Authors: Alessandra Thomas
A giggle bubbled up from my belly. Soon, I was looking up at him and laughing, and when his expression mirrored mine, I laughed that much harder. He reached into the pan I held open, grabbed a potato skin, and held it up near my mouth.
I leaned in for a bite and closed my eyes as I chewed. Damn, that was good. When I finally swallowed, I looked back up at Hawk. Our hands remained on the pan, inches from each other. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. So he spoke instead, never breaking eye contact with me.
“Good?” That same sexy, gruff voice, spoken so low it was like he was sharing a secret.
With the way he was looking at me, maybe he was.
It was all I could do to nod slightly before I turned toward him, pushed up on my tiptoes, and pressed my palm to his face and my lips to his.
His hand gripped my waist, and holy hell, that was what I had so desperately wanted to feel ever since this morning. Even though it had only been eight hours ago, it felt like it had been an eternity. His hard stomach pressed against me, his lips soft and warm, his breath filling my mouth and his tongue expertly stroking mine. My heart ran a marathon around my chest, and I felt like telling it to keep going until it had to stop, but I wasn’t quitting this any time soon.
Until Sherri’s voice gasped, “Oh! Excuse me!”
We leapt apart only to see her high-tailing it out of the kitchen.
Hawk looked down, flashing a half-guilty, half-delighted smile at the floor. I leaned against the counter, still torturously close to him, and realized my breathing was still quick.
And his was, too. I wanted to live in this moment, where all I cared about was a boy and all he cared about was me and nothing else in the entire world mattered.
Finally, he said, “We should probably get this food out there, huh?”
What I said next surprised me more than anything else that day, even though I meant every word. “Yeah, and then get out of here?”
His eyebrows lifted, and he tilted his head. “Yeah?”
“I mean…I’m hungry, and I had potato skins last night.”
A look that was between sad and stressed crossed his face for the briefest second.
“They were so good, though!” I rushed to explain. “Really. So maybe…” Shit. Shit shit. Suddenly, my tongue was tied. I was looking at this guy I hated ten hours ago and now found irresistible and gorgeous, and I had just propositioned him with maybe-sex-but-actually-just-kidding-dinner-instead.
“We could go grab something to eat. Yeah.” Hawk cocked his head toward the opposite counter. “You get the plates, and I’ll take these out.”
Even though those trays had to be heavy, Hawk carried four of them at a time out to the buffet tables. I suddenly had an all new appreciation for the fact that he seemed to only wear t-shirts when I watched his forearms flexing against their weight. They continued to mesmerize me as he laid out trays of wings, potato skins, cole slaw, and roasted vegetables.
I moved to help him and let my hip bump against his. Not entirely by accident. “Roasted root vegetables are bar food?”
“Nah, I prepped these at my place. Can’t serve these people entirely greasy shit.”
“So you have the same industrial-sized pans at your place as the bar?”
“Um,” he cleared his throat. “I live right above the bar.”
I stopped what I was doing and stepped back to look at him. “You live there? I thought you just worked there.”
He smirked. “Yeah, that much was clear from your little rant after class. When you called me a ‘stupid cook’?” The apartment is — was — my dad’s. Hence, working downstairs.”
My cheeks blazed red, and I stared at my shoes. “Shit.” It wasn’t often I wanted to bite my tongue. It almost never let any words out of my mouth that I thought I might regret — which, of course, meant they stayed buried deep inside me. Most of the time, it was better that way — as in cases like this.
I usually was not a total presumptuous bitch, though, inside or outside. Or was I? Shame swept over me. “I’m sorry.”
He grunted and kept busy uncovering the trays. “I didn’t argue with you. And you were having a shit day.”
“Yeah, I was,” I said, “but that’s no excuse. I really am sorry.”
He shrugged and finished up setting out the trays, but I swore I saw a slight smile on his face before he cleared his throat and looked up at me, clapping his palms together and rubbing them back and forth.
Holy hell, those hands. His fingers looked long and strong, and all I could think about was how they had felt around my waist not ten minutes earlier.
