Hawk
Fucked up neurotransmitters, she said…
I considered what Janie must suffer from while shoving my hands into my jeans pockets and making my way down the walkway to the third door down from ours. Her high had drawn me in while in Sturgis, but I refused to let her low spit me back out, leaving us both alone again.
Her body language had tried to shut me out, protect herself from being tossed aside as I’m sure most men would do at signs of her instability. But I wasn’t some little boy ready to move on to the next fuck. A real man, a seasoned one with enough baggage of my own to drop her jaw, I wasn’t about to leave her behind.
Janie needed me, whether she knew it or not. I might not be some smart psychologist or doctor who could cure her—if there even was a cure—but I sure as hell knew how to be loyal and stand beside those I loved.
The damn L word again.
I shook my head although the thought of actually falling in love with Janie didn’t twist my stomach in knots. Inhaling until it hurt, I rapped on Jonny’s door.
It pulled open a few seconds later by a rumpled blond-headed giant, bleary-eyed and scowling.
“Digger,” I said, rather than good morning since I knew all too well he hated everything about the sunrise.
“The fuck you want?” he asked while scratching his balls through the boxers sitting on his hips.
I glanced past him at the two empty, twin beds. “Jonny around?”
“Went to the office for coffee.”
Dipping my head, I backed up and started toward the office without another word. While I was known to need coffee in order to function in the morning, Digger often wanted to bash heads in before finally getting his paws on a mug. Best to leave him be until he had two or three cupsful sloshing in his empty stomach.
Jonny poured coffee into cups when I entered the office again. He glanced over his shoulder as the office manager called another greeting my way. “Still able to walk?” Jonny asked with a grin as I drew close.
“We need to talk,” I said without cracking a smile.
His lips flat-lined as he nodded. Without a word, he handed me a coffee and poured another.
I followed him back outside and toward his room.
“What’s up?” he asked and raised one of the cups in his hands to sip.
“If it’s all right with you, Janie and I are going to stay on here for a day or two.”
His brow lifted as he glanced over at me. “What’s up?” he asked again.
I heaved a breath. “Long story short, I think she’s bipolar. Has it bad and crashed this morning.”
“Crashed as in depressive episode?”
I nodded. “Your sister is bipolar, isn’t she?”
“Aubrey is, yes. Is Janie on meds?”
“Yeah.”
Jonny handed me one of the coffees in his hands and opened his room’s door.
The room smelled of sweaty feet and shit.
“Turn the fucking fan on!” Jonny hollered at the closed bathroom door.
“It’s on!” Digger hollered back.
“Then open the fucking window!” Jonny put Digger’s coffee on the bed stand between the beds and motioned at one of the chairs on either side of the small table beneath the room’s front window.
“Can’t stay long.”
“Sit your ass down,” Jonny said when I hesitated, pointing at the chair, his dark eyes flashing. My best friend and brother had taken a back seat to the Fallen Gliders’ president.
I sat.
“You ought to put her on a plane and send her home.”
“Can’t do it.”
Jonny sat across from me, hands wrapped around his cup. “Why the fuck not?”
“Too far gone. I’m completely infatuated with her.”
“Fuck.”
The old Hawk, pre-Janie Hawk, would have nodded in agreement.
“She got your balls in a vise grip already?”
A half-smirk lifted my lips. “Something like that.”
“Fuck.” Jonny scrubbed a hand down his face and over the dark shadow lining his jaw. “It ain’t easy living with someone like her.”
I nodded, all too familiar with the stories he’d told me of his sister before their parents finally got her checked out and diagnosed. “I want to help her. I want to be her knight on horseback—or bike back.”
“You sure about this, Hawk?” He ignored my attempts at humor, his steady gaze boring into me as though drilling the truth of the situation ahead of me into my brain.
“Yeah, I am. I’m going to help her find her normal again.”
Jonny sat back and sipped a few times, still studying my face. “We’re pulling out after breakfast at the diner. Give me a shout if you change your mind before then.”
“Will do.” I stood and turned, more than happy to leave the stink of their room behind.
“Prop that fucking door open, will you?” Jonny said to me as I walked outside into the fresh, hot air. I chuckled to myself and dragged the heavy-ass chair between the door and jam in an attempt to air out the room like he’d asked.
