CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

“It’s like pulling off a band-aid. Only, I’m bleeding to death in front of her sympathy.” - Hawk

 

Tense energy zipping up his legs made Hawk pop to his feet.

No fucking way he could keep still.

Tell her everything and let the chips fall where they may. That was the plan here, but fuck if he could keep still while he did it.

Hawk paced.

And he paced some more.

An animal stalking its cage as he tried to rearrange the order of words stuck in his throat.

All he wanted to do was get far away from this conversation. Climb onto his bike and ride until exhaustion set in.

Now he had to break its chain, so he could have something good.

 “Hawk. It’s okay, you only have to tell me what you want to.”

Going through his coping mechanism was shot since Gia usually was his go to for all things calm. He would normally have stood aside, somewhere she couldn’t see him lurking like a fucking creeper, and he’d pray all her sweetness and gentle smiles would somehow soak into his nastiness and stop the roaring of voices inside his head.

He wasn’t an actual mental case, but he wasn’t far from it.

“I’ve been out in the cold for ten years, Gia. You can’t shut me out. That’s what I’m trying to do, be who you deserve, no secrets.”

“Oh, baby. You’ll never be there again. We have each other now.”

Rider always said it was Hawk’s own stubbornness the only reason that stopped him being a crazy fucker. His prez wasn’t wrong. As much as emotions now didn’t touch him, or never used to. He was steeped in those little shits now.  

He fixed a stare somewhere over her left shoulder when he was ready, not wanting to see her eyes when he said what he was about to.

“You need to know I don’t want you to hear any of this. None of it. I don’t want it polluting your mind like it’s ruined mine.” Her eyes got watery. “I’ll let you decide. I wish I was strong enough, man enough to fucking let you go, Gia. You’re in here.” He thumped his chest. “For what it’s worth.”

“It’s worth.” she croaked. “What—what you said. Do you want to begin there?”

Choosing the furthest chair from her, he sat, braced his feet out wide and rested both elbows on his knees, letting his too-heavy head fall on his neck. “I wasn’t raised in a neglected home. It was one of those nice red brick places with a porch and a back deck. Nice neighborhood that held cookouts on Fourth of July and Labor Day. I had food, clothes, the regular shit you’re meant to give your kid. I was home-schooled and had a few neighborhood friends. At least for a couple of years.” Picture fucking perfect as people thought. But as he knew pictures could deceive. “Lisette Hawk and Xavier Abaddon. The upstanding parents.” He nearly spit to even say their names.

Gia looked to be holding her breath. “The woman who called is your mom?”

Hawk confirmed with a grunt. Though he was loath to call her by any kind of title.

“You didn’t have your father’s name?”

“No. What with him being a Catholic priest and raping women as his hobby of choice, he liked to keep a low profile on all the kids he truly had in the states.”

Gia visibly blanched, her shock was understandable. He wished that was that worst she’d hear.

“I didn’t know for a long time what he was. He was just a guy who stopped by now and then, hardly a father at all. We never stepped foot in his church. I didn’t know she’d been one of his mistresses for decades. She even helped him chose women.”

“Choose women for what?”

“To rape. To use and brainwash. To beat and abuse. To do whatever the fuck he wanted since he acted like he was God incarnate with his man-made cult farm.” It could have been a robot speaking for as much emotion as Hawk was showing.

He wished he had a blunt in his pocket. Something to take the edge off the twitching in the back of his skull.

 “Did he … did he touch you? Hit you?”

“You’d assume, right? I suppose he’s the only priest who wasn’t a child molester. He preferred tits and forcing women. I saw him maybe once, sometimes twice a week if that. It tapered out over the years. We didn’t go places, but my home life was normal. As normal as I assumed every kid had back then.”

Bile kicked up into his throat. The fingers dangling between his spread legs began to twitch.

“She’d take me to these meetings. It was in someone’s basement in town, I think. I was Seb’s age. Maybe younger. I remember the place always smelled bad of cigarettes and sanctimonious bullshit and I would always ask if I could stay in the car. The answer was a hard no and I’d be dragged inside and made to sit in the middle of their circle. It started off with other kids there too, we could play in the corner with a few books. But over time it dwindled down to just me.”

“Do you know what happened to the kids?”

“Fuck knows.” He suspected those kids were dead. “She’d dress me in my best clothes, shined my shoes, made sure my hair was perfect. I was such a neat little kid. Never allowed to get dirty.” With his hands shaking, he began to crack his knuckles.

He couldn’t fully focus on Gia, though he felt her gaze. Her sympathy like a blanket shrouding him.

Yeah, good plan, dipshit.

 “I presume it was an improvised church, that’s what I’d take it for nowadays, one of those cults that pop up for stupid assholes to join and think they’re being saved by a deity. Like minded crazy people who preached the bullshit bible and threw around words like evil and damnation to make their lives seem more important than it was.” If he let his eyes close, he could easily be back in that basement with the smell of patchouli oil and dripping pipes and holier-than-thou bullshit being spouted from all corners. And the way he was paraded around as though his mom had brought a platter of meat to a party.