My mind raced as I transferred stack after stack of paper plates and napkins to the long tables in the dining room, where families were starting to trickle in and set up spots for themselves. I ran through the facts:
Hawk was not as completely irresponsible and jerky as I had thought from his late arrivals and forgotten homework.
Hawk was gorgeous.
Hawk was an incredible kisser.
Hawk was a responsible person who owned an apartment.
I knew where the apartment was, and I could tell my friends before I went.
If it were Cat in this place instead of me, would I give her the thumbs up to go home with him?
Abso-frickin’-loutely.
There were more rowdy kids at this dinner than I’d ever seen in one place before. While their parents fixed plates of food, I sat down with them, asked them the best things about their days, and taught them knock-knock jokes and the cup-stacking tricks my brothers had been obsessed with teaching me at Thanksgiving just a few months earlier. Ben, the junior in high school, was convinced it would make me a hit at sorority parties, and I hadn’t had the heart to tell him that was not the sort of thing that impressed college guys. I’d have to tell him it came in handy for today, though.
More than once, I caught Hawk pausing whatever he was doing to watch me. When I finally joined him to clean up the tables after most of the families had migrated into the living room to watch TV or shuffled back to their rooms, I asked, “What was with the look?”
He tossed me a clean white cloth while he held on to the standard bottle of castile soap and water used to clean pretty much everything at Rowland House. His eyes sparked as he said, “I’ll spray — you wipe.”
But I wasn’t letting him off that easily. “When I was with the kids. You were looking at me.”
He moved to the end of the long tables, and I trotted after him, not willing to let the conversation drop. The truth was, I realized, I was having fun. He walked the length of the table, spraying the surface while I wiped it down, two steps after him. I was so aware of the way his body, of the way his t-shirt curved into the small of his back with every stride and his fingers fanned across the table when he leaned on it to spray the cleaner. My mind raced with imagining my nails digging into his back, his fingers splaying out across my stomach. I didn’t try — I swore I didn’t — but the further he walked around the table, the more quickly I swiped the cleaner off until, at the very end, I was right at his heels. He turned to me, letting the spray bottle dangle from his fingertips.
I didn’t step back. We were inches from each other, and I looked into his eyes, daring him to dodge the question again. If only I could get the words out with those ice blue eyes making me forget what I wanted to say, where I was, who I was.
Holy hell, it never failed. When I was close to him, it was like my whole body vibrated.
“You were watching me, weren’t you?”
His gaze drifted down to my lips when I spoke. Then his eyebrow quirked, and I swore he pressed his lips together just the tiniest bit before grabbing the white cloth from me and striding back toward the kitchen.
“Uh, maybe,” he called over his shoulder. “I don’t know. You were just so…nice. Not stressed. It was different from how I’ve seen you.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve only seen me in business class. I mean, mostly. Which I frickin’ hate.”
We reached the kitchen, and Hawk dropped the cleaning supplies in the sink. “I knew you didn’t give a shit about business class!” he said, a triumphant smile on his face. He looked like he was just dying to pump his fist.
“I don’t give a shit about business, but I care deeply about my grade. There’s a difference.” I tried to keep some indignation in my voice, but it just wasn’t happening. I’d never seen Hawk smile like that, and it was absolutely infectious. More than that, it was magnetic. The air around us seemed to spark with possibility. Of what, I didn’t know, but I did know that it felt delicious.
Hawk snorted again but not in the dismissive way he always had. It was actually pretty clear — he was teasing me. “Okay. But probably they’re pretty closely related, don’t you think?”
I shook my head. “Not necessarily. You can do anything if you buckle down and kick your ass into doing a good job.”
Then, Hawk’s voice softened, and his eyes along with it. “Sure, but I don’t want to spend my life kicking my own ass. Do you?”
The teasing had taken a serious turn, but not an angry one. One that forced me to think and gave me the space to be honest. He did have a point, even though I hated to admit it. So instead, I just kept stacking foil pans and folding them into the trash. Hawk started to pack up leftovers, and when I finished filling up the trash can, I leaned against the counter, watching him work. He carefully put together meals in portioned Styrofoam containers for the next day, assembly-line style.
