Hawk scowled at me some more then he stepped away from Skull but demanded to me, “Come here.”

He may have stepped away but none of the tenseness left the room and I briefly debated the merits of running for my life rather than approaching Hawk but when his eyebrows went up I decided to take my chances and approach Hawk.

The second I did, his hand hooked around my neck, he yanked me toward him so my head collided with his chest, his arm locked around my shoulders and his other hand wrapped around my wrist. He pulled it up so it and its red welts and bits of broken skin were level with Skull’s eyes.

“This is on you,” he said quietly and released my wrist but his fingers slid down and curled around my hand so he could pull it around his middle and he left it at the side of his waist. “She loses sleep, that’s on you. I lose my man, that’s on you. Either of those last two happen, I’ll make it my mission that you never forget they’re on you. We clear?”

Apparently they weren’t for Skull returned, “My play was allowed to go down, I woulda kept her safe and I would have saved her sister.”

Hawk pulled in his lips and bit them at the same time his arm tightened around me and I knew both of these were efforts at control. What he didn’t do was respond so Skull’s eyes came to me.

“I would have kept you safe,” he repeated.

“And I would have appreciated a choice in whether you had to expend that effort,” I replied.

“Gwen, the work I do saves lives but don’t think you watched this play out and can mistake me for a man who doesn’t understand that those lives I’m savin’ are worth the exchange of a good woman,” Skull returned.

“Thanks for that but if that’s true, how do you explain Brett?” I shot back and Hawk’s arm got even tighter around my shoulders.

“Because,” Skull said gently, his face had changed, he still looked rough, rock ‘n’ roll, ultra-cool hot guy but the way his face changed and his voice gentled, his hotness quotient, I, unfortunately and automatically due to vast amounts of study on the subject, noted entered the stratosphere, “he works for your man so I know he’s a man who puts on his boots every day understanding what happened to him today is always an eventuality and, knowin’ that, he’ll have planned for it. And I also know, he works for your man, he had that choice you’re pissed I didn’t give you, he wouldn’t have even taken the time to blink before he decided he was willin’ to take his chances to play my play.”

Shit. I was guessing he had a point there.

I decided to stop talking. Skull waited for me to say more and there was something about that, him giving me the time to speak my piece, say what I had to say that I didn’t want to admit, because he was not my favorite person, was nice.

And it was then I realized that the entire time he had me in that filthy apartment, he actually was standing guard protecting me, but in a good way. And the reason he looked so unhappy wasn’t because I scratched his arms. It was because he was a good guy who, for the greater good, was enduring a life pretending to be a bad guy. He’d been involved in an operation where one on his side went down and, for that greater good, he found himself in a circumstance which was much like I suspected many circumstances he’d come up against the last year and a half in order to maintain his cover. He had to make a decision, let it happen and was powerless to do anything about it.

And I had to give it to him. That would make me unhappy too.

When I didn’t speak, he tore his gaze from me, his eyes caught Hawk’s for a brief moment, he turned and disappeared.

Lawson filled his space and I looked up at him.

“Sweetheart, I hate to say it, but I gotta take your statement.”

I sighed.

Then I remarked, “We have to quit meeting like this.”

Hawk curled me closer into his side.

Lawson smiled.

Chapter Twenty-Five

You Promised

I opened my eyes.

There was mostly darkness in Hawk’s loft but a soft light was coming from somewhere close.

I was in his bed and he wasn’t. There was no weight, no warmth, no presence. Hawk had a presence. Even if he wasn’t touching you, you knew he was there.

This meant he wasn’t there.

Earlier we all waited at the hospital until Betsy wandered out of Brett’s room. She looked shell-shocked, I knew this and I didn’t even know her but it wasn’t hard to read. Hawk, Dad, Meredith, Elvira and me, along with Betsy and Brett’s parents, all waited until the doctors did their rounds and told Betsy there was no change, he was stable but critical and she should go home and come back in the morning.

Even though her parents were there, Hawk told Dad to take me and he took Betsy home. Her family may have wanted to quibble but Hawk, being Hawk, they didn’t. Elvira followed them because she was spending the night with Betsy.

Dad and Meredith took me to Dad’s friend, Rick’s house because Meredith and Dad were staying with them until their house was livable again.

Rick’s wife Joanie and Meredith tried to get me to eat but I said I’d wait for Hawk. He finally showed, Joanie whipped up some grilled cheese sandwiches under Hawk’s edgy, impatient stare, she wrapped them in foil, put them in a bag, hugs and kisses were exchanged and Hawk whisked me off to his lair.

On the way he didn’t talk, not even a word. I figured this was because his man was down, lying in a hospital bed, condition critical and his unconscious body was going about its duty of fighting for his life. I figured Hawk was hoping Brett’s body would win that battle because I hoped the same. Because this stuff filled his head the same way it was filling mine, and I knew Brett a lot less than Hawk did, I figured he needed to brood so I let him.

When we entered the lair, suddenly finding myself starving, I went direct to the kitchen while Hawk turned on lights. I unwrapped the sandwiches and put them on plates, cutting them on the diagonal. Hawk went to the fridge and got a bottle of water.

When he closed the fridge, I offered him his sandwich with a quiet, “Baby.”

He looked at me, looked at the plate, took the plate, went direct to the garbage bin, opened the pedal with the toe of his boot and dumped the sandwich straight in. Then he dropped the plate to the counter. Then I watched him prowl to his desk, turn on the laptop, turn on the desk lamp, sit down, snap open the top to the water and down a huge gulp.

As I watched this I realized I did not know him at all. I’d known him for a year and a half but I’d only been getting to know him for a week.