Serena
As I peeked into Maggie’s room, I heard the sounds that came every morning—or midnight, or any time, actually—after a hangover.
Yep, groaning and gagging, which was a good thing, because that meant she’d woken up and was on the way to recovery. I decided to make her bed while she was busy freshening up. As I cleaned the room as much as possible, I briefly heard the water running before it became silent.
“Maggie?” I called worriedly. I didn’t want to scare her or anything. Plus, if she had a headache, she really didn’t need me shouting all over her room.
“Yeah?” Her voice was weak.
“Are you all right?”
“No.”
The bathroom door opened and she came out, looking pale. I didn’t think it was a good idea for her to drink at all. “I’m sorry.” Her hangover was partly my fault.
“For what?” She furrowed her brows in confusion.
“Do you remember anything from last night?” I asked carefully, and for some reason, that made her blush.
“Not much.” She kept staring down, so it was hard to hear what she was saying.
“So you remember—”
She interrupted me quickly. “The kiss? Yes, I do. I just don’t know with who.” She closed her eyes in mortification and sat on the bed, holding her head in her hands.
I, however, stood there confused out of my mind. A kiss? I didn’t know anything about a kiss, and that was clearly the only thing she remembered. “What do you remember, Maggie?” I decided to learn what was going on in her head first, because who knew what kind of perception she had of last night.
“We went to the bar.” She swallowed. “Ren, Shane, and the girl. Grady, how he took care of me when Ren was making a scene.” She was silent for several seconds. “Then I remember myself against the bar wall outside and the most amazing kiss I’ve ever had. Before that, I’d only been kissed once, so maybe my judgment is not the best, but anyway. Then he was gone, and I don’t remember coming back home. Nothing after that, like I had a blackout. I never drank before.”
Well, no shit. It wasn’t exactly news to me, but the whole kissing thing. She didn’t remember Grady brought her back and spent the night with her. She just thought he took care of her at the bar.
Maggie had some hot kiss with the biker dude who owned the bar. With the way he looked at her, I was sure there was no way in hell anyone would have gotten the chance to touch her last night, let alone kiss her.
However, she wasn’t ready to know all the information, because she was crushing on Ren. So I decided to keep my mouth shut. As much as I wanted to help her sort it out, to tell her what happened and maybe open her eyes to some things, I knew it wasn’t my place. They had to sort it out for themselves. “You know, maybe you shouldn’t think about it too hard.” My advice was lame, but there wasn’t much else to say.
“I just shouldn’t have done it. It’s not my thing.”
“Maggie… what is your thing?”
She was silent for several minutes, and I thought she wouldn’t answer. But when she did, I wished she would take it back, because her answer broke my heart.
“Being invisible.”
Maggie didn’t feel well for the rest of the day, and I stopped her from coming down to help me, even though she wanted to.
Shane was busy with Carter, but when no one was looking, he sent me smiles and glances. In return, I blew him kisses. It was fun to be open with our affection, and I was so happy that I wanted to draw. After lunch and before dinner, I had an hour of doing nothing, so I decided to spend it on something useful.
I was never very good with portraits, but somehow I remembered every detail about Shane as he sat on the grass, and I felt inspired. All his masculinity just had to be captured on a canvas, but all I had was letter-sized paper, so it would have to do. Before I knew it, it was late. I rushed out of the room to prepare dinner but stopped first to check on Maggie.
She was fine but preferred not to eat, deciding she would just lie down.
After dinner, the house grew silent. Everyone was busy with their own thing, and I was doing the dishes when I felt a soft kiss on my neck and arms circle my waist.
Resting my head on his chest, I continued washing while he hugged me. Such quiet moments were usually the best things that couples shared.
I wondered if it was like that for Hawk and Elizabeth. If every night he came to her like that after a busy day spent on the ranch. I never met them, but I wondered about their love life.
Love? Snap out of it girl.
“Tired?” I asked and felt him nod. Moving my head to the side, he gave me a proper kiss on the lips. His mouth was gentle, and a sigh escaped my mouth.
Before he could take it further, we were interrupted by a gruff voice by the door. “Well, hello there.”
Shane tensed beside me and focused on the man. When I’d first met Shane, I thought he was a warrior. But if he was the warrior, then that man was the chief. He was taller than Shane, had black hair pulled into a ponytail, broad shoulders, and he was ripped. His dark eyes went well with his darker complexion. His high cheekbones emphasized his muscularity. Overall, he seemed like an older version of Shane. Except for the eyes. Shane’s were ocean blue.
He had a presence about him though, giving the impression you had to listen to him. He seemed like a man who could be lethal if he wanted to. However, that contradicted the kindness and warmth his eyes held.
Silence stretched, and I didn’t really know how to react. I mean, I was sure it was Hawk, because I could never imagine a guy like him working for someone else.
“Hawk,” said Shane, proving my thoughts to be correct.
“Hello.” Lame, but what else could I say here? Crap, Hawk’s eyes shifted from me to Shane with an assertive gaze as he took in the situation, came to some conclusion, and then looked at me again. “I’m Serena.” Crap, my voice was shaking a bit, and I was nervous, unable to get a grip on myself.
“Yeah, I got that, darlin’.” Then he addressed Shane. “A word?”
Shane gave me a peck on the mouth and smiled reassuringly before leaving my side. They disappeared into what I assumed was the office. No one was allowed to enter that room, one of the rules Carter explained on my second day here.
Left standing there like an idiot, I didn’t know what to do. Sighing, I finished cleaning and went upstairs to let Maggie know her dad was here.