Somewhere between the ribs and the roasted vegetables, he said, “Do you ever think about just leaving it all?”
A week ago, I would have laughed at him or rolled my eyes and called him emo. But between shadowing Doctor O’Donnell and feeling this — whatever it was — for him, something about me had changed. Something that wasn’t content to be the same old me, that didn’t assume things about how my life would work out.
“Do you?” I asked.
He paused, sliding his hand around the back of his neck, kneading the muscles there. He nodded once, twice, then met my eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
Hawk closed the boxes, one by one, stacked them — a dozen altogether — and placed them in the fridge, right next to the counter where I was leaning. He shut the fridge door, and for the second time, we were so close I could feel him breathing the air I breathed, gauge the tension in his body.
“What would you do?”
“I would…drive. See things. Stay where I wanted. Meet new people.”
I shrugged and gave him a soft smile. “You met me just last week. I’m new.”
“Yeah, you are.”
“Besides, the bike feels right in
Philly
. What if you went someplace where it rained all the time? And then you wouldn’t have any towels or even a place to get warm, and you’d probably catch a cold.”
“Maybe,” he murmured, reaching out and running the tip of his finger down a loose strand of my hair. “But every once in a while, something really amazing happens in the rain. Sometimes, even if it’s raining, nothing else matters.”
I was suddenly transported back to that one moment when he kissed me like he needed me to live, a moment that told freezing rain and dry clothes and basic shelter to wait just a damn minute because we were busy and hungry for each other and just didn’t give a shit.
When we finally broke apart, he spoke in a low, gravely voice. “And if it’s going to rain anyway, you might as well be happy standing there.”
We stood half a step apart, our breaths reaching out and pulling back, filling the space with something promising, something brave.
He broke the awkward, full-of-sexual tension silence. “So. Dinner. Where to?”
“Um, I don’t know.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Remember, you’re the one who asked me out. Pick the place.”
Yeah, I had asked him out. Sort of. I hadn’t meant to do it as ambiguously as I had, but even I knew full well that asking a guy to “get out of here” meant “I hope you have a condom because I’m going to maul you as soon as possible.”
And, honestly, maybe that’s why I’d said it. Hello, Freudian slip.
Now, after watching those forearms and feeling his eyes burning into me and kissing him again — I was kind of glad I’d said it that way.
I motioned toward the empty tray of roasted vegetables — by far the most popular dish among the residents. “I want some of those.”
Hawk’s chest puffed, and he beamed. “Yeah? I could throw something together.”
Something about that smile, one of the only ones I’d ever seen on Hawk, made me feel giddy. The words “throw something” resonated in my mind. I wouldn’t mind him throwing me around a little bit, in the right context, of course.
I felt my cheeks flush again, even as I thought it. Since when had I become one-track-mind Joey? Probably since I hadn’t had sex in months and hadn’t had great sex in…well…ever, honestly. Maybe my subconscious was telling me this was my chance.
“Okay,” I murmured. “Let me text my roommate.”
Hawk finished cleaning up while I sent Cat a quick text with the location of the bar.
“Okay,” he said, wiping his hands on a clean towel and passing it to me. “I’ll cook for you. But only if you can handle another ride on the bike.”
Chapter 8
When
we got to his bike in the Children’s Hospital garage, Hawk lifted the helmet over my head and strapped it in place, his fingers brushing my jaw just like they had right before the first time he’d kissed me. A shiver swept down my spine as he pulled his riding jacket over my shoulders.
“Okay,” I said. “You can’t ride this thing in January in just a t-shirt.”
Hawk shrugged. “I’ve done worse.”
I quirked my eyebrow. “Really?”
He chuckled. “Okay, maybe not. But it’s a short ride. I’ll be fine.”
