Chapter 6
Roarke wasn’t the one she called to say that James was awake. She called Amber. He felt something toxic settle in the pit of his stomach at that. He really couldn’t blame her for being petty over him missing the doctor’s appointment. It was an asshole move and he deserved to get a bit of cold shoulder and dog house. What did bother him was the feeling in his chest that something was wrong, something was off. Hanna wasn’t quite right anymore.
He thought of the phone call he overheard, the talk about leaving Texas. She was talking to someone on the outside of whatever all this was. There was someone else out there who knew what was going on, monitoring it, keeping tabs. He didn’t like that. She hadn’t said a word about having other contacts which meant that she was hiding it from him, which meant she didn’t trust him. She was carrying his baby and she didn’t trust him. It’s just as well, he didn’t trust her either.
Despite not being the one she called for, he went to the hospital to relieve her of her watch. She didn’t look happy to see him there when he showed up. Her eyes flickered across his just long enough to recognize him and scowl before they moved away from him, not meeting his eyes again for the duration of the time.
“The nurse has already come through and checked his vitals,” Hanna said, getting her bag together. “She won’t be back until she comes through with dinner. They’re going to start lowering his pain med dosages as well.”
“Noted,” he said, staring at his dirty fingernails. “Anything else?”
“Nope.”
Then she was gone. Out the door. Not a word. He wanted to throw a punch through the wall, but wasn’t about to do that with an audience watching him. He also wanted to work on that anger. It was the same anger that got him into a lot of trouble thus far and likely pushed Hanna farther and farther away from him.
“Have a seat, kid,” he said. “We need to talk.”
“Talk?” Roarke asked, crossing his arms across his chest.
“Don’t give me that shit,” James coughed out. “You like to play the tough guy and that’s great, it works for your friends, but I don’t take shit from bratty kids, whether they’re twelve or thirty-two. Sit your ass down.”
There was nothing James could physically do to force him to sit down. And yet Roarke found himself dropping into his seat on command, arms coming undone and staying pinned at his sides like a kid getting lectured in front of the whole class.
“You need to get your act together,” he said, quiet plainly. “Isabelle had a chat with Hanna.”
“What? When?” He was on his feet again, hands clenched, muscles shaking. James gave him a look and he lowered himself back down.
“Doesn’t matter, the point is Isabelle got inside her head a bit with some unfortunate truths that you need to shed some light on fast if you’re going to keep Hanna in your life.”
Roarke swallowed.
“Isabelle painted a very coldhearted, abusive version of you. I’m not asking you to comment on that or defend yourself to me. I’m telling you that you need to tell Hanna the truth about that, no matter what it is, no matter how it makes you look, or what you did. She’s always been smart, she’ll find the truth out one way or another and then you’ll be really fucked if she finds out you kept something from her,” he said.
Roarke felt his neck grow tight with agitation. He twisted it about, cracking it, trying to pop some of the knots forming there. He didn’t want to show his guilt there. None of them had been given a choice in the life they had, that was just a fact of being born into the Withers family. You did what you did for family and that meant the Hell Hussars, the dynasty. He didn’t force her to do anything, he didn’t threaten her, he didn’t keep her locked away or anything like that.
He didn’t think he did any of those things, anyway. Had he been cruel to her? Was it cruel to give her everything she could want, the protection she needed, the chance to live out the potential of that good brain inside her head? Was it cruel to ask only that she be loyal to the family in return?
“I know you’ve got a baby on the way,” James said with a heaviness that could have made Roarke’s heart stop right then and there. “And you’re going to lose that baby and the wonderful woman who will be its mother if you don’t clear things up, get control of yourself.”
“How do you know about the baby?”
“I’m closer to Hanna that you’ll ever be, even if things work out and you end up happily ever after,” he said.
“You know who she really is then?” Roarke asked.
“There isn’t anything to know from asking ‘who is she really?’” he said. “Her name, her story, those have some hidden truth underneath them. I will tell you that you don’t know the full story there and you need to earn her trust back enough for her to share that with you. That being said, the choices she’s made, what she feels, that’s who she really is. And I know for all that muscle and showmanship, you know in your heart all you need to about her.”
Roarke and James didn’t talk the rest of the night, James giving into his morphine drip and Roarke lost in a maze of thought. His guesses were correct, there was something false about Hanna. But he thought about what James had said. There was a truth in everything she did, everything she chose. He’d read once that true character was defined by choices, not facts about a person. If he applied that to Hanna he knew that she was fierce, she was brave, she was loyal to the people she cared about and expected that loyalty in return. She had a hunger for adventure, or danger.
The riddle of her name, of the truth, it didn’t seem so important when he thought about how honest she looked coming apart underneath him in the nights they spent together.