Page 6 of Hawk's Secret
BREE
Two weeks in, and Angel's Rest felt like mine.
Not in any way that mattered and definitely not in any way that I'd earned. But the rhythm of the place had settled into my body the way music does when you've heard it enough times, automatic, unconscious, my hands reaching for the right glass before my brain caught up. I knew the bourbon Hank liked best was the third bottle from the left. I knew the trucker who came in on Tuesdays wanted his beer cold enough to hurt and his burger burned black. I knew which regulars tipped and which ones didn't and which ones thought a wink counted as currency.
The brothers were becoming familiar. Not friends, not yet, but presences I could read. They had their habits, their routines, and I observed it all. I served them. Chatted with them. Laughed at the right moments. They were starting to like me. Trust me.
Which made what I was doing worse.
I was good at the other job too. The one that sat in my stomach every night when I locked up, heavy, rotten, a weight I carried home in the dark. I wasn't interrogating anyone. I wasn't asking questions that would raise flags. I was just listening. Keeping my ears open while I wiped down the bar, while I stacked glasses, while I leaned against the counter and let theconversations wash over me. The brothers talked. They talked at the bar, at the pool table, in the back booth when they forgot I was close enough to hear. Fragments. Enough to piece together who was at the compound and when, which runs were coming up, what routes they favoured.
I passed it to Colt at our next meeting. A car park off the highway this time, midnight, his bike ticking in the cold. He took the information the way he took everything from me. With a smile that made my skin crawl and a look that said he owned me and we both knew it.
He wanted more. Faster, better, specifics. When I told him I couldn't push harder without raising suspicion, he grabbed my arm. His fingers dug in above my elbow, grinding into the muscle, and he leaned in close enough that I could feel his breath on my face.
"You'll figure it out," he said. "Or I'll find someone else to motivate you. Let’s not forget what’s at stake here.”
He let go. I could feel the bruise forming before I got back to my car. The next morning I wore long sleeves to work and told myself the ache was a reminder. Of what I was. Of what I'd let myself become.
And then there was Hawk.
He was at the bar almost every night now. Back booth, whiskey, his eyes on the room. On me. I couldn't tell if it was club business or something else, and the not knowing was driving me out of my mind. He'd sit there for hours, barely drinking, barely talking, just present. A wall of quiet, steady focus that I felt on my skin every time I turned my back to pour a drink.
The way he looked at me had changed. Or maybe I was finally letting myself see what had always been there. It wasn't the way a man looks at his sister's friend. It was slower than that. Heavier. The kind of look that tracked me across a room and stayed on me a beat too long, the kind that made me fumble aglass because I could feel it between my shoulder blades before I turned around and confirmed it.
Fifteen years. Fifteen years of this man, of watching him from the safe distance of a joke nobody questioned. It had started as a crush. Sixteen years old, heart in my throat every time he walked into a room. Crushes burn out but this one hadn't. It had grown roots, sunk deep, turned into something steady and permanent that lived in me the way breathing did. I didn't just want Hawk. I'd been in love with him for so long I couldn't remember what it felt like before. And now I was standing six feet from him every night with a bar between us and the joke wasn't funny anymore. The feeling was so loud I was terrified someone would hear it.
A delivery camein on a Thursday. Cases of bottles stacked on the back porch, too many for me to carry alone. Hawk was there before I asked, the way he was always there before I asked, appearing in doorways and corners with that quiet, unhurried certainty that made me feel simultaneously safe and completely unravelled.
We carried the cases through to the storeroom behind the bar. Close quarters, narrow corridor, his body taking up most of the space. I was hyper-aware of every inch of him, the width of his shoulders in the doorway, the way his arms flexed under the weight of the crate, the heat coming off his body in the cramped space. Our hands brushed on the last case. His knuckles against my fingers, a second of contact, and the jolt went through me so hard I fumbled the box.
He caught it. Caught me. One arm around my waist, steadying me, the case braced against his hip with his otherhand. For a second I was pressed against his chest, the solid wall of him, and his arm was tight around me and his heartbeat hammered through his shirt, fast, faster than it should have been for a man just carrying boxes.
I looked up. He looked down. And whatever he saw on my face made his jaw tighten, his arm flex against my waist, a fraction of a second where his hand pressed harder into the small of my back before he let go.
"Careful," he said. His voice was rough.
"Yeah," I said. “Thanks."
He stepped back. Put the case down and left without another word.
I stood in the storeroom with my back against the shelves and the heat of his arm still burning through my shirt, and I thought, very clearly,I am so not over this crush.
Friday night.Late. The bar had emptied out slowly, the regulars drifting home, the last trucker settling his tab. The brothers that had been in the bar had gone through the back door to the lodge an hour ago.
He was still here though.
His glass was empty and he hadn't refilled it. He was just sitting there, watching me, and the weight of it pressed against my skin. I'd been feeling it all night. Every time I'd looked up, he'd been looking back, and the thing between us was so charged the air felt different. Two weeks of this. Two weeks of his eyes on me across a crowded room, two weeks of near-misses, almost-touches, and two weeks of a heat that kept building with nowhere to go. The delivery scene in the storeroom had beenthree days ago and I could still feel his arm around my waist when I closed my eyes.
"You don't have to stay," I said. As casually as I could muster. "I'm almost done."
He didn't move. Didn't answer. Just watched me from a booth with those steady, dark eyes that saw everything and gave away nothing. Except tonight they were giving away something. I could see it from across the room, the tension in his shoulders, the way his hand rested on the table with his fingers slightly curled. He wasn't relaxed. He hadn't been relaxed all night.
I finished wiping down the counter, started on the glasses. The jukebox had run out of quarters and the silence was thick, the kind that makes a room feel smaller.
I heard the booth creak. His boots on the floor, slow, unhurried. I kept my eyes on the glass in my hand, on the cloth, on anything that wasn't him walking toward me. He came to the bar and set his empty glass on the counter. The sound of it, glass on wood, was loud in the quiet room.
He didn't go back to the booth. He stayed, standing on the other side of the bar, his hands resting on the edge. I was close enough to see the scars on his knuckles, the tendons shifting under his skin. Close enough that when I looked up, his face was right there, inches away across the narrow bar top.
