Hawk

 

 

I push myself harder, bench pressing what feels like an elephant before Jake helps me lift it to the bar and comes to toss me a towel and bottle of water.

I’m sweating, my arms and legs are on fire, and I’m just plain annoyed and mad at the world today. I didn’t sleep for shit last night after I took Mika home, my need to go back and fix her making me lie sleepless all night.

“What’s up, man?” Jake asks after the silence becomes too hard.

People usually can’t be around me and stay quiet. It makes me tense because sometimes I just want silence, but for whatever reason, people get antsy when I don’t talk.

“Nothing.”

“Come on, Hawk. This is me, my brother. I’m the one guy you don’t intimidate, and I don’t give a shit if you get annoyed or growl and scowl at me. You’ve been a worse asshole than usual lately.”

I drink my water in huge gulps and swipe the towel over my brow and nape, leaning my elbows on my knees. I’m tired and yet unable to stop thinking of Mika.

She looked so despondent last night I almost left the truck and went in there after her. I may not like being around Mika for reasons of my own, but she’s family, and when family is down, you give them a hand and pick them back up.

“It’s Mika,” I mutter, tossing the towel away and looking up at him where he’s sitting on the bench across from mine.

Jake is one of my best friends. Between him and Leila, I’ve hit my quota at two, and I aim to keep it that way because the truth is that I don’t give a damn about being Mr. Popular or having a gaggle of people hanging on my ass.

Mika though. For reasons I won’t explore, I feel as if I can’t just walk away from her when it’s clear she needs someone. Not that I’m exactly that ideal person to be around her, not with the shit I feel and think every time she’s near.

But no one else is stepping up. I understand that she’s not about to burst Leila’s love bubble, and I get that Lay herself doesn’t see anything at the moment but Lyon and the life they’re building together.

Love is a strong emotion that sorta blanks out everything and everyone else when you’re just feeling it for the first time or renewing it again. I get that, but now, with Lay not being around for Mika, every time I see her, she seems so…dull, as if the shine is wearing off day by day.

One of the things that I liked about her from the get-go was her loudmouthed attitude and her ability to laugh and cut people down with just a word.

It’s hilarious to see a woman standing five three, if even that, making a grown man tremble in his boots. I can only do that because I’m a big, scary SOB with eyes that can freeze a soul.

Mika does that because there’s just something about her attitude that lets a man know she’ll fight dirty and take a chunk of you without a thought.

Now, though, she’s just so uncaring. I see her sitting in her office on whatever site Lynx and Pop are working, doing her job but just being there on autopilot, as if she’s functioning but not really there at all.

I don’t like it. I don’t know why or why I should even care. The woman irritates the shit out of me when she’s flitting around with men and laughing about her vibrator being the better option.

She’s too saucy and sassy and, yeah, blasé about life for my liking, especially for a woman who almost died. It pisses me off whenever I see her, and I have to witness the lack of caring and regard she shows when, to my way of thinking, she should be climbing mountains or doing something truly great in thanks for the miracle of her life.

And here I am, feeling like an ass because she’s hurting and I can’t fix it.

“What’s up with Meek? She still going out with that ass?”

“Nope.”

I laugh as I say it and catch Jake’s eye, my own sparkling with the memory of her parting shot to the patrons of that bar. Lesbian. The woman is hilarious.

“Thank God. Brass met him when they bumped into her at some music thing a few weeks ago, and he did not like the little shit. He was drunk almost all weekend and treated her like a piece of ass. Brass only stopped from killing him and dragging him into the bushes because Mika slapped the guy at one point and split.”

“Yeah, well, he didn’t get the message, because I saw them at Hendricks last night and she had to reaffirm her lack of like in a very pointed way. He’ll be trouble. I just know he’s not going away without a good beating,” I grunt, going over to the dumbbells and grabbing a ten pounder to keep working out.

“Want me to send Brass to have a talk with the fool?” Jake snarls, jumping on the elliptical and going at it.

“Nah, she’d just go nuts about us interfering.”

“Yeah, but do we want some crazy asshole bugging her? Mika is family. She’s always there to help out. She babysits for us all the time, and my boy loves her. I’d just feel all wrong not doing something about this when I know she’d drop everything to help out if need be.”

“That’s true. It’s the one thing about her that doesn’t grate on my balls. The woman is a menace, and she has no filter, but she’s a sweetheart,” I grunt, doing a few reps on both arms and then jumping on the treadmill.

Jake laughs at that, and I find myself having to stop a grin just thinking about the outlandish stuff that woman says.

“I like her, Hawk. I love your family, and Leila is great, but Mika is just special.”

Don’t I know it?

