His thumbs swept my jaws and he said quietly, “All right, baby, I’ll get you Imperial.”
I shook my head but unfortunately didn’t shake his hands free. “No, the other night, I liked you. Tonight, I don’t,” I announced. “I mean, thank you for saving me from biker prison but now I want to go home…” It was then I realized I didn’t have a home, my parents’ didn’t have a home and therefore I was fucked so I finished lamely, “Or… wherever.”
“You are where you’re gonna be until whatever the fuck is happening is over, babe,” Hawk declared.
“Hello?” I called. “Let me remind you that you live in Badass World and I do not. You can’t tell me where to be.”
“I sure as fuck can, Gwen,” he replied.
“No, you can’t,” I returned, his hands slid to my neck and his fingers curled deep.
“Listen to me, Gwendolyn,” he growled and I missed that somewhere he got un-pissed but I wasn’t missing that he was now re-pissed and him saying my full name only underlined it. “As far as intel we got goes, Ginger was nowhere in the vicinity today when you had your drive-by. So that means one of two things. Those shots were meant to take out Tack or they were meant to take you out.”
“No one wants me dead,” I returned.
“No, but they want Ginger to suffer and she’s your sister and they might not know you’re not tight and, last, they’re gettin’ desperate so, like I said, they could have been meant to take you out.”
Holy fucking shit!
I closed my eyes and muttered, “Why does this keep getting worse?”
I opened my eyes when Hawk answered, “Because your sister is a piece of trash.” I was going to let him have that this time but I didn’t get the chance to tell him that because he went on. “Now, we don’t know but we need to assume you’re a target, which means your parents may be targets which means protection. You’re safe here so you’re gonna stay here. I’ll do what I can for them. And I’ll do what I can to bring peace with Tack because I need him as an ally with this shit and I don’t need more to deal with and that includes you giving me lip.”
“You’re going to do what you can for my parents?” I asked and he stared down at me, his fingers flexing into my neck.
“Sweet Pea, look at me.”
“I am looking at you.” And I was!
“No, really, look at me.”
I was really looking at him!
He kept talking. “Gayle’s never been here, she’s never gonna be here and her place got shot up in a drive-by, she asked my advice, I’d tell her to talk to the police. Now, do you get where I’m comin’ from here?”
“Not really,” I told him and his fingers flexed again so I asked, “You said you investigated me and watched me and not them, why?”
He looked over my head and muttered, “Jesus.”
“Now you aren’t looking at me,” I observed and his eyes cut back down to me.
“I’m good, babe, and I know you like it, I know you like what I can do to you but that isn’t it for you with me and now I know it never was. And for me, you’re you. That meant I needed to engage.”
My heart skipped a beat.
“What?” I whispered.
He kept going. “I did the normal shit, looked into you and I found out Ginger was your sister. I found out you showed too much skin when you went out. I found out you talk to strangers like they’re your best friends. I found out you don’t live in the real world, you live in a dream world where you don’t pay a fuckuva lot of attention to what’s happening around you and you make questionable life decisions and I found out you gave what you have to give only to me. Because of that, it became clear you needed looking after. So I did.”
“I can look after myself, Hawk,” I partially lied. This was true in normal circumstances it wasn’t when I was getting shot at.
“Bullshit,” he replied.
I wasn’t going to fight that, not now, not with bullets flying so I decided to fight something else.
“You didn’t complain about too much skin the other night,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, babe, that’s because your ass was in my ride and on my arm the other night and your focus was entirely on me.”
Hmm. That was a good answer.
I kept at it. “I don’t live in a dream world.”
“Gwen, you took one look at me, decided I was the one, I said four words to you and you took me to your goddamned house and your goddamned bed and didn’t say word fuckin’ one when I kept comin’.”