“Oh … hey, Digger!” I leaned back in the room.
“What?” he hollered from the bathroom, dragging out the word.
“When you get home, can you drop Janie’s backpack at my place?”
“Yeah, now leave me the fuck alone so I can shit in peace!”
Chuckling and shaking my head, I made my way back up the walkway.
There was no question that I wanted to stay with Janie. Give her some time to level out a bit. A huge test early in our relationship—because I sure as shit had already decided she belonged to me. I just needed to get her to believe that I wasn’t going anywhere that would take her from my side.
Fuck New York, I thought as I approached our door. She was coming home with me to New Hampshire, and I wouldn’t take no for an answer. Mind made up, I let myself into our room. The TV flashed into the dimness, still muted from earlier. Janie lay on her side facing away from me in a fetal position. No sounds of crying reached my ears.
I kicked off my unlaced boots again and crawled onto the bed to spoon her from behind. She didn’t pull away, but she didn’t exactly melt against me like usual, either. “How ya doing?”
“M’kay, I guess.” Her voice sounded scratchy, raw from the sobs she’d let loose in the shower.
“I talked to Jonny. Let him know we’re saying on here until you’re ready to roll again. Hope you don’t mind that I told him about what you’re going through. His sister is bipolar, so he totally gets it.”
She nodded and finally relaxed in my arms. “You came back.”
“Of course I did. I’m a loyal son of a bitch.”
The silence stifled my mind as I considered all the ways I wanted to tell and show her what she meant to me. My cock had a mind of its own, swelling against the cleft of her ass, but at least I held myself in check, not thrusting against her softness like I wanted to.
I finally opened my mouth, needing to get on with my plans. “This is going to sound crazy—”
“Crazier than you wanting to drive me back to New York? Crazier than my fucking head?” She’d muttered the words, but at least she spoke without slurring or crying.
“I want you to come home with me.”
She snorted but didn’t move.
“I’m serious, Janie. You’re like a tick burrowed inside my skin, except I don’t want to pluck you out.”
Still unmoving, she didn’t respond for enough seconds my heart began to beat harder at the thought of losing her. “You hardly know me.”
“I trust my instincts about people.”
“I—I can’t just up and leave my home.”
“There’s no man waiting for you in New York?”
“No.”
“Work?”
She shook her head. “I do graphic design stuff from home since I can’t hold down a nine-to-five job like a normal person.”
“You are a normal person, Janie.” I frowned. “A normal person with a mental illness.”
“M-my dad will blow a fucking gasket,” she said, ignoring my declaration.
“Then we’ll go to New York so I can meet him and tell him you’re coming to live with me.”
She heaved a sigh.
“What?” I asked, rolling her onto her back so I could read her face.
She’d closed her eyes, and a furrow lined the skin between her eye brows. “Dad won’t ever approve.”
“’Cuz I’m a badass biker with a long beard, tattoos, and leathers?”
A corner of her lip actually quirked, giving me hope the wall of depression that had slammed on top of her would crack sooner than later. “Something like that.”
“You’re old enough to make your own decisions.”
“Yeah.”
“So that’s a yes?”
She shrugged, and I relaxed onto the bed again, my head on the pillow beside her. I kept my hips away from her, trying to talk down my straining cock and aching balls. While depressed, I hadn’t wanted a woman, so I very much doubted Janie had any interest in fucking.
We lay together for close to an hour in silence more than not as I asked questions about her illness and she answered.
She met with a psychiatrist on a weekly basis, had been hospitalized twice before being diagnosed, but had enjoyed a somewhat normal summer before the excitement of heading to Sturgis put her in a manic episode that had lasted longer than any she’d experienced.
The rumble of my brothers’ bikes bled through the motel’s thin walls, and I listened as they drove off together.
“I hope you don’t regret this,” Janie whispered against my chest, having finally snuggled into my arms.
“Never.” I kissed the top of her head.
“Shit,” she said, stirring to sit.
“What’s wrong?”
“My backpack … I need to finish up a website I’ve been working on.”
“Fuck.” I grimaced. “I asked Digger to drop it off at my place when they got home.”
Lips pursed, she lay back down. “Not like I can get the creative juices flowing while I’m like this anyway. I’ll have to message her.” Janie blew a heavy exhale between her lips, and silence settled over us again for a short time.
