The Shop is all shut up and the lights are all but off when Melissa arrives. She’d waited until she knew that all the mechanics would have left for the day, all but one.
“Are you sure about this?” Ali gives her a concerned look, as she’d asked the same question for the umpteenth time.
“I have to do this, Ali. I’m the only one that knows what Wes is doing. I can’t just close my eyes and pretend that it’s not happening.” Melissa looks at her friend’s darkening expression in the mirror, as she pulls her hair into a ponytail.
“I know you want to do the right thing here, ‘Mel. But…what if he doesn’t believe you? What if he won’t even hear you out?” Ali settles a hand on Melissa’s shoulder, worried that her friend’s propensity to always look on the bright side is blinding her to the possibilities that this little encounter may go very wrong.
“I have to try, Ali.” Melissa shrugs, not really knowing what else to say. “You’re the one always telling me to put myself out there, to go out on a limb.”
Ali rolls her eyes. “I was talking about wearing miniskirts, getting drunk occasionally, having fun, not trying to save an outlaw motorcycle club from going under!”
“They don’t deserve what Wes is going to do to them, Ali. He’s going to write about everything, exaggerating all that he can, making them out to be dangerous monsters. He’ll do whatever he can to make a splash, to write an article that’ll get people talking, whether it’s true or not!” Melissa shakes her head, not wanting to dwell on what that would mean for the Kings.
Ali sighs deeply, knowing from the expression on Melissa’s face that there is nothing she can do to dissuade her. “Just be careful, alright? Your man is hot, but he seems to have a pretty hot temper, too.”
Melissa smiles, what she hopes is reassuringly at her friend. “Hawk won’t hurt me, Ali. There are a lot of things that I’m not sure about, but that isn’t one of them.”
“Our door would disagree with you!” Ali shouts from behind her.
Standing outside of The Shop, Melissa tries to shake off any last vestiges of uncertainty. She had told Ali the truth when she said that Hawk wouldn’t hurt her, but she’d meant physically. He still has all the power in the world to hurt her emotionally, and she isn’t sure that she’d ever be able to prepare herself for the wounds he could inflict. She readjusts her pencil skirt and wishes that she’d changed out of her heels. She’d gone to The Tribune to meet with Olivia, and she hadn’t had time to put on anything less formal.
Melissa walks round to the side door, which she knows from experience is the last one that they lock at the end of the night. It opens without so much as a creak, and Melissa slips through onto the main shop floor. The sound of atmospheric rock comes from the back of the open expanse, and she’s relieved when she doesn’t hear the sound of conversation. When she’d reached out to Felicia, to make sure that Hawk would be at the shop that night, she hadn’t specified that she needed to speak to him alone. But of course Felicia had read between the lines, yet another thing that Melissa would have to find a way to thank her for.
“Are you just going to stand there all night?” Hawk’s voice cuts through Melissa’s musings and catches her completely off guard.
For a moment, Melissa looks behind her, as if he might be talking to someone else, which of course he isn’t. “It’s me. It’s Melissa.” She calls out to him, as she walks towards the corner of the shop where the rock music was still blaring.
“I know. I heard your car pull up out front.” He sounds nonplussed, as if he couldn’t care less that she is there. She thinks that it is better than open hostility and anger.
She takes a deep breath. Get it together, Potter. He doesn’t bite! Melissa’s mind inevitably goes to a completely inappropriate place, thinking about the way he had gently bitten her shoulders, just as she was about to come and how it had driven her completely wild. The memory of that is enough to create a pool of heat between her legs. She feels herself flush, as her eyes meet Hawk’s, and she gets that sensation again that he can read her thoughts.
Else swallows hard, feeling her mouth immediately go dry at the sight of him. He’s in his typical uniform of jeans that sit perfectly at his hips and a white t-shirt that is now streaked with grease from the car he’s been working on. But it’s not the way his clothes perfectly hug his body or the fact, as anyone with two eyes in their heads would attest to, that he’s drop dead gorgeous. It’s the way his eyes seem to darken as he looks at her, an expression that, a mere few days ago, would have preceded them tumbling into bed together. He looks away from her, and the spell is broken, leaving Melissa feeling both relieved that she doesn’t have to withstand his intensity anymore and disappointed that it’s disappeared.
