Hawke: A Bad Boy Fighter Romance (With bonus book Sons of Flame MC) (9 page)

I didn’t see Desouza leave, just heard the door open, and then close.

A few hours later, I left through the front door, next best thing to broke, and tried to sort through what the hell I was supposed to do now.

Chapter 10

Naomi

I called Nic on the way home, wincing with every ring until she answered. If she’d let it go to voice mail, or just screened it entirely, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

She did answer though, after the fifth ring. “Hi.”

Alright. I deserved that. “Hey, Nic… what are you doing right now? We should talk. I don’t like how we left things and I feel awful about it and… well there’s just a lot to talk about. Can we meet?”

She didn’t answer right away. I could hear her rummaging through something on the other end, maybe papers or her purse. “Yeah. Okay. I get off in half an hour. Maybe Lane’s?”

The bar of choice, for all three of us. I almost changed it to someplace else; Jason might well show up unannounced and if I saw him again in the very near future I was going to lose my shit. But, she’d wonder why if I didn’t want to meet there, and that would lead to questions she wouldn’t drop until I answered and… “Yeah, Lane’s. About an hour. I’ll see you then, Nic. Hey,” I said when she didn’t acknowledge, “I love you. Okay? You know that.”

A sigh. “I know. I’ll see you in a bit.”

She hung up, and I put my phone down to focus on driving. Lane’s was a drive from my place, but I didn’t mind. I did use the hour to drop by the apartment, change clothes and manage a short-lived shower before I got back in the car and sped down the long avenue to downtown.

I managed to get there before Nic did. Lane’s was named for the first owner, Lane Murphy, whose picture adorned the wall above the back of the bar, the various letters and signed pictures of his patrons plastering the space around it in memoriam. His daughter ran the place now, and knew the three of us from way back. We’d been going here for years. Lane used to serve Nic and I drinks before we were legal. We didn’t dare bring Jason here until I was twenty-one—he’d have called the cops, probably, and turned Lane in for serving me under aged.

“Beat everyone here?” Lisa asked when I took a seat at the bar.

I shook my head. “Just me and Nic tonight.”

Lisa went to work fixing me a cherry martini. Lane himself had shown her how to do it just a year before he died, when Lisa was starting to take over as his health failed. Now, I hardly drank anything else.

Lane’s had been a good idea. With everything else spinning out of control and upending, this was the neutral ground of our lives; solid ground while the rest was swallowed up by the mudslide around us, a haven from the threat of drowning. The weight of all our good memories was here, from before things grew complicated and painful; before there were secrets. Lane’s was a place of redemption, confession, and peace-making.

And the cherry martini definitely soothed my frayed nerves, too.

Nic showed up a few minutes late, looking harried, and worn out, and not happy to see me. But we hugged, and we nabbed the booth in the back corner. I decided I should probably talk first; set the tone.

“I was out of line the other night,” I said, solemnly, I hoped and with as much humility as I could muster. It wasn’t my strong suit. “I was angry, and I purposefully tried to hit you where I know it would hurt and… and I’m so so sorry, Nic. I swear, I didn’t mean what I said about… any of it.”

Nic looked sad. She looked like she’d been sad for days. Jesus, how could I have struck her a blow like that? She sighed, though, and glanced around the place. Maybe, I hoped, she was wandering down memory lane a little, remembering all the good things this place was for us. “I know you didn’t mean to hurt me. Or, I mean, that you felt bad about it afterward at least. Shit happens, Nomi. It’s fine.”

“About Jason,” I started.

Nomi held up a hand, squeezing her eyes shut. “I don’t want to talk about him. Not now, anyway. I know how he feels about you. I won’t say I’ve made peace with it, but, you know… if you two… I would be happy if you were happy, you know? That’s all.”

I reached across the table for her hand. She was holding her whiskey sour with both hands, but she let go with one of them to let me take it. “Me and Jason,” I said, “that’s never going to happen, Nic. And I should have had that conversation with him a long time ago but I was so worried it would ruin our friendship, you know? And… well, it might have.”

Nic looked up at me, eyes wide. “Oh, Nomi… you didn’t, did you?”

I recounted parts of my encounter with Jason.

