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“She’s not Morgan’s granddaughter. Craig Morgan wasn’t her father.”
I shrugged. Hawk had mentioned something like that yesterday to Ciro, asking about a paternity test. I hadn’t thought much of it then, and I didn’t care now. “Who the fuck cares? She had to put up with his abusive ass for years. Had to watch her mother get beat by the bastard. Then the old man snatches her and tries to marry her off to an evil sonofabitch. If anyone deserves that money, it’s Gracie.”
“Yeah. You’re right.” He raked his hands through his hair and turned to walk over to the vending machine. He pulled out a dollar from his pocket and punched a few numbers. I frowned as I watched him bend to retrieve whatever he’d gotten. When he straightened, he had a honeybun in his hands. “Maybe she’s hungry,” he muttered to himself.
“Hawk…what do you want me to tell Jenkins?”
“Tell him to do what he has to do. I’ll give her the money as a wedding present.” He gave me a weak grin as he headed for the door. “It’s about time I wifed that female.”
Chapter Fourteen
Felicity
Poor Gracie was sick for three days before the antibiotics started doing their job. By then she was weak and pretty pitiful. It showed me a new side of Hawk, though. A side I didn’t even know he had. He was tender with her, so loving. He held her hair when she threw up, he wiped her brow when she was soaking wet with sweat from her fever. He held her close when she slept and held on to her like he would never let her go.
It was petty to feel jealous of a sick girl, but I was.
Not of Hawk’s relationship with Gracie. I would never think of him like that, never love him in other way than as a brother. No, I was jealous of the way the biker treated his female. I’d always wanted that. Craved it. To have the man I loved take care of me like that, to hear those three little words he repeated to her over and over again that brought a special gleam to her brown eyes.
After Westcliffe’s beating I’d been in the hospital for over a week. He’d done some internal damage that had required surgery. The loss of my unborn child hadn’t been the only thing that he had taken from me that night. I’d lost my spleen and a foot of ruptured intestine. Over that week, Hawk stayed with me. Colt and Raider had come to visit just as often as Raven had.
Jet had remained absent.
I found out later that he had gone off the deep end when he found me unconscious. I’d been broken, bleeding, and nearly dead. He’d thought I was going to die, knew even then that our baby was gone. There had been too much blood for him to not know that the baby was gone. It was much later, though, when I found all of that out. After he’d beaten Westcliffe to death, after he’d avenged me and our baby.
But as I’d lain in that hospital room, crying myself to sleep while the nurses pumped powerful painkillers into me, I’d felt abandoned. I’d wanted him there, holding my hand. Wiping my brow. Kissing my cheek and whispering that it was going to be okay. That he loved me and we would get through it. Together. It didn’t happen, though. Hawk had been the one to hold the bucket when I’d cried so much that I’d thrown up. Hawk was the one who had wiped my brow, his jaw clenched and his fists balled up as he watched me fall apart.
So yeah, I was a little jealous of Gracie right then, but I didn’t let it show.
During the day, I stayed at the hospital with the others. Where Jet went, I went. He wouldn’t let me out of his sight. At night I went back to my aunt’s house and slept in Jet’s arms. We made love over and over again, barely getting any sleep each night. Before I fell asleep in the early hours of the morning, he would tell me he loved me and I would pretend to be asleep.
That wasn’t the only time he said those words. He told me at least once an hour, every hour, like he was timing himself and keeping up with how many times he said those damn words. Each and every time, my heart would stop—savor those them as they washed over me—but I never acknowledged them. I didn’t believe him when he said them. I didn’t understand why he was saying them now, anyway. They weren’t necessary and I honestly didn’t want to hear it.
If anything they pissed me off.
Hearing “I love you” from Jet Hannigan was a dream I’d once had. Ah, hell. It was something I still dreamed about. But only if it was true and I knew that it wasn’t. He couldn’t.
Could he?
No, of course he couldn’t. Didn’t. I scoffed at the mere thought and chided myself for hoping—if just a little.
Gracie was better now. She hadn’t completely gotten her strength back, but thankfully the sepsis had cleared up and after two weeks in bed at home, she’d finally gone back to work—something Hawk wasn’t pleased about in the least. She’d spent over two weeks in the hospital and when the doctors had finally released her, Ciro had let us use the Vitucci jet to get home in. I’d been sad to leave my aunt, but I knew I belonged back in California. In Creswell Springs.
I’d always belonged there. It was home.
It was getting easier and easier to be away from Emmie and her family now. The pain of missing them was a dull ache, but I only thought of them a few times throughout the day. Raven had kept me busy from the moment we’d gotten back from Connecticut, and with both Lexa and Max fighting for my attention, missing Mia and Jagger wasn’t nearly as bad.
With Lexa off to preschool and everyone else gone to work since the lockdown was over, it was just Raven and the baby with me this morning. My friend ran around the kitchen cleaning up after the tsunami that was the Hannigan house after everyone had eaten breakfast.
Max sat on my lap as we watched his mother finishing up the dishes by hand. It was weird for me to see Raven so domesticated. She’d never taken care of everyone before I’d left. Motherhood had changed her, in a good way, and I liked it. This new Raven was still hard as nails, but she was softer too. More openly affectionate.
“How was Ciro?” she asked as she set the last pan in the drainer and wiped her hands on a dish towel.
I pressed my lips together as I thought back on the little bit of time I’d actually spent with my cousin over the last two weeks. “Busy,” was all I could come up with to explain how he was. “Apparently being a scary Mafioso street soldier for Vito Vitucci is a busy job.”
Pouring herself a cup of coffee, Raven sat at the table across from me. She had a slight gleam in her green eyes and I swallowed a groan. “Did he mention me?” she asked mischievously.
I rolled my eyes at her and lifted Max in the air enough so that I had to look up into his eyes. Bash’s eyes. “Did you know that your mother nearly caused a war, Max? Hmm?” Max giggled like I was telling him a funny joke that cracked him up. “She was seventeen years old and using my favorite cousin to get back at your big, scary daddy. Mr. Mafia Man and Daddy nearly killed each other.”
