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“Are we dating?”
The car purred, but that was nothing to the rumble taking place inside of me under the weight of his glance.
“Don’t you get it by now?” he said. His eyes were both soft and intense at once.
“Get what?”
“How I feel about you.”
My mouth parched. I was wrapped in the heat of him, in the tug of his gaze, in the lack of oxygen between us.
He’d dropped hints every time we were together, but he’d never said anything outright, and I was suddenly starving for the words.
“How do you feel about me?”
“I’ve been into you from the minute we met. You’re careful. Intentional. Feisty. Something told me you didn’t open your heart to just anyone—you were selective, and though I’ve resolved to keep any woman from getting too close to me, I wanted the privilege.”
“I find that hard to believe,”I said. “You seemed like the complete opposite. Like you have all kinds of relationships with women. That’s one reason I pushed you away for so long. I didn’t want to be just another fling to you.”
“You were never that.”
“Why keep yourself from love? Why sign a pact like you did?”
“You remember how Addie asked what my deepest held secret was during truth or dare back on the plane?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you want to know the answer?”
I held my breath. This was the last turn I expected our conversation to take.
“Here’s my secret: my parents are still together, but they hate each other. In fact, I’ve distanced myself from them as well because I can’t stand to see it.”
As he mentioned it, I realized he hadn’t told me much about his parents at all. He’d talked about his sister and showed me pictures of her and her kids, but nothing about his parents.
“You mean they fell out of love?”
“I’m not sure they were ever in it to begin with,” he said. “They married for the advantages of it, I guess. But Dad has had all these affairs on the side, and Mom knows about them but stays married to him so they can keep up appearances.”
“Hawk, I’m so sorry.”
“I never wanted to be like that, you know? I guess I’ve had this deep-seated fear of repeating their mistakes, so when Sean presented The Pact and said we had to sign it to be a part of Sigma Phi Rho, I had no qualms about doing so. Ifigured by eschewing marriage, I could break the cycle and avoid subjecting future generations to the same challenges my sister and I have had to deal with.”
I couldn’t imagine the pain he and his sister must have endured over the years. It made me think of my own parents, of the cute things Dad used to do for Mom and that she did for him too.
“Not all marriages are like that,” I said. “Before my mom died, my parents were really happy.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “Seeing Gabby and Adrian so caught up in their bliss, talking to Adrian about how he’d do anything for Gabby, it’s just made me think. And then you having this hold over me… No other woman has done that to me before. No other woman has made me feel the way you do.”
I swallowed. I’d never had a man express himself like this to me before. He was…declaring himself, and I was here for it.
“You don’t love easily,” Hawk went on, “but you love hard and deeply, and I think that’s why you’re so careful about who you open your heart to. You are a beautiful woman, a beautiful person, and I’m not ready to let you go anytime soon.”
He took my face in his hands, and that touch felt as though it was the only thing keeping me together.
I went from solid to liquid. I lost myself in the sky of his eyes.
“And if anything happens to you, especially because of me, I’ll make them rue the day.”