“I’m glad you came by.” He clears his throat, as if he’s embarrassed and keeps his eyes trained on a spot just behind her head.
Melissa expels a breath that she hadn’t even realized she was holding. Out of all the things that Hawk could have said, that was the most unexpected.
He seems to read her surprise in her expression. “I owe you an apology, for last night.” He takes a deep breath, like it’s hard for him to say. “I was out of line.”
Melissa takes a step closer towards him without even realizing that’s what she’s doing. “Hawk, you don’t have to apologize to me.” She shakes her head, reaching out to touch him, an automatic response that she has to quash. It was something she’d spent a large portion of the night before thinking about, that’s when she wasn’t thinking about Wes and the fact that he was going to destroy the Kings. How would she have felt if Hawk had suddenly turned up at one of her hangouts after they’d broken up? Like he should stick to his own turf, that’s how. “Durangos is your place; it’s your world. You were right; I don’t belong there.”
“No, I wasn’t.” Hawk doesn’t even hesitate in his response. “I want you to know that you’re welcome there anytime.”
Melissa smiles sadly, pleased that Hawk seems to be past the combative stage. But at the same time, she knows that if he’s happy for her to be around then perhaps that means he’s over what they had, perhaps he’s realized that it wasn’t such a big deal after all. The thought of that hurts way more than how he’d treated her the night before.
“Thanks. That means a lot.” Her voice wobbles a little as she fights the emotion threatening to overtake her.
Hawk nods slowly, still not looking at her. The silence stretches out between them.
“If you’re here to see Felicia, she bailed a little while ago.” He waves vaguely towards the door before he turns away from her, rifling through a tall toolbox.
Melissa forces the butterflies in her stomach to settle before she takes another step towards him. They’re still a good six feet apart, but that proximity is enough to pull her into his orbit. “I didn’t come to see Felicia. I came to see you.”
Hawk abruptly stops going through his tools and turns back towards her, his eyebrow raised in that mock questioning way of his that makes him look like a smartass.
“To talk to you, actually.” Melissa hurriedly changes tack, not wanting to sound like the pathetic ex-girlfriend who is desperate to get back together—despite the fact that the definition sort of sums her up at the moment.
Hawk searches her face, looking for something and after a few seconds he leans back against the bonnet of the car that he’s been working on. “I’m listening.” He crosses his arms, looking at her expectantly.
Melissa takes a deep breath, trying not to think how things might have been different if he’d said those words to her that night instead of storming out of her house without letting her explain why she’d lied to him. Instead, she just focuses on what she has to do.
“I want to explain what happened. The story my editor wanted me to write, why I didn’t tell you in the beginning, and why I told him that I wouldn’t write it.” Melissa looks down at the floor during her speech, scared that if she looks at Hawk that she’ll lose her nerve.
“I know about the story, the little exposé they wanted about the Kings, and I know why you didn’t tell me right away. You wanted the story; it could have been a big deal for you.” Hawk’s tone is measured, calm. There’s no hint of the anger that he had directed at her when he’d found her press pass carelessly discarded at her desk.
He shrugs, his broad chest rising and falling with the movement. “Felicia gave me the headlines last night, right around the time that she told me to get my head out of my ass.” He laughs ruefully, and Melissa finds herself smiling; his laugh had always been contagious. It was one of the sounds she loved most, and she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed it until that moment.
“That’s not exactly how I would have put it, but she does have a point.” Melissa looks up at Hawk through her lashes, watching as a half-smile tugs at his lips. It was as if they had been transported back to the days before the truth about her had come out.
“You’re not wrong.” His face turns serious. “But don’t push it.”
The smile fades from Melissa’s lips, and she swallows hard. So much for the good old days, she thinks ruefully. “You said that you knew why I agreed to write the story, but what about why I changed my mind?” Melissa throws the question out like it is a challenge.
