CHAPTER FORTY

“Invite the love of his fucking life to look at his demons … what a shitty idea.” - Hawk

 

Triggers, tiny fucking pneumatic missiles started popping inside Hawk’s head until the white noise felt like shards of glass tearing up his ear canal.

Reminders of just how not normal he was kicked him in the nuts. Like he needed that mirror held up against his face. A decent fucking guy who didn’t lash out like a moron. He didn’t process as others did and wasn’t that half the problem of why he thought he was a piece of shit.

His sweet Gia didn’t deserve his burst of frustrated anger.

Something down deep crumbled.

Hawk immediately moved his damn feet, regret staining his eyesight and he got back in his woman’s path, no hesitation this time he put his hands on her.

As her eyes shut and her calm sigh glided across his throat, she hadn’t faltered in touching him, in accepting his. Gia curled into his ribs, fisting the back of his shirt in two hands, not letting go.

And he didn’t want her to.

His knees would give out before he let her go again.

Going under the hem of her shirt he spread his fingers on her waist, around to her spine. Holding her tightly.

“I didn’t mean to yell. I’m fucking sorry, little bit. Forgive me.” He kissed her all over her cheeks and eyes. “I’m a goddamn asshole, you know this.”

She’d hurt for him if he told her.

Gia was that kind of woman.

That kind that bled for someone else.

And Hawk would rather cut off his own balls than do anything to hurt his little bit of a thing.

“My asshole,” she murmured making him smile.

But this was what she wanted from him, wasn’t it? To cut out his cancer and present her with it. To let her see every undisclosed, diseased scab oozing with his past, for what? So, she could be disgusted alongside him?

He’d lose her. What if she didn’t believe him?

Shit. This was fucked up, he thought. So wrong.

She made him feel. Period.

Things swirled in his head that he’d never felt before.

Foreign, unfamiliar, uncomfortable things.

Things that he wanted to do to please his woman.

But this was different. Something new. And it was making him want to vomit every goddamn word into her ears.

Just confess until he was hoarse and empty.

He was evil.

He was wicked.

The devil lived in him.

He knew those were slurs of people not fit to eat dog shit. People who hid behind bibles and the word of God to duct tape over the fact they were fucking sick, as if throwing out psalm passages would expunge their depraved sins.

Fuck them all.

The shit he’d done he owned it and didn’t fucking care.

The ugly truth, Gia was too good for him, everyone at this point could agree to that and he’d used any reason to hold onto her tight, to keep her for however long she allowed him in her life. If that made him a fucking weak bastard, then he accepted it.

For the right person a man could lower his guard and show a side of him no one else would ever see.

To people he was the deranged, unfeeling, animalistic gets shit done VP.

For Gia he had to be a whole other person, otherwise he’d lose her.

Unaware he was breathing heavily through his nostrils, she placed her hand on his cheek to bring his head back into the here and now.

Even with her eyes brimming with tears, and her cheekbones highlighted in color she was so incredibly beautiful it hurt his chest.

He squeezed her tighter, loved her harder.

“Come back to me, Hawk.”

He swallowed. “I’m right here.”

Even a stupid man could recognize love in everything she gave him.

What a lucky bastard he was.

She smiled up at him, flickered dainty fingers across his chin and jaw. The touch of an angel grounding him.

“I’m terrified I’ll lose you, little bit. You’ll see all of me and you’ll realize what a wasted prick I am. Don’t say anything, it’s in my head now, nothing you say will can rewire my fucked-up thoughts. Never wanted to be normal, until now. I always imagined the agony of never having you and wanting you from afar was the worst kind of torture. But I know now it’s having you and watching you walk away that will kill me.”

Each day she was fixing her perfect self somewhere in his fucked-up puzzle.

And it didn’t suck.

“Nope,” she smiled. “Never going to happen. You think I’ve waited all this time to climb you like a tree only to let you go weeks later?” Her smile flourished sending light into her eyes, and she poked his ribs making him squirm. Fuck. This woman undid him. “Never happening, dude. So, get over yourself. You’re my future baby-daddy, even if you screw your face up at the thought of kids, it’s happening one day.”

He exhaled hard. Shit. He’d probably do it too. Poor fucking kid having him for a father. Least it would have Gia when he screwed up.

Hawk knew how much she was compromising for him because he was an unstable piece of shit.

And he was letting her.

Because he was too much of a pussy to let her go.

Couldn’t.

Wouldn’t.

Now he had to bend and give her what he swore never to talk about again.

 “Baby.” She skimmed a kiss hot enough to brand him on his forehead, the love behind it like you’d give to a crying kid. He leaned in, pressing their foreheads together, chugging on her clean, sweet scent. “We’re all imperfect, Colton. We make mistakes, we have people who betray us, who abuse our trust. It’s how we deal with it that matters to us as individuals. I’m right here and you can trust any secret with me. Trust that I will be here with you. I want you just as you are. I need you just how you are. I’ll take you just how you are.”

“Kiss me,” he issued in a rolling growl. “Before I vomit up all my crap, kiss me, little bit. Show me you love me like the not-good-enough prick I am who shouldn’t have my hands on you at all, but you’re mine and I need your mouth, your taste saturating me.”

“Hawk…” she all but purred smiling and let him take her lips.

Long, heated, wet consuming kisses.  His pulse mimicked the sounds panting out of his woman.

She was everything to Hawk. She had to know that. On some level he hoped she knew that. He wasn’t a prick just because he was born that way. He’d tried to protect her from himself.

With each kiss she gave him, he was bursting alive.

Each smile gave him breath.

He'd needed to die a few times, figuratively, to fully appreciate being her man these past weeks.

To be in Gia’s world ...fuck him ...he couldn’t have imagined feeling this good, ever.

When he looked at her, his very fucking shitty existence exploded into atoms of color and trust and understanding.

Slanting his mouth over hers, he dove straight in with slow strikes of his tongue. He took her mouth like it was the last time he’d have her out-of-this-world taste. He gave her grunts, she fed him her sweetness and he was left feeling like she’d given him something more than a kiss. She’d given him yet another piece of herself.

“You are so beautiful, Gia. Perfect and a wonder to me. No matter what happens, you’re the woman who rules me body and soul. Come and sit. I got shit I need to tell you.” Winding his fingers around hers, he led her into the kitchen. He chose the seat opposite. Folded his hands on the table.

“This feels serious suddenly. So, I’ll tell you now I love you, baby, no matter what.”

He hoped she meant it in a few minutes.

There wasn’t any part of Hawk who believed in the garbage like fate and destiny. If that were the case who the fuck would give him the life he’d had so far? Who would write that into his genetic material?

But as he watched Gia, his chin lowered, eyelids at half-mast and his lungs feeling like they were burning from the inside he knew only one thing; she was meant to belong to him.

Right or wrong, she was his.

He fell in love with her when she was little more than a baby girl on the budding crest of womanhood and it only became nastier with the years.

Hawk was hers to do as she wanted with his of no-value-self.

He was a seasoned biker, with crime and death so large it was etched into his skin. He held little remorse for the things he’d done or seen. He had little to no empathy for others pain and suffering. If he was at their door with a death warrant, then it was a fucking certainty they deserved it. Why would he feel guilty for that?

But knowing he was about to put a shit ton of darkness into her sweet, tender heart … fuck, the guilt nearly choked him.

The words weren’t planned, though he’d had this imaginary conversation with Gia a million times already. He’d picture her face twisted in disgust and how she’d leave him afterward

He inhaled once. And twice.

“I didn’t know it at the time, but my abuse began with my birth.”