Shane
I hadn’t expected Hawk to come back so soon. With the way things were progressing with Elizabeth, I thought he’d stay there until the end of the summer.
We went into the office, and he sat on his chair and took out his cigar. He always had a cigar in the evenings, said it was a little joke he shared with one of his close friends. Whatever. Never got the point of that, and I never had a smoke in my life. The life of a football player didn’t allow it. But that was something I didn’t want to think about, so I focused on his face. He wasn’t happy about Serena and me—I could tell. He told me no one should touch the girl; well, no one did.
She was mine. Didn’t that bring smug satisfaction to me? I just couldn’t help it. I liked knowing she was my girl.
“Shane, I thought I told you to protect this girl from unwanted advances. Didn’t you listen?” he asked amusedly, exhaling smoke.
“I did.”
“Then what do you call what I saw in the kitchen?”
“My advances were wanted.” I didn’t care for his behavior. I had the right to date whomever I wanted as long as the person involved was willing.
I expected Hawk to give me a piece of his mind, so I blinked in shock when he started to laugh so hard he choked on his smoke.
“Damn, don’t you remind me of myself twenty-five years ago.” Both of us froze, because we never discussed it, our similarities. I showed up on the ranch, ruined his life, and he let me stay here. He taught me about horses, traditions, and I got to know everyone on the ranch. But never did we speak about the fact I was his bastard child from his affair with my mother. Or rather, one-night stand, which wasn’t supposed to have consequences.
“We have to talk about this sometime, you know,” Hawk said softly and stubbed out his cigar. “You’ve never asked me about that night, and you refuse to talk to your aunt.”
“You don’t owe me an explanation,” I replied grimly.
Hawk raised a brow. “I don’t?”
“No. You never lied to me. She did.” But there was bitterness inside me toward all of them. I suppressed those angry feelings, but I knew they didn’t allow me to completely accept Hawk. Sometimes I wondered what the hell I was doing on the ranch.
“She did it to protect you.”
“A lie is a lie.” Hawk watched me carefully, and I tried to understand why. It was almost as if he felt sorry for me in advance, as though my attitude toward lying would bite me in the ass.
I didn’t fucking think so. Nothing, in my opinion, could excuse a lie that affected something so crucial. How could I ever trust after that?
“And if someone lies, that’s it? They don’t deserve to explain themselves?”
“For me, it’s done.”
“Boy, you have a lot to learn about life.” He rested his back on the chair with a worried expression on his face. I decided to keep my mouth shut, because no one would ever change my mind about it.
“How is Elizabeth?”
Hawk tensed, his hand sliding over his face as he sighed. “She's good. Great, in fact. She rented an apartment and teaches at the local art school. She enjoys life.” His voice was empty and I didn’t know what to do or say.
I was the one who’d screwed up. When I showed up at Hawk’s ranch telling him he was my father, all hell broke loose. I knew he had a family, and they were happy. What I didn’t know was the fact my biological father was married at the time of his and my mom’s one-night stand.
I could still remember the look on Elizabeth’s face when she understood who I was, when I proved I was Hawk’s. It was the look of a woman whose whole world crashed, and there was no hope of putting it all back together. The same day, she packed her bags, came to me, touched my cheek, and left for LA to live with her sister.
She wanted a divorce and made her life there. For some reason, they kept avoiding telling their final decision to Maggie. They told her about me, and oddly, she accepted her bastard brother with open arms, and we became fast friends. Her mother never showed attitude toward me, but I knew deep down she must have resented me.
Hawk didn’t want her to go, and I knew he loved her. For the last year, he was never out with women, but I knew based on their conversations with Carter that Elizabeth had dated several guys, and those relationships weren’t exactly platonic.
But Hawk didn’t care. He wanted her back, so he kept going and begging, and she kept refusing. It was the same circle all over again, and I knew he wasn’t ready to give up yet. Some part of me believed he was beating a dead horse, because Elizabeth couldn’t bring herself to forgive him.
He never once accused me of doing wrong, never told me I was just a bastard from a woman he didn’t even remember or that he had no need of a son because he’d already raised Ren as his own, even though his blood didn’t run through his veins. He treated me the way he treated both of his kids, with love and a father’s pride. I was the distant one who didn’t want to get close, though the irony was it was the exact same reason I came here. To get the sense of belonging and understanding of where I came from.
“Good for her. Don’t you think—”
He raised his hand and cut me off. “No. She loves me, and I love her.”
“Hawk, I know about your conversations with Carter. There were and are other men. You do realize that, right?”
He clenched his fist, and I saw the infamous lethal expression on his face. “I do. But she’s doing it because she’s hurt, not because she really wants to move on. I just need to prove I’m worth taking a second chance on.” There was no point in the conversation, because it was same old, same old. Fucking hilarious how my dad, who cheated on his wife, thought their love should keep them together. Maybe he should have kept his pants zipped twenty-five years ago.
I never heard him apologize for what he had done to Elizabeth. I didn’t think he did, because he saw the situation as the problem that was supposed to bond them, not tear them apart.
I agreed with his wife; a betrayal was a betrayal.
“Is that all? All the reports are with Carter. There was no emergency while you were gone, and Serena, after several fiascos, is doing fine.” I stood and he nodded.
“You can go.” I lifted my chin and went back to the door. When I had my hand on the doorknob and was about to open it, I heard his quiet voice. “I could never call my child a mistake.”
I swallowed and heard my heart pound, but couldn’t say the words, so without a reply, I left the room. The emotions threatened to suffocate me, and I couldn’t have it.
I needed to find Serena.