“Why do you think that is?” he asks, although I am sure he knows. He is just getting me to admit it.
“Hawk,” I whisper.
He nods.
“This place screams at me that he is not here. Hawk lived here, slept here. I saw him every day. I stand at the bar and just wait for him to come through the door.”
“But you know it’s not gonna happen.”
“I know, but I can’t help wishing for it.” My hands start to shake, and an urge to snort starts to take over.
He grabs my hands again. “Work through it, baby. You got this,” he says encouragingly. “Tell me how things are with you and Emma.”
“Getting better?” I say, a little unsure. “I’m trying, Sainte, really I am. Today when the baby kicked, I saw how much they love each other. I never really noticed it before. He’s never coming back to me.”
He shakes his head. “No, darlin’, he’s not.”
“And neither is Hawk.”
He shakes his head again.
“And I’m alone.” Before I can say any more, he places his finger onto my lips to silence me.
“That is where you are wrong. You have me and all the boys in this club, their old ladies, Emma, and you still have Ice. They all love you, and the sooner you realize it, the easier this addiction will be to beat. I promise. We’re all here to help. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.”
“I didn’t ask for help, and I got stuck with you,” I say sarcastically.
“Admit it, you’re having fun, right?” he asks teasingly with a big, wide-ass grin on his face. I smile. I have to say, the asshole is growing on me.
“I guess,” I say reluctantly.
“What I’m trying to say about help is you don’t always have to get it from me. A perfect example would be earlier in the kitchen with Emma. She loves you, Honey, more than you realize. Don’t be afraid to talk to her. She may not have experienced what you are going through, but she will never let you down.”
As his words sink in, I think to myself,He is so right. I have never had a friend like Emma.“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure, you can ask me anything. I’m an open book.”
“When you first came here, you and Emma were inseparable. What was up with that?”
He laughs. “Well, Ice brought me here to watch over her, so she was my priority.”
I cock my head. “Nah, Sainte, it was more than you just being her bodyguard, or protector, or whatever the hell you all want to call it.”
He laughs again. “You really want to know?”
“Yes, the truth. Remember, no lies.”
He nods. “Yes, I remember. Well, a lot of that hanging around with Emma was to make you jealous. Emma is my cousin. She didn’t know it then, but she does now.”
Okay, now there is just too much information to process. First, he says he wanted to make me jealous, then says Emma is his cousin. Wait, what? “Your cousin?”
“Yeah, it’s a long story, but Ice and I go way back to when he was a kid. I spent a lot of time in juvie, and Emma was too young to remember me, so she didn’t know until Ice and I told her.”
“So you were a bad kid?”
He cocks his eyebrow. “Not a bad kid, a mischievous kid,” he says to clarify. “I pushed the limits. Sometimes I got away with it, other times I ended up paying for it.”
“And now you are a Mafia hit man.”
