The way Hawk used to look at me. Stealing glances from across the room as he stood in the shadows, his gaze running up and down the length of me, deliberately slow, drinking me in.

The way he was looking at me now.

I’d forgotten how exposed and vulnerable that look had once made me feel, yet at the same time, how wanted. Needed. And excited.

How free.

Feeling emotion welling up inside me, I swallowed hard and whispered, “I never thought I’d see you again either.”

A lengthy silence followed my words as Hawk’s gaze bored into mine, and I dropped my gaze to my feet, suddenly unable to face him.

I didn’t know what I’d been thinking. After my blowout with Jase, I’d had it all worked out in my head that once Hawk was home again, I’d tell him how I felt, how I’d always felt. And somehow that would make things right again, that the ever-widening span of years that we’d kept our distance from each other would instantly close.

That wasn’t the case. If anything, now that he was here and conscious, I felt even more awkward than before. As if my realized feelings were new ones, instead of the old and buried ones they were, and I was afraid of what would happen if I let them blossom, let them grow. Would he return them, feeling the same? Or had too much time passed, and would he toss them away?

“I’m sorry, Dorothy,” Hawk said, breaking the silence.

Surprised, I lifted my eyes to find his expression had fallen further, and his features were creased with pain.

“What I did,” he said, “fuckin’ with you, takin’ what wasn’t mine, that was wrong. I never said I was sorry ’cause I thought feelin’ sorry for what I did meant I felt sorry that we had our boy, but I know that ain’t true now. And I am sorry. Most of all, I’m sorry I left. If I never would have left, you wouldn’t have been shot. I would have been there and you would have been safe.”

I stared at him, speechless. Hawk had always been a man of very few words.

“I pushed you away,” I eventually said. “I don’t blame for you leaving.”

“We both made mistakes,” he said.

A small, nervous laugh escaped me. What was he trying to say? That he didn’t regret Christopher, but everything else? That he regretted me and us?

“I thought you didn’t believe in mistakes,” I said, hating the tremor in my voice that betrayed my feelings.

“I’m forty-five years old.” He lifted one brow. “Got a kid of my own too. It’s about time I took responsibility for my own actions, don’t you think?”

I pressed my lips together, willing my tears not to betray me now. Staring at Hawk, I shook my head. “I don’t understand, what are you trying to say?”

His eyes narrowed, his brow drew together, causing his forehead to furrow even more. “I’m sayin’ that I’m sorry, that’s—”

“Stop it,” I cried out, unable to hold it in another second.

It was all too much. Not knowing what had become of him, then learning who he truly was. The agonizing wait to find out his fate, and the realization of my feelings for him. Then seeing him beaten, bloody, and broken, and all the while I was caring for him, envisioning the moment when I would tell him the truth. And now this, an apology from him, telling me he regretted what we’d done, it was all too much and released a torrential downpour of emotions that I was powerless to stop.

It seemed that the floodgates of emotion that Jase had forced open, had yet to fully close.

“You never showed up!” I shouted, swiping at the tears on my cheeks. “You never showed up and I kept calling and I called Eva and then Deuce called me back but he wouldn’t tell me anything, no one would tell me anything and then I had to find somewhere for Christopher to stay and then my flights were canceled and I had to drive all the way home in a snowstorm and Deuce told me about you and who you are and I just . . . I just, I didn’t know what to think, none of it seemed real, and then I thought Preacher wasn’t going to help but he did and then I beat up Jase and I told him I loved you and then he left and then Deuce left and they brought you back and I was here when the doctor came, and Hawk, oh my God, your leg, it was so bad, really infected, and you were so sick and you looked so bad, you were so beat up, and I thought you were going to die, even though everyone kept telling me you weren’t going to die, and I couldn’t understand anything you were saying and I was so scared that I was going to lose you again, that I wasn’t going to have the chance to make things right and I couldn’t . . . I didn’t . . .”

**•

Dorothy kept going and going and fucking going, flinging word after word at him like a pitching machine. Like one of those dolls with the strings and after one too many pulls, the string snaps off and the doll just keeps fucking talking and talking and talking . . .