Nic looked hurt, at first, that he’d finally confessed his feelings to me instead of ultimately coming to her, but then she was worried, and finally angry. “Has he lost his fucking mind?” She hissed. “Jesus, Nomi… I had no idea he was capable of—”

“He was just upset,” I said. “And I get it. I mean… I was definitely a little scared, for a second but; I mean it’s Jason. I knew he wasn’t going to do anything.” I kept to myself the fact that in the moment, when it was happening, I actually wasn’t one hundred percent certain that was the case. Fear and rationality don’t mix.

“Still, he should have taken the first ‘no’ and left it there.” She didn’t mean it because it would mean Jason was out of my ball field, finally; but because when it came down to it Jason was our friend—but I was her little sister, and nobody messed with Nicola Ellis’ little sister. “God, if I’d been there, Nomi, I would have torn him a brand-new shiny asshole.”

I bit my lip. God, Mother Mary, whoever’s listening and wants to lend a divine hand, let this not set her off. “There’s… more.”

Nic’s face fell. She assumed the worst. “He… he didn’t…”

“God, no, Nic,” I said quickly, “I would have opened with that. No, it’s about… um… something I said to him…”

Her face grew confused, and then still, and then red. “Jesus, Nomi, you didn’t.”

“It just came out,” I said. “I was so angry at him for jumping on me like that, and for treating you like he has and I wanted to, I don’t know, distract him or redirect him or something and the first thing I could grab onto that might do it was telling him… how you feel about him.”

Nic buried her face in her hands, mortified. “Jesus Christ… how am I supposed to look him in the eyes after this. Nomi,” she groaned my name the way she had when I’d drawn all over her wall with crayons when I was little, right before she helped me clean it up instead of telling Mom and Dad. “Shit.” She finished her whiskey sour, and waved for another one. Lisa got on it.

“Think of it this way,” I said, as cheerfully as I could manage. “Now he knows, and he knows I’m not interested in him like that so, after he… cools off a little, who knows? Maybe he’ll come around. He needs time to process.”

“He’s going to think I’m some simpering, moon eyed twelve year-old following him around like a puppy,” she sighed. “You weren’t wrong. I do chase around after him. It’s degrading. God, I’m like four years older than him I should be the aggressor here or something… I still remember having boobs when he hit puberty.” She made a disgusted noise, although whether it was Jason’s rough transition into adulthood or at her own perceived childishness wasn’t clear.

I did my best to run triage either way. “You and Jason have always been connected by your mutual joy of running my life,” I said. Nic frowned at me, rolled her eyes, and then finally shrugged when she’d thought about it a second. “You have everything in common and you love the fact that he’s a sexy police officer, and he loves that you’re so practical and put together and sexy as hell. You two were made for each other. It can be embarrassing and messy if that’s what it’s going to be at first but… isn’t that worth it? In the end, I mean?”

Nic sipped her fresh drink, lost in thought and not looking at me. I did some damage to my own martini, neglected in the midst of my rush to convince her this was all a good thing and not the awful, muddy, potentially destructive situation I kind of thought it might be. Better for Nic to think there was hope. She tended to self-destruct when she thought there might not be. That worrier thing she’d gotten from our mother.

I’d gotten my father’s infectious optimism, even if it tended to come and go these days, so I plied it with everything I had. “And now this is out in the open, things will be so much better between us, right? I mean, every time we’d go out I felt so much pressure to be interested in Jason’s fucking cop stories and you and I hardly ever talked because you were busy trying to get his attention—”

“That’s so not true,” Nic complained.

I laughed. “Uh, yeah. It is an entirely accurate observation. It’s fine, though, I get it. I might have done the same thing.”

Nic shook her head slowly, “No, Nomi, you wouldn’t have. God, you just have this ability to not give a fuck. That’s probably why Jason has been so hung up on you from the first place. I probably seem high maintenance compared to you.”

Anyone who saw us in the booth together would make the same assumption. I had a tight button up, sleeves rolled, a tee shirt and bra on underneath, and jeans. My hair was in a pony-tail because I hadn’t had time to blow dry it and, frankly, didn’t feel the need to gussy up just to go to the bar.