He turned to the bike and got on. Eleven blocks that included a cruise over the Schuylkill River on a dinky motorbike with no jacket did not count as a “short ride” in my head, but clearly, the discussion was over. It would probably help my anxiety if I would quit trying to handle everyone else and just be.
Right.
Holding back a sigh, I settled myself on the bike. Behind him. With my legs spread right up against him like that, I couldn’t help feeling hot. Again. Holy hell, I kind of wished he hadn’t had a jacket with him at all.
“Hold on tight,” he said in that same low, gruff voice that ran through my head whenever I thought of him. My fingers spread out across his stomach for the second time in one day, and if my reaction was any indication, I loved it more every time. Then the bike grumbled to life between our legs, and he turned and flashed a smile, his vibrant eyes sparking into mine.
Holy. Frickin. Hell.
Ten minutes later, we drove up to the bar and pulled into a small alley alongside it. It was so dark by now I could barely see, and subconsciously, I dug my fingers farther into Hawk’s stomach, which twitched violently.
“Oh my God.” I leaned in to speak into his ear. “Are you ticklish?”
He parked the bike and shot me a half-annoyed, half-amused look. In the silence left by the deadened growl of the engine, every one of my senses was heightened. The smell of him — guys’ shampoo and spearmint gum. The feel of his t-shirt wrinkling under my fingers. The cold air crashing into the front of my body as he dismounted from the bike.
He took my hand to help me off the bike but let it drop as he stepped to a side door and fumbled for the keys.
“It’s just a little walk-up,” he said as we climbed a dark, narrow flight of stairs illuminated by a bare bulb. It certainly wasn’t the Kappa Delta house, that was for sure.
But when he opened the door at the top of the stairs, I saw that no, it definitely wasn’t the nice, clean sorority house I lived in — it was much better.
The apartment was a completely open floor plan, with warm, cream-colored walls framed by crown molding and a dark hardwood floor stretching from wall to wall. Pillars of exposed brick broke up the space and made it seem warmer, more inviting. A black, shaggy area rug held a soft, slightly saggy-looking couch stacked with pillows and a heavy, oak coffee table. An old tube TV sat on a stand made out of what looked like oak, in view of both the living room and the kitchen.
The place was a frickin’ disaster, with papers strewn all over the coffee table and at least two pairs of stray shoes and several t-shirts littering the floors, but it was nice. Very nice.
I turned in a circle and spotted two doors leading off the main space.
“Bathroom and, uh, bedroom,” Hawk said, pointing at them.
“Just you?”
Hawk nodded as he helped me out of the jacket and helmet and tossed them on the floor beside the door. He stood back and smirked. “Christ, you were swimming in that jacket.”
“Yeah, I know I’m short.” I stood up as straight as I possibly could. “So?”
“Nothing. Nothing.” But his eyes swept down me, and I could swear I saw hunger in them. “Uh…let me see what I’ve got.”
“Pasta? People always have pasta.” I plopped myself on the couch and watched him search through the kitchen. I had thought he was wearing his jeans low, something I normally hated, especially on college guys. But as he pulled cans and boxes out of one of the white cupboards, I realized that only the pockets were low and the jeans themselves rode right below his waist, held up by a thick black leather belt. His t-shirt, a dark heather gray, moved with his torso. All in all, I pretty much couldn’t tear my eyes away from him.
“Pasta with cannellini, lemon and capers. Sound good?”
My stomach ripped out a growl again. “I only understood ‘pasta’ and ‘lemon.’ But honestly, even that sounds awesome.”
He laughed. “I promise you’ll like it then.”
I desperately wanted to know what a guy like Hawk, who worked in a divey bar and could barely make it to class on time, was doing living in a gorgeous apartment like this all by himself.
“So,” I said after a few minutes of water rushing from the faucet and the clicking of a gas burner filling the silence. “Rowland House.”
“Yeah?” He rested his elbows on the counter and studied me with his cool blue eyes.
“Well…why? There are a ton of shelters and stuff you could take the food to. Ones closer to the bar, I’m sure.” I didn’t bring up my observation that no reasonable bar cooked that much extra food at lunchtime. He must have wanted to take it over there, to have planned for it. “So, why the Rowland House, like, every day?”