Hawk looks down at the floor, away from her, as if he’s found something intensely interesting at his feet. “You said some things before I left.” He looks back up at her, his dark eyes hardened again, as if he had pulled down the blinds, protection against caring too much. “Were any of them true?”
Melissa rears back as if he had hit her. “Do you even have to ask me that?” She frowns at him in surprise.
The look he gives her tells her precisely what she didn’t want to know. “It’s not like you’ve given me a whole lot of reasons to believe your every word, Melissa.”
She had loved the way that he said her name, as if it were a caress, as if it were beautiful. This time his tone is cold, hard, like it were any other word.
She nods in understanding. “Alright, I guess I deserved that.” She bites her bottom lip, trying not to fidget under his gaze. “It was all true.”
She braces herself for his reaction, prepared for him to scoff, to laugh at her, to shout. But he doesn’t do anything. He remains quiet, looking at her enigmatically, making it impossible for Melissa to know what he’s thinking.
“I told you that I fell for you, for you and the club, for the whole community of it. I couldn’t write the story that my editor wanted. He wanted blood and fear and enough evidence to bring the full force of the authorities down on the Kings. I couldn’t do that, not to you and not to the rest of the guys. That’s the truth, it’s up to you whether you believe it or not.” Melissa spreads her hands open, showing that she has nothing left to give, just the truth. “Take it or leave it, but it is what it is.” She waits for a response from him, something in his eyes that will tell her what he’s thinking. His face is expressionless, not telling her anything.
“Was there something else?” He waits, watching her with those hawk-like eyes of his.
“Yes.” Before Melissa can lose her nerve she asks the question that won’t stay buried. “Why did you get all hot and bothered when you saw me talking to Wes?” She plants her hands on her hips, refusing to accept anything but a real answer. “Felicia told me she had to talk you down.”
Hawk looks down at his feet again and a few minutes go by while he considers what he’s going to say. “You two were looking pretty snug in the bar last night.” It’s a challenge more than a statement, and Melissa is taken aback by the fire in his eyes.
“I’m not interested in Wes, not in the way that you think. He’s just a friend now.” Melissa waits for a beat, considering this. “In fact, I’m not sure if he’s even that anymore.”
“And what was he before?” Hawk doesn’t miss anything at all from her tone.
Melissa takes a deep breath. She knew that this was going to come out sooner or later, that was why she had come here after all, she had just hoped that it would be later. “Wes is an ex. The one I told you about.” She bites her bottom lip, preparing herself for whatever his reaction might be.
Hawk clenches his fists against his sides and stands bolt upright, taking a few steps towards her, stopping just out of reach. “Wes is the asshole that got physical with you? The guy that won’t leave you alone?”
Melissa nods mutely, not trusting her voice with him standing so close to her.
Hawk throws his hands up, looking down at her angrily. “Jesus, Melissa, why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Melissa frowns up at him, his accusatory tone getting her back up. “When was I supposed to do that? When you were shouting at me for being at the bar or when you were ignoring me?” She crosses her arms in front of her chest, refusing to back away from his intense stare.
Hawk rakes his hands through his hair in frustration, leaving him looking all mussed and sexier than he has any right to. “If I had known that he was the guy, I wouldn’t have let him anywhere near you.” He steps closer to her again, reaching up and stroking the side of her cheek, tucking a strand of auburn hair behind her ear.
Melissa can’t help but lean into his touch. There’s no way of telling her body not to respond to him, not to lose its balance around him. She meets his eyes, all dark and reckless with need, with want. “You can’t beat him up for talking to me.” Melissa feels a smile twitch at her lips at the knowledge that Hawk had wanted to do exactly that. It can only mean one thing…that he still cares.
“I saw you were a little shaken when you left his booth. I wanted to explain to him that no one upsets you. Not when I’m around.” Hawk’s voice is soft and low, and it makes her stomach do little somersaults. He doesn’t take his eyes off of her, as he strokes her cheek with the pad of his thumb. It takes all of Melissa’s strength not to purr.
“I can take care of myself.” Her voice is husky, filled with need that’s pooling between her thighs.
Hawk’s eyes burn, but not with anger. This time it’s something else, something that’s even more dangerous for her. “But you don’t have to.”