Hands pulling at him.

Some slapped him around the head when he complained.

They called him an evil, wicked boy. Because why? He asked to go play outside.

He cried if they hit him and denied him water. Little boys who cried didn’t deserve water.

They said he had the devil in him. A terrified kid made those people behave in shocking ways because his mother told them he was possessed.

They said he was a cancer to the world and he should be grateful he had people who cared to cure him.

“I had no clue at the time, what kid of four would? That Lisette thought I was born with evil in me and her little coven group were exorcising me. Every. Fucking. Week. They made me recite the bible continuously, they blew smoke in my face, made me swallow it until I coughed up vomit and cried like a damn baby for them to stop. I hated that the most. They were getting me stoned. I was sick a lot. Soon, playing with the neighbor kids stopped. She told me they had germs that could hurt me. She’d give me medicine, and say it was to make me better. Most of the time it didn’t. You’d call it Munchausen syndrome by proxy these days.”

“Jesus. Hawk. She purposely made you ill?” Gia’s voice trembled and when he allowed himself to collide their gazes, not only were her eyes wet, but they were steaming mad. “Oh, my god! You were a baby. How could she do that?”

It hurt to look at her. Hearing sympathy ...sadness in her voice killed him.

And she hadn’t heard the worst of it yet.

With most people reading their facial expressions, and body language was usually confusing, or he just didn’t care to know. But with Gia, it was as though all his crossed wires unfurled. Either that or she was just that expressive even his dumbass self could understand what she was feeling.

Swallowing, he unclasped his hands and scrubbed one in his hair, lowered it, letting his torso sag, he continued. “This went on for years. I didn’t know any different, it was just my life. I’d ask why I couldn’t play outside with the other kids, she told me I was her big man and needed me close since my father was away a lot of the time. It was only when he was around she forgot about me completely and it was those times I began to feel good again. It was a never-ending cycle of abuse.”

Big blue watery pools looked across the table at him and Hawk got the feeling if he gave Gia any indication she’d be in his lap. For him to continue he had to keep his hands off her.

“Weren’t there any other family members who noticed what was going on? No social workers? Or neighbors?”

“Nope. She kept us isolated. I don’t even know if she had other family, except for those meetings and who would know I was being abused when I didn’t have bruises? Lisette was a smart kind of crazy. After a while those basement meetings increased to two-three times a week. I don’t know what those sickos thought they were achieving scaring a kid bad enough to piss himself.”

The memories of being scared and all those hands on him to rid the devil from his body forever lingered. It wasn’t sexual but abuse all the same. Hawk as a small boy was petrified of all adults and those dark days lingered in his adulthood since he still hated being unnecessarily touched. The sum of fights he’d been in since his teens was evidence to his demand of never fucking touch him.

“By the time I was eleven it was the norm that I felt like shit most every day. Lethargic, puking, listless, headaches. I ended up in the hospital a few times where Lisette would put on an Oscar worthy show for all the sympathy she received for her sick kid. It never occurred to me this woman who was, what anyone would say a devoted mom, who baked cookies and hugged me in front of cartoons, would also be the one making me sick with her special mom milkshakes laced with drugs.”

To give his hands something to do he stalked to the fridge, poured Gia a glass of her Riesling and placed it in front of her clasped hands, before taking his seat he stroked the back of her head.

“God, Hawk. All this is just … fucking terrible. I can’t believe you went through so much.”

“It was life, little bit.”

Those fuckers really did a number on him. A kid who couldn’t defend himself. A kid who only wanted to go to school and ride his fucking bike.

“It got worse when I killed a guy.”

Just like the blunt asshole he was, he dropped that anvil and watched Gia almost choke on a sip of wine. Shock stole across her beautiful face.

“I was eleven and he was the creepiest of the guys in the basement. He tried to shove his hand in my pants. I reacted and shoved him. I was still a reedy kid, but he tumbled down the basement stairs and broke his neck.”

He recalled the pandemonium of those bitches. All their suspicions were coming true, of course. He was evil. Forgetting the fucking fact, he’d stopped a pervert from grabbing his junk. “It was the only time I saw Xavier there. Like the great asshole he was, he took the body and we heard no more about it. No cops, no investigation. When I saw the guy there on the floor, his neck twisted, soulless eyes open looking back at me I felt fucking relief, Gia. I thought finally, they’ll take me away to prison. Even at eleven, prison was more desirable than staying in that place with those people.”

Pressing her lips together he heard the choked sob from his woman.

“I want to go back in time and grab you up, Colton. I want to protect you from every fucking adult who should have done it already. I want to take you away from people who don’t deserve you.” She dropped her head over her hands.

It was the tears splashing onto her fingers he concentrated on.

Little pools of his Gia.

“Little bit, don’t cry. Please. I can’t get this out if you cry.”

“I can’t help it. You were a fucking kid. I hate them all. I’m glad that man is dead.” She snarled.

