally realized she hadn’t followed him to their table and had come looking for her.
He’d also recognized me.
“Dude!” he said, a huge smile breaking across his face. “Holy fuck, I can’t believe it’s you.”
“Jason,” Denise hissed, but he wasn’t listening, having gone full fanboy the minute he’d realized who I was.
“I’m Jason McQueen,” he blurted, one hand to his chest as though I should be as impressed by him as he was by me. “Man,” he went on, physically moving his wife out of the way so he could get closer to me, holding up a hand for me to clasp, which I pointedly ignored. “You guys fuckin’ rule,” he went on, completely unphased by my rejection of his weird bro-hug thing.
“Jason, what the hell are you doing?” Denise was the angry one now.
“Babe,” he said, looking at her like she was dumb. “Babe, this is Hawk Jameson.” When Denise just blinked at him, he went on, speaking slowly. “He’s the lead singer of Black Kite.” Still, Denise did nothing but frown. Jason went on, “You know. That song that was playing when we—”
“Jason!”
Ignoring the look of shock on his wife’s face, Jason turned back to me. “Man, I was gutted when you guys broke up. Your album, Holy Trinity, changed my fuckin’ life, man.”
That album was the biggest pile of shit we’d ever produced. It was nothing but soulless garbage about banging women and defying authority.
Of course, it was this douchebag’s favorite. He probably lost his fuckin’ virginity to it, thinking he was hot shit, banging a cheerleader in the backseat of his daddy’s Mercedes.
Jason continued to spew platitudes, going on and on about his favorite songs, but while he talked, I was watching Denise. With every word that Jason spoke, I could see the calculation in her eyes. I watched as she tried to figure out how to use this.
Use me.
Because that’s what women like her did. They saw me as a tool, a way to make themselves more important in the eyes of others. They never gave a shit about me as a person, and even Jason here cared more about his own experiences with the music than he did anything else.
No, Denise was going to take this situation, and she was going to make it something she could benefit from.
I just fuckin’ knew it.
“So, Hawk, is it? How do you know Wren?”
I narrowed my eyes at Denise before I turned to Wren, waiting for her to take the lead on this one. It was more than obvious that she and Denise had a history of bullshit; Wren’s first letter to me had indicated as much, but seeing the two of them together all these years later proved that Denise had never really moved on from her schoolyard bully mentality.
But as I waited for Wren to speak, she never even looked up, her arms crossed over her chest and her shoulders curled in. Looking at her, sitting there trying to disappear before my very eyes, made me want to rage. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to go full fuckin’ rock star on this piece of shit town. Throw chairs, flip tables, toss Jason fuckin’ McQueen through the plate-glass window and into the street. I wanted to take Denise apart piece by piece, starting with her fake eyelashes. I wanted to tear her down until the only thing that remained was a sniveling, desperate worm of a woman, and then I wanted to place her at Wren’s feet, where she belonged.
“Come on, baby,” I said, holding out my hand to Wren and ignoring Denise’s question all together. “Let’s get the fuck outta here.”
For a second, she didn’t move, her eyes still firmly on the twisted linen napkin in her lap. But when I didn’t pull back, when I continued to ignore Denise and her husband and the hushed whispers of the nosy people all around us—several of whom were filming us now that Jason had outed me to the whole place—Wren finally lifted her head, her wide, hazel eyes wet. I smiled at her, and as she placed her hand in mine, a single fat tear rolled down her cheek. Once she was standing, I lifted my hands to her face, cupping her cheeks as I thumbed away the tear, swearing to myself that it would be the last one she ever cried over that bitch.
Wren closed her eyes, and I couldn’t help myself; I leaned in, pressing a soft kiss to her forehead before stepping back and releasing her.
“If you’ll excuse us,” I said, my anger clear in my voice as I pulled out my wallet and counted out five one-hundred-dollar bills, tossing them into the center of the table. “Wren and I have plans.” Taking her hand, I pulled Wren along, pausing when we were a few steps from the table, turning back to see the look of outrage painted on Denise’s face. “And I mean it with the utmost sincerity when I say, get fucked, you phony, try-hard bitch.”