“How do you know it’s every day?” I thought I heard a catch in his voice.
“After seeing you there two days in one week, I’m guessing it’s close to that.”
He barked out a short laugh and shook his head. “Yeah, Sherlock,” he said, with a twinge of affection in his voice. “It’s a few times a week.”
“So….?” If there was one thing I’d always been, it was a little pushy.
Hawk paused, planting his hands on the counter and leaning forward. “I spent a lot of time there as a kid.”
I gasped. “Who was sick?”
“My sister. Leukemia. Those were some tough years, to say the least.”
A strange feeling rose up in me. While I was sad that he’d had to deal with all that, there was finally something we had in common. Something similar that had carved our personalities, our insecurities, so deeply.
His hand flew to the back of his head, rubbing the hair there, and my heart panged. “My mom couldn’t handle it. She was clinically depressed already, and when my sister relapsed the first time, she…uh…she killed herself.”
’“Holy shit. Hawk.” Cancer was tragic, but suicide? The unexpected nature of it, the betrayal, the not knowing why — it must have destroyed Hawk completely. Between that and a sister with cancer…it could be that I was the only one on this campus who could understand him.
I stood up and made my way over to the other side of the counter, only a few paces away from where he stood. Tentatively, I reached out to touch his shoulder. Right as my fingertips made contact, he shrugged away.
Dammit. I knew it was a pushy move, but I couldn’t help myself. His words made me want to be closer to him, to have the option of touching him. Comforting him. The way he sighed and stared off into the distance again made me want to do those things even more.
“You know,” I said softly. “It’s okay to talk about her, to remember her. I get it.”
“Yeah,” he said, yanking open a drawer and tugging a can opener out. “Listen,” he said, looking at me with that same hard look he’d had days before. “I don’t need your bedside manner, okay? I got plenty of bedside time then, and I really don’t want to go looking around for some now.”
My mouth dropped open. It hadn’t occurred to me that the best bedside manner might turn out to be shutting the hell up sometimes.
“Anyway,” he continued softly, “I spent a lot of time at Roland House when my dad was at the hospital with my sister, so I want to give back, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.” I felt like screaming at him that I really did know, that I understood helplessness and despair and fear all when it had to do with ravenous, devastating mutated cells that you couldn’t even see. I should have tried to reach out and touch his hand, but he was already starting to twist the handle on the can opener.
On the next turn, he looked into my eyes, “Sorry — didn’t mean to get all serious,” he murmured. He sucked in a sharp breath. “Aw, fuck!”
Blood bubbled from the middle finger on his left hand.
“Oh, crap!” I darted into the kitchen and started pulling open drawers, looking for a spare kitchen towel. When I finally found one, I wrapped it roughly around his finger and held it tight to the wound. Just then, a hiss and slight smoky smell from behind me told me the water was boiling over.
“Shit,” Hawk said. “Can you get that? The pasta? I don’t think you want blood in it.” He winced.
I dropped the entire box of pasta into the pot and set the timer. When I peeked inside the can of beans, it didn’t look like it had gotten any blood in it, so I gave them a quick rinse in the sink.
“Okay, these go on the pasta?”
“Yeah, and the capers.”
“The what?”
“Capers?” He laughed, motioning toward a small jar full of black things, too big to be caviar. “Little salty black things? And then could you cut that lemon in half, squeeze it over everything, and drizzle some of that olive oil over the whole thing?”
The timer for the pasta went off, and I grabbed the colander from above the sink and drained it. “You’re a task master,” I grinned, throwing all the ingredients together in the pot and tossing them with a fork he’d pulled out.
“Thanks,” he said, pulling the cloth away.
I leaned in to get a better look and saw the blood still welling sluggishly from the wound. “That’s deep.”
“It’ll be okay,” he said. “I’ve had worse. I’m a decent cook but a total klutz in the kitchen.”