My stomach grumbled. “Ready for some food? I’m fucking starved.”
“Nah.”
“Mind if I head over to the diner and get some takeout? Be back in fifteen or so.”
Janie shook her head, and I forced myself to leave the warmth of her soft curves. “Be back soon, baby. Call me if you need me.”
Boots properly laced, I locked the door behind me and headed across the parking lot to the dive of a diner I expected we’d be eating at for the next couple of days.
Smoked sausages, corned beef hash, bacon, scrambled eggs, a pile of pancakes. One of the boxes stacked in my arms ought to tempt Janie, I thought twenty minutes later while heading back to our room.
She lay as I’d left her, silent TV still flashing.
I sat the boxes on the small table and flicked on the lights.
A grumble floated over to me.
“Got a ton of food over here. Bacon … pancakes.” I opened the boxes and prepared two plates on the paper ones the waitress had provided for me.
Janie didn’t stir.
I rounded the bed and scooped her up into my arms, ignoring her swat against my chest. “You need to eat.”
“Don’t want to.” She pouted like a petulant child, but I set her on the chair.
“Just a couple bites, baby. I don’t want you getting any weaker than you already are.”
She heaved a breath, which lifted her slumped shoulders.
“If you don’t eat, I’ll take you over my lap and swat your ass.”
I’d hoped for a glimmer of something in her eyes but got nothing. “Fine.”
I dug into a pile of pancakes while she nibbled on a piece of crisp bacon.
“Did you take your meds today?”
“Not yet.” She wouldn’t lift her head to look at me.
“Are they in your bag?”
“Yeah. I’ll get them after I’m done,” she hastened to say. A handful of seconds later, she dropped the bacon back to the paper plate and started crying again. “I’m so fucking sick of this.” Once more, her arms wrapped around her waist, and I hurried to chew my mouthful of food so I could offer some comfort. “I was doing well since May, and now this.”
I leaned over and ran my hand from her shoulder down her arm as far as I could before the table hindered me. “We’ll find your normal again.”
She nodded, and I leaned back to take another bite.
“Pancakes are good,” I said before shoveling them into my mouth.
With a sigh, she swiped the tears from her cheeks and picked up her plastic fork. She got five decent-sized bites down and a few swallows of OJ before I allowed her to leave me alone to finish the food.
Progress, in my book. A full day of rest, renting movies, and we’d see what the morning brought.
****
By our third morning in that damn motel room, I’d about had it with the stifling heat outside, the small room, and lack of … well, just about every damn thing. Fighting to keep my hands to myself had my muscles tense, my balls aching. Jerking off in the shower seemed like a shit thing to do, so I decided to tire myself out instead.
After coffee, I got down on the floor and did countless sets of sit ups and pushups. I went at it until my arms couldn’t hold me up anymore and sweat dripped off my nose.
Janie lay on the bed, same as always. At least she hadn’t cried for close to twenty-four hours.
I hopped in the shower, head tipped back into the spray.
Her depression threatened to bring mine back. That, along with my blue balls had me on edge.
Fuck it. Time to move.
Imagining her tight cunt wrapped around my cock had me swelled and leaking in a matter of seconds. Jaw clenched, I took myself in hand with a glob of her conditioner and jerked myself hard and fast. I bit back my groan as cum flew from my cock in thick ropes. When the last shudder rippled through me, the first spurt had long swirled away down the drain.
Somewhat relaxed, but hardly sated, I finished in the bathroom and packed up my shit, my mind fucking set.
“What are you doing?” Janie asked, pushing up to sit, her eyes wide, full of fear.
“Packing up.”
“You’re leaving me?” she half-shrieked, and I hurried to gather her in my arms.
“No, baby. We are leaving.”
“But—”
“You’re going to pull up your big girl panties, sit on the back of my bike, and we’re going to put some miles behind us and that damn, disgusting diner I can’t stand the thought of eating at again. We’re going to see some countryside. Make headway toward getting home.”
“Sure you still want me?” She asked the same question to leave her lips dozens of times already.
“Yes.” I brushed her hair away from her face. “Now, come on. Go brush your teeth and pack up your stuff. We’re heading out in a half hour.”