There was nothing sexual about the motion. He’d done it a thousand times over the years, and so did everyone else. But today, I couldn’t help but notice that Hawk’s shirt rode up, exposing a line of skin at his hip where his jeans dipped as his lean arm muscles flexed beneath his T-shirt and?—
“Christ on a Christmas cracker! Are you trying to set this place on fire?” Hawk nudged me out of the way as the edge of the kitchen towel I’d been using to grip the pan began smoking. He grabbed the safe end of the cloth, flung it into the steel sink behind him, and turned on the faucet. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he demanded, shooting me a glare over his shoulder.
You. You, you,you.
“Nothing,” I croaked. This was the first time he’d looked at me properly in days, and I drank him in—his big brown eyes snapping with emotion, his floppy hair, his sturdy shoulders and lean muscles, his adorably snubbed nose and delicate nose ring, the tiny scar under one eye that he’d gotten when he’d fallen asleep reading an old hardback copy ofMiddlemarchand the heavy book had dropped on his face. He was so familiar, yet I couldn’t help but look at him like a stranger in some ways. “I’m a little… out of it, I guess. I haven’t slept well. I’ve had stuff on my mind.”
Specifically, Hawk-related stuff.
Things between Hawk and I had been weird since our hike, and not only because the air seemed saturated with sex pheromones anytime he was around. After the town meeting,he’d avoided me—at least, as much as he could while still showing up every day for work during our busy summer season.
Oh, on the surface, he’d been a perfect employee—polite and agreeable as ever, twice as willing to work hard as anyone else I’d ever employed, with a smile for every person he encountered, always remembering that Norma Alvarez was allergic to pineapple and putting extra cherries in the kids’ Shirley Temples.
But the truth lay in everything hedidn’tsay. Ordinarily, Hawk and I talked daily about all kinds of things large and small. Though he could be shy and quiet with people he didn’t know well, he’d never hesitated to open up to me about whatever was on his mind—hilarious town gossip, worries about his family, concerns about the resort development, gushing praise for the pancakes he’d eaten for breakfast, rants about his latest read.
He was two hundred tons of passionate feeling packed into one small body—the most intenselyalivehuman I’d ever met—and like a comet, he left a trail of rainbow-hued emotions across my personal horizon whenever he came into my orbit. Our conversations were the soundtrack to my days, and my week had been much, much quieter without them.
Too quiet.
Dull.
I’d caught myself wanting to ask him questions or draw him out, but every topic seemed loaded with land mines. Talking about the Aerie development or the upcoming town decision was guaranteed to set him off. I couldn’t ask him if he’d made that date to go hiking with Simon Wentworth—which, seriously, was that not the prissiest name ever?—without seeming as overprotective as Webb or, worse, jealous, which I definitely wasnot.
And meanwhile, every moment I spent with him, and even the moments Ididn’t, were now electrically charged with Hawk-sex thoughts—two things that should never be uttered in the same sentence, let alone mentally hyphenated. I thought about him while cooking, while grocery shopping, while chatting with friends and neighbors in town, while shoving myself under the cramped bathroom vanity in my money pit of a house in an effort to restore running water to the sink.
I understood that he was embarrassed and maybe a little hurt. He’d made an offer and been shot down, which was never fun, even if there were no romantic feelings involved. If anyone else had done it to him, for any less compelling reason than my own, I’d have kicked their ass.
But the longer he remained licking his wounds, the more wildly off course our relationship veered. I wantedmyHawk back. I wanted our simple, easy friendship.
And in that moment, as I stood watching Hawk scowl at the now-soggy kitchen towel in the sink, I decided enough was enough.
“Are we still on for our usual hike tomorrow, Hawk?” I blurted.
Across the room, Crys let out an excited little squeak that made everyone look at her. “Oh, silly me! I just saw the time! It’s nearly eight. Katey, we should go now if you still want to hit Singles’ Trivia Night at the Bugle.”
Katey glanced down at the counter she’d been scrubbing. “Singles’ Trivia Night? Tonight?”
“Honey, of course. Remember we said we’d go?Now?”
“Well… no. But I guess we could if you?—”
“Now,” Crys repeated, linking her elbow with Katey’s and towing her out the back door. “We wanna get there early before all the cute singles get paired off with the smart ones. ’Night, guys!” she called over her shoulder.
Once they’d gone, the whole restaurant was silent aside from the steadyplink plink plinkof the faucet. Hawk’s shoulders were stiff, and it almost seemed like he was holding his breath.
“Hawk?” I stood and edged closer, careful not to touch anything sharp or flammable or poisonous, stopping a foot away from him. “What do you say? Nothing, you know… weird. Just you and me. Being normal. On a regular hike. Like we’ve always done.”
Great, Jack. Nothing sounds more normal than insisting something’s normal.
Hawk did the thing he always did when nervous. He stretched his neck by leaning his head from side to side. “Aregular, normalhike?” He sounded half-amused, half-annoyed. After a pause, he shrugged. “Sure. I was planning to go hiking tomorrow anyway.”
“Good.” I let out a relieved breath. “Good. It’s just… I missed talking to you this week. Things are so busy here. I haven’t heard about your latest adventures with the Mini Scouts or if you’ve gone hiking with… anyone. I don’t even know what you’ve been reading lately.”
As friendship test balloons went, this seemed incredibly pathetic, but after rubbing his lips together for a second, Hawk nodded to himself and glanced over his shoulder at me. “I just finished a good book, actually. Total keeper-shelf, reread material. It’s agayPride and Prejudiceretelling, so it’s Eli and Darcy this time. And it’s spicy.”
“Oh? Well, that’s?—”
He shut off the water and turned around, leaning back against the sink with his arms crossed over his chest, almost like a challenge. “Eli and Darcy are in a closet under the stairs at Rosings—you remember that’s where bossy-as-fuck Lady Catherine lives when she’s not gallivanting around trying to break the two of them up?”
