I blinked. Then I asked, “War?”
“War, me and my boys against the Chaos MC.”
“What?” I asked. “Why?”
“Babe,” he stated and stopped a few feet away from me. “You were locked in Tack’s room at the Compound. That’s a declaration. My boys and I had to infiltrate it to get you out. This will not go over well.”
“Um… I think you may be misinterpreting things. See, Tack was there when someone shot up my living room and I think he was trying to protect me.”
It must be said, though not to Hawk, that I thought this and I did it hopefully so I wouldn’t have a nervous breakdown. I thought other things too, things akin to what Hawk was saying but I didn’t let them have too much of my headspace considering they’d give me a nervous breakdown. I’d never had one but I was pretty sure nervous breakdowns were things to be avoided.
“Even Kane Allen, he decides to play a Good Samaritan, is gonna drop the victim of a drive-by at the police station. Not claim her as his and ride out to hunt down the perpetrators unless he’s,” he leaned forward, “claiming her as his.”
Uh-oh.
“Okay, I can see that as bad but he’s doing it. I made no such declaration.”
“Then you wanna tell me why Tack was there during the drive-by?”
“He was at my house when I got home this morning.”
“So?”
“He wanted to talk.”
“So?”
“So, he promised not to say anything to freak me out so I agreed to talk.”
“All right, Sweet Pea, let’s go back to why you weren’t somewhere else this morning, for instance,” he took a threatening step forward, “here.”
Uh-oh.
“Hawk –”
I stopped talking when he took another threatening step forward and seeing as his legs were so long, this meant he was close. Too close. Really scary close.
“Yesterday,” he said in a terrifying, quiet voice and got closer so I slid away from the column and took a step back. “I left here,” he kept coming at me so I kept stepping back, “and when I left here,” I kept moving, he kept coming, “you were sweet and cute.”
I hit bookshelves and was forced to stop. Hawk didn’t stop. He pinned me in, his head tipping down to look at me but he didn’t touch me. He pinned me in with the sheer force of his badassness.
“Then,” he went on, “yesterday afternoon, I get this f**kin’ note with a f**kin’ check. The note, I don’t get. The check, babe, the check is a smack in the f**kin’ face.”
Hmm. Maybe I didn’t think that out very well.
“So I check the device on your car and see you’ve holed up with a cop,” he continued.
“You have a device on my car?” I whispered and his scary, angry face turned scarier and angrier so I shut my mouth.
“I come home,” he stayed with his subject, “and I got a message from Gayle. So I get the note because I get that you heard her message and then you listened to some bullshit that your friend fed you and you didn’t pick up the phone or get your ass to my place so you could talk to me. You went off half-cocked and, doin’ it, pissed me way, the f**k, off.”
All right, so we were on this subject then we had to talk about this subject.
“I know about Your Days,” I whispered.
“Yeah? You do?”
“Yeah,” I kept whispering, “I do. And I know I’m filler.”