“Yeah, but I don’t know, man. I always expect to get back into town and see her doing something with her life, and all I get is the same old schlepp. She goes to work, busts balls, and then home again. Lyon says she doesn’t even go out all that much anymore and she just gives Leila the brush-off when they invite her out with them. That isn’t her.”

Which I should not care about, I tell myself for the thousandth time, pushing myself at a dead run as if I can escape the thoughts that haven’t left my head.

“Maybe she’s just not into partying anymore. It does happen, you know. How old is Meek now? Twenty-four?”

“Twenty-seven,” I grunt.

“See? A lot of chicks don’t feel the party at that age. Hell, my own woman stopped giving a damn about that when she hit her twenty-second, and then it was all hearth and home and home-cooked meals for me.” He grins.

Lucky bastard.

“Yeah, maybe.”

But it doesn’t ring true for me. I’ve watched her over the last few months without letting on, and I see her, really see her, unlike most people who just see what she puts out there. Not that I’m blaming Leila for not noticing. She loves Mika, and she’d be on this in a beat if she knew her little sister wasn’t happy.

But I see it, and it’s angering me that I can’t just let it go. I shouldn’t care. I have a good life that makes me happy. I work and kick ass on a regular basis, ridding the world of scum, in direct opposition to what I was doing just a year ago, being a heavy for my brother Bear’s crime outfit.

Now that we’ve killed the men who murdered my sister, Sparrow, and all the Wylder brothers have their women, we’re just a normal family. Bear dismantled his outfit despite protests from the government, and he runs the agency we all work for, contracting out for private and military based clients who need our certain set of skills.

Most days I’m off in some foreign locale helping to kill, capture, or disappear a terrorist or some criminal asshole who’s set on hurting others.

I love my job most days, and I love coming home to the little house I bought from Lynx’s girl, Teeny. I have a good life, and I’m content. Maybe that’s why seeing Mika drifting around like a ghost is pissing me off.

I may look gruff and grumpy most of the time, but I like my family happy. And Mika is not happy.

“Let it go, Jake. I’ll talk to Leila about it sometime this week and see if she can’t get a bead on what’s happening with Mika.”

“Honestly? Because you know she’ll just get worried and upset and Lyon will go mental about his precious lady being unhappy. They’re coming up on the wedding in what, four weeks?” he asks, getting off the elliptical and grabbing a towel to mop up the sweat we’ve both built up.

I follow, not at all into the workout anymore because I feel restless and edgy with the worry I have for Mika.

Jake’s right though. I can’t exactly go up to Leila four weeks before her wedding and stress her out about Mika. That leaves me though, and shit, I have no fucking idea what to do about this. I’m not a sensitive guy. Hell, I’m the antithesis of sensitive. It gave me the creeps just talking to Mika about her feelings last night, and the woman didn’t even tell me a thing.

I’m more likely to piss her off at this point, which I don’t want to do because she’ll just tell Lyon, and as laidback as he is, the man will beat the heck out of me if he gets pissed.

“Hell, you’re right,” I mutter, sighing loudly, my tone aggrieved as Jake grins at me and tosses me more water.

“I am. So, what are you gonna do? And what are we doing about this ex of hers?”

Hell if I know. My first instinct is to find him, make him dead, and go bury his body in a concrete barrel out in the swamp. Call it a remnant of my days playing it as a mob heavy for eight years.

I can’t do that though because Ma made me promise that I would only murder bad guys and take my temper out on the men I’m sent to target. A promise is a promise, I think sourly, scowling at the need to calm down and think things through.

“I don’t know, but I can tell you with all honesty I don’t want to get too involved in this. The woman goes for the balls when she gets mad. Lynx had to convince one of his crew not to press charges when she balled him because he almost got the site shut down by violating safety regulations.”

Jake chuckles, as do I, because you gotta understand, Mika is five three, if she’s lucky, and I’m being generous. She’s this itty bitty little thing with white-blond hair and brown eyes, and she looks like a kid she’s so small and cute.

Well, okay, not a kid, because then the way I sometimes check her out would be gross, but she is small. And she’s got a mean lip and right hook when she loses her temper.

And trust me, it isn’t pretty when that happens. That poor asshole she nailed in the nuts walked funny for two days, and he only stopped at laying a charge when Lynx told him he’d have him blackballed and he’d be working the checkout at the local supermarket.

“Look, man, I’ll shoot straight with you, okay? Mika is a good woman, one I’d be glad to call my own if not for the hottie I have in my arms every night. She’s sweet and funny and feisty, and she has a lot of baggage she’s dragging with her. I know you’re not into getting close to people, for whatever reason, but I do know that you’re involved.”