She’d always fucking talked too much, especially when she was upset. Hawk could recall countless nights when he’d been forced to listen to her ramble on about Jase, forced to watch her cry, emotionally beating herself up over and over again for reasons he’d early on stopped trying to comprehend. He’d simply fucked her to shut her up and it had worked . . . for a while.

But she’d chosen Jase over him, and then she’d been shot, and the silence that had followed had been fucking deafening.

And, fuck, after all these years of the cold shoulder, barely speaking to each other, feeling like strangers in the same room, he hadn’t realized just how much he’d missed her. Not just being with her, but her. All of her. Even this, her nonsensical rambling, her inability to express absolutely anything without being so motherfucking emotional. And even then, it was still a garbled mess. He’d missed every damn inch, all five foot nothing of her, the never-ending tears and all the baggage she’d always clung to, insisted on dragging along behind her.

Christ, they were both a disaster. Her with her heart exposed for all the world to see, and him with his locked up so tight, it had taken a random drunken fuck, some blackmail, a pregnancy, a gunshot wound to the head, years of emptiness, a kidnapping, and a few more gunshots for him to sort his fucking shit out.

What a goddamn waste.

The silver lining? She’d said she loved him. Last night and again just now, in between something about beating up Jase and Deuce leaving, she’d sure as shit had said she’d loved him, as well as admitting her fear of losing him again. It was a surprising and not so surprising revelation. There had been times that he’d suspected her feelings had run deeper than she’d let on, but she’d never admitted it and so he hadn’t either.

But none of that shit mattered anymore. He was sick of living in the past, of living in a future going nowhere. And he didn’t want to look back anymore.

“Dorothy.”

She just kept talking.

“Dorothy!”

Still, she kept talking. And, goddamn it, if he didn’t love the shit out of this woman, he would most certainly kill her.

“DOROTHY!” His hand flew to his throat as he instantly regretting yelling. Although it seemed to do the trick; she was no longer babbling but instead staring at him.

“For fuck’s sake,” he rasped, rubbing his throat. “Shut up.”

“Shut up,” she whispered, her face crumpling. “Shut up? You’re seriously going to talk to me like—”

“Yes,” he gritted out, cutting her off. “I’m seriously goin’ to tell you to shut up and get your ass over here.” He attempted moving himself, wincing when the pain in his leg intensified, and decided to hold out his arm to her instead. “Just come here,” he said, gesturing with his hand. “Just shut up and come here.”

A long pause followed, and then she stammered, “I should get dressed.”

“No!” he yelled, growing increasingly frustrated with her and the fact that he couldn’t get off the damn bed to go get her himself. “Get the fuck over here!”

It was slow going, but eventually she put one foot in front of the other. He waited with his arm outstretched as she moved toward him at a snail’s pace, trying to maintain patience when he felt anything but.

She paused at the edge of the bed, her face still flushed and red from crying as she gripped the towel to her chest. Her gaze skittered up and down his body, then across the bed and even farther, toward the window as she looked anywhere but directly at him.

Realizing what was happening, that Dorothy was being her own worst enemy, he released a heavy sigh and let his arm drop to the mattress.

“Woman,” he said softly. “Stop fuckin’ thinkin’ so damn much.”

Her gaze lifted, meeting his, and they stared at each other, her green eyes filling with tears, his body itching with the need to bring her close to feel her against him.

And also with the need to pee. Christ, he had to piss. Great fucking timing too. He’d waited twenty years for her to admit she had feelings for him, and for almost eight just for the chance to touch her again, and he wasn’t going to let an untimely bodily function fuck this all up.

“I thought I was going to lose you,” she whispered tearfully. “I thought I’d never get another chance.”

“Thought you woulda figured this shit out by now,” he said. “That as long as I’m breathin’, I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

“I know that you were there . . . for Christopher,” she said, her voice small, unsure.

“For both of you,” he corrected her, dropping his gaze to the necklace. “I’ve always been there for both of you.”

With one hand still clutching her towel, she reached up with the other and again clutched the tiny pendant that hung from her neck.

Remembering Christopher’s attempts at trying to convince him that what she really wanted for Christmas was a new video game console, Hawk almost smiled. Almost. But knowing Dorothy, she would misconstrue his smile for something else entirely.