He smiled. His little girl so protective and lovely. Touching her fingertips across the table he let her squeeze his fingers.

“Around my fourteenth birthday I started blacking out. Lisette said I’d developed seizures. I believed her, why wouldn’t I? It happened more and more. Losing chunks of time, I couldn’t account for, usually at night. I’d wake the next morning feeling like death warmed over, like I was hung over. Nausea and headaches plagued me for months. She’d tell me I passed out in front of the tv, or at the dinner table. I believed her.”

A chill raced down his spine. Sweat gathered on the back of his neck. Hawk popped up from his chair and paced the length of Gia’s kitchen, he ended up in front of her. Tears glistening her eyes. His belly hurt so fucking much. He didn’t want her to know any more.

But how could he move on, how could he try to make a fucking life with Gia if he wasn’t honest, if he didn’t vomit his past out on the floor to let her decide if he was still worth it?

“Gia.” His head cranked down to rest their foreheads, she gripped the back of his neck, twinning fingers in his hair. Her touch welcome. So, fucking welcome. “I wish so fucking much that I was stable enough for you.” So, fucking much.

It was never her father’s threat that stopped him pursuing something with her. If not for the sordid shame he carried he would have easily seduced her. Even at seventeen. He knew this. He would have been the big fucking bad wolf and took her when she was too young.

If anything was a cancer inside Hawk, it was the love he felt for this woman. It never quit. It roared through his heart until he could scream wanting her.

He breathed and wished he’d met her sooner, wished he was born in some other life.

“I want you just as you are, Hawk. I swear it. Just you. This is for you as much as it is for me. I think you’ve held onto all this bad inside you for too long.” Tentatively her hand came up and brushed his cheek.

There was never any revulsion when she touched him.

He needed the strength to go on.

Just a minute, his obsession whispered. Just a minute of her first.

He wanted a kiss before …

He agreed and swooped down, nuzzling her lips, asking silently for her to open for him.

She opened instantly on a whimper and gave him what he needed.

Harmony in the form of a disruption from resurfacing memories pouring out from wounds long since glued shut he was now slicing opening again.

The kiss drowned him.

It soaked him deep, her fingers scratched the side of his face lightly, reminding him he was alive, he wasn’t that person no more. Not a scared, defenseless kid.

He was strong and more than capable.

Once his mouth was full of her flavor, he raised his head as if drunk on his own legs.

The sense of suffocation no longer pressing on his chest.

“You’re so perfect.” He whispered backing up a step.

“No, I’m not. I’m human. I make mistakes, Hawk.”

“You’re perfect to me.” And that’s what mattered. To him she was pedestal worthy. The untouchable goddess.

People who should never have been allowed to bring a child into the world made him into an animal. They piled him with so many neuroses to guarantee he would never be afforded a normal, happy life.

None of it was his fault and still he was trapped in a web of darkness yanking at him, trying to pull him under.

Did he want the same for Gia? Did he want to invite her into the dark with him?

She needed the light.

Fuck. She was the light. Wasn’t he gravitating towards her like she was everything to him?

 “Hawk. Please, finish it.” She implored wiping under her eyes. “You can do this, baby. Let it all out.”

Grabbing at his hair he heaved in air like a dying man.

All the words he needed to say were there. Right. Fucking. There.

And he was choking on them.

His knees creaked as he paced. “I can’t do this,” a pneumatic drill played in his head.

“You can,” softness at his back was when he snapped. She took a step back when he rounded on her.

“I can’t do this! I can’t fucking do this. You don’t need an animal like me, Gia. Jesus. You must be crazy. They made this, Gia! I’m disgusting! You don’t even know.”

But the quiet rage wouldn’t quit. Heartburn in his chest. Hawk went down on his haunches, head bowed, he warded Gia off when she made to come to him.

 “You can tell me anything. I don’t care, Colton. Don’t you get that? You sharing this isn’t for me. It’s for you, baby. It’s to set you free before it eats you alive.”

Sweet and kind was his Gia. He loved her until he wanted to die from it.

Hawk laughed, and it was a short, tortured sound. An animal caught in a trap and accepting its death.

“I’m trash, little bit, and I can’t have you. They made me into this. I don’t know how to be anything else.”

“Why? Why, Hawk? You know that isn’t true. I can’t change how you think about yourself. But I don’t think that of you. I love you endlessly.” Her voice cracked, and he couldn’t raise his head, couldn’t bring himself to drag his insignificant piece-of-shit-self up off the floor to see her beauty. Because if he did he’d go to his knees and beg this little bit of a thing to love a monster. To accept him as he was. What they made him into before he had a real chance at life.

To please love him, cracks and all.

“Because, sweetheart,” he’d mastered numbness long ago. Casting his head on a slant he looked up at her and saw every piece of hurt and love she had for him. It was easy to put coldness in his voice. “The first pussy I was ever inside was my own mother. That’s not the kind of man you invite into your bed for the rest of your life.”