Nic had obviously stopped at her place on the way here, and probably spent half an hour touching up her makeup and slipping into this flawless blouse and skirt combination, and knew exactly which heels to step into on the way out without having to look. She was high maintenance. But that was fine. Jason wanted me to be that.

“Once Jason has about thirty seconds to stop and think for a second, he’ll come howling to your door,” I said. “Believe me. He’s not bright sometimes, but he can see what’s right in front of him if you point him at it. Why do you think he’s not detective yet?”

Nic giggled a little, and shrugged a shoulder. She seemed happier. Maybe she was finally beginning to imagine what it would be like to finally get what she wanted, to finally show herself to Jason.

She frowned. “Wait… but, what brought all this on? Jason just showed up and said he loved you and went ballistic? That doesn’t sound like him.” She squinted at me, looking for my tells. Damnit.

I played it casual, and swept loose hair behind my ears. “He just hit his boiling point, I guess, I don’t know.”

Nomi pointed. “You did the thing. You do that when you’re hiding something; Nomi, what don’t I know?”

“Jesus, Nic, I don’t have a thing that I do like that, you’re looking for secrets that aren’t there. It’s like I said it was.” I rolled my eyes and sipped my martini. I sipped a lot of it, and flagged Lisa for another one.

Nic was staring at me.

“What?” I asked, put off and nervous and really wishing she’d just finish that drink and dull the edge off her suspicious nature.

She searched my eyes.

She looked me over.

She squinted.

“Oh my God you had sex with that patient!” She whispered it, loudly, and then glanced around like someone would have heard us. Lisa delivered my Martini with a sly grin, but minded her own business otherwise. She was a vault, that woman; I wasn’t worried.

I was, however, incensed and shocked that Nic would make an accusation like that, even if she was right. Fuck me, she’d gotten Mom’s crazy intuition, too. “I did no such thing!” I whispered back at her, just as loud. “God, you and Jason both!”

“So that is why Jason showed up,” She said. “That fucking idiot; I told him not to say anything.”

I wanted to be mad at her, for talking to Jason about my business, which she had no right to know about even if it was just her crazy gut-instinct—and, possibly, my hour long rant about Jack the other night; I own that. But I couldn’t be, not after all this, and not here. “He was concerned about it, yes. He says Jack’s a criminal, that he’s connected to a mobster, that he’d hurt me… he’s out of his mind, though, nothing’s happening between me and Jack.”

Again, Nic stared at me, but this time it was with sympathy, not judgment or that irritating knowing look she got when she’d caught something on her radar. “Nomi… look, can we just suspend all our crap, our judgment, and our need to keep secrets from one another for just ten minutes?”

I shrugged. What secrets?

“I’m not an idiot, Nomi,” she said when I waited for her to speak first. “I know when you’re into somebody. I’ve always known. I saw you get your first crush. And your second, and all the others and I drove you to your first date when Mom and Dad said you couldn’t go. I covered for you because Tommy Sanchez was a weed dealer and had been to juvie and I watched over you from another booth that whole date.”

“You spied on me and Tommy Sanchez?” I gaped at her. “Oh my God, you’ve been at this your whole life.”

“Yes, I have. I even saw that you put your foot between his legs and thought nobody noticed.”

I blushed. “Yeah, okay, I get it.”

“You like this Jack guy,” she said—not a question, we were past that now. She knew. “I know you’ve fucked him, I can feel it in my gut. Just… just talk to me? Please? I might not approve but I am your sister and I want to know these things; what’s going on with you. Please, don’t keep me out. If you’re going to risk your job over this guy, I… I want to know about him. You’re crazy, definitely, but I don’t think you’d take a risk like that for just anybody.”

I was starting to smile. When I did, Nic smiled with me. “Spill,” she said.

I combed my fingers through my hair, took my pony-tail holder out and rebound my hair with it, and then slumped forward to rest my elbows on the table, my chin in my hands. “I…” I sighed. Might as well. I was caught. And I so badly wanted to tell someone what was going on in my head. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. Honestly, when I first met him I hated him. He was obstinate, and you should hear the way he talked to me, I mean really hear it for yourself and… I already had problem patients and he was one more and I was so close to just quitting that fucking job.