“I am not. I don’t even like her,” I protest, knowing it for a lie.

I may not want to like her, but the truth is that I have had some very bad dreams about that woman, and it pisses me off when I wake up coming all over myself just dreaming about those deep brown eyes.

“Bullshit. I saw the way you looked at her. Your dick definitely liked her,” he laughs, making me grin because I can deal with sexual shit, not the emotional garbage Jake is always spewing.

“Yeah, but he’s liked a lot of women over the years, pal.”

“True. You are a man whore.”

“You jealous?” I laugh, pulling my sneakers off to go shower.

“Nah, man, you seen my wife? Why’d I want to go somewhere else when I got the most beautiful woman in the world in my bed every night?”

He crows that shit, and I feel my chest tighten because it’s true and I envy him that. I haven’t ever met someone I want that with, so my life is more of empty sex and whispered goodbyes than true happiness.

I tell myself all the time I like it that way, but the truth is that I’m not sure I do. I like the women who’ve joined our family over the years, and I adore the way my brothers are now, happy and content.

“Yeah. Come on, man. You know I’m not the one to talk to Mika. I’d say something, and she’d just lose her temper. Hell, I took her home last night, and she all but flew into the house instead of talking to me.”

Jake grins and shrugs, conceding my point and pissing me off as well. You think I don’t want to be the guy she can talk to—

Okay, well, I don’t. That’s true, but I do want to help her if I can, and I can only do that if she talks to me. Which isn’t happening because the woman despises me.

Not that I blame her. I’ve cultivated that dislike for a while. Unintentionally at first and then as a way to stop from doing something we’ll both regret later.

I want to have sex with her. A lot of it, and it’s not easy to be around her when my cock gets hard just smelling her scent. I don’t even like her, so feeling that way isn’t easy for me. Nor is sitting across the dinner table with one of her dates who clearly isn’t good enough for her.

I want her. Bad. But I don’t ever mix business with pleasure, and I definitely do not do it when I have to see the woman all the time.

“Maybe I should talk to Brass. He likes her, you know, and he’d definitely be up for taking her out.”

Like hell, I snarl, giving him a filthy look. I am a man whore, true, and I am not ashamed to say that I like variety in my women, but Brass is a sleazeball.

The man is my pal, but I won’t lie and give him qualities he doesn’t have, and he does not have sticking power. He’d be in and out of Mika’s bed and life so fast her head would spin.

Nuhuh, not happening.

“No. She’s not into casual sex,” I snarl, stripping down to step into the shower while Jake takes a seat on the long wood bench by the lockers.

The gym at the company’s training center is fully equipped for every man on Bear’s teams, the locker room and showers more of a locker room setup from high school than some luxury spa though.

I don’t mind anyone seeing my bare ass though, not after all the years I spent secretly training with a contact from Bear’s days in the Army.

Every Wylder has had his run in that area, one way or another. I disappeared for a training exercise and stint, serving under Colonel Briggs about four years ago, and I loved it.

Being trained by some of the country’s elite in demolition and explosives was fun, as was the hand-to0hand, weapons. and marksmanship stuff I did. I’ve never been like Bear or the others.

I didn’t just wake up one day and say, ‘This is what I want to do with my life.’ Nah, I just sorta drifted and was content to toe the line as far as life went until I went on that training period.

Bear told everyone who asked that I’d gone down to South America to deal with the cartels and represent his interests, just as he did when Lyon and Lynx needed to train.

It was good for me that time because I became really aware that I have an aptitude for this kind of stuff, ironic because I once told Lyon he was selfish to want to pursue a military career because it scares Mom.

Now it’s my calling and the one thing I have in life that I am good at. Yeah, ironic.

“Hawk? You still with me, man?” Jake asks when I’ve washed off the soap and grab a towel to step out.

“Yeah. What?”

I dry off with an economy of movement and move over to my locker, grabbing my clothes as Jake comes over to sit behind me.

“You just gonna ignore this trouble with Mika? What happens if she’s sick or something? Has that crossed your mind?”

Shit! It has, but I really haven’t wanted to think that way, not after everything I saw when she was sick. Mika and everyone knows that I went to the hospital when she was sick the first time, and that’s true, but what they don’t know is that I would go sit with her at night sometimes to watch over her for Leila.

It was a time I hated and something I don’t think about if I can help it because I won’t forget the way she looked in that bed. Thin to the point of emaciation and half comatose from the drugs they gave her for the pain.

Dying.

I saw it on her and smelled the hopelessness too. No, I don’t want to consider that Mika may have lied about her results because she’s sick again. But that doesn’t mean it’s not possible.