I looked again and sucked in a breath at how drenched the towel was. “Hawk, are you sure you don’t want to go to the ER? You might need stitches or…”
“No,” he said, in a rougher voice. “I’m sure it’s fine. Look,” he said, lifting the towel and holding his finger out. “I think it’s already slowing down.”
I shook my head but shrugged. “If you’re sure… Where are the plates?” I asked, spinning in a half-circle.
“Cabinet right next to the oven.”
I piled a generous helping of pasta on the plates and brought them both over to the counter, pulling up a bar stool for each of us.
“Well, you just fit right in,” he laughed, taking a fork from me and twirling a mouthful of pasta on the end.
“Hey, I was too hungry to have you bleeding in my dinner,” I teased. I took a big bite. I was so hungry and the pasta tasted so good, I savored it on my tongue. “Damn, I am a good cook,” I said.
“Don’t give yourself too much credit. I assembled the ingredients.”
“Right and turned the burner on.”
“And filled the pot with water. I’m a total genius.”
The space should have been filled with an easy laugh. But that slight, soft smile of his left too many unanswered questions. I had no idea where I stood with the guy or what he even thought of me. But all I knew was that I wanted him to kiss me again and the thought made my cheeks burn.
I cleared my throat. “So, ah, for business class. You called it ‘Joey and Hawk’s.’ You want us to start a restaurant?”
“Yeah. Just thinking about the bar downstairs as a starter. I wanted to think of ways to make it really lucrative. You know, fine alcohol and stuff. Maybe build a stage for some of the alt-rock bands some of our patrons are part of — increase their personal investment.”
I shook my head, my mouth full of pasta. “Sansom is turning into a more hipster neighborhood. Class up the food a little bit — those root vegetables you made for Rowland House tonight were beautiful — and make it like bar and comfort food with a gourmet twist.”
Hawk put his fork down. “Okay, but are the guys who hang out there already going to appreciate that?”
“It’s not for the guys who hang out there already. We have to build our restaurant for who we know. College kids.”
Hawk looked hesitant, but now I was on a roll. “Get rid of the smoke, get some nice furniture. Have a painting party.”
Hawk laughed. “Yeah, but you’re not thinking. We don’t have any starting capital and not much to offer besides the same services we’ve been giving the same guys, night after night. How are we going to get a new market in there?”
I shrugged and took another mouthful of pasta. Chewed while I thought. “We could have themed hipster food nights. Artisan ice cream. Pasta bar. And we could charge tickets for people to come see the bands.”
Hawk’s face screwed up in thought, and he grabbed a notebook from the counter. His pen flew across the page, drawing plans and sketches for more stage area and seating.
I tried to focus on my pasta and not the fact that the way he bit his lip while sketching was adorable and totally sexy at the same time.
He raked his hand back through his hair, making it stand charmingly on end again. “Christ. This project was not the easiest pick I can see now.”
“Well,” I said. “I know he said no changing, but if we really can’t hack it…”
“Fuck it. No, we have to do the restaurant. Bar. Whatever.”
I snorted. “Why do you care? I mean, you’re just working there to get through school, right?”
His face fell.
“I….sort of. Well, not really.”
I titled my head to stare at him. “Every kid I know who works at a bar hates it. You can only serve drinks and breathe in smoke all night for so long.”
He shrugged like he’d just thought of it. “Not me. I’ll be doing it forever. I own the place. So this business plan could be useful someday.”
I paused with the fork halfway to my mouth. “Hold on. You own it?”
He nodded, leaning back with a satisfied smile.
I waved my fork half-f of pasta at him. “How exactly does a kid your age — twenty, twenty-one?”
“Twenty-three,” he replied.
“Okay. How do you own a bar?”
“It’s really half a bar. Gary, that guy who started all that shit the other night? He owns half of it.”
I shoved a bite of food in my mouth and nodded. “Okay….”
He looked away and blinked hard. “Long story short, my dad passed away. Car crash. A bad one.”
Holy hell. I’d made him tell me about two dead parents in one night. My voice dropped. “My God. I’m so sorry, Hawk.”