AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yes, you are. Why?” His frown is still in place, but there’s concern in his eyes. “Did anyone hurt you? Did I hurt you?”
You have.
No.
I don’t know.
Everything hurts these days.
Someone knocks on the bedroom door, and Hawk doesn’t even turn around. “Not now.”
“Hawk, we should talk,” Storm says. I can see his vague shape at the opening, his dark hair, and I remember the way he held Raylin and touched her belly, and God, will I ever stop crying today?
“Not. Now.” He puts his hands on either side of me, bracketing me against the wall. “Talk to me.”
Oh God, he’s looking at me like I mean something to him, like he cares. I can’t take it.
Also, I don’t want to talk about it.
“Told you, it’s nothing,” I lie, duck under one muscular arm and head toward the bedroom door. “We should go.”
Chapter Seventeen
Hawk
Something’s off, and how the hell can I fix it if she won’t tell me? If she won’t trust me with it. I thought we were past that, past the barriers and the façades. I mean, she saw me at my fucking lowest. Saw me beaten and damn nearly incoherent, saw me violent and half-mad with thirst and despair.
And I hurt her. Hurt her trying to drive her away.
Fuck!
“Layla.” She’s out of the room already, and I limp after her, only to remember I’m stark naked, and this isn’t my house. More people live in it, and they don’t need to see my dick or my bruises. Plus, Storm will kill me if his girlfriend sees my dick, because she’ll inevitably start comparing us, and he’ll hate me for being so much bigger.
A glance around the room shows me a stack of clothes, pants and a T-shirt, so I grab them and throw them on before hurrying out.
“Layla.” I make my way down a long corridor, the tiles cool under my bare feet. “Can you just wait for a sec? Hell.”
She’s nowhere to be seen, so I continue down the passage. Never been here before. Storm bought it like two months ago and was all mysterious about it. I get that he wanted a safe place for Raylin, but he’s been really secretive lately, and I dunno what the hell’s going on with him.
We never kept secrets from each other before, damn him. All our childhood, all up to now, we told each other everything, just like brothers.
And then you grew up, I remind myself, and became separate entities, instead of a three-headed monster. Storm has every right not to tell you everything that’s going on in his mind, even less between him and his girl.
I go through a small hall with my photos hanging on the walls. I blink at that, because Storm didn’t say he bought any of my photos—I’d have damn well given them to him—and come on, that’s something he could’ve told me, right?
Jeez, the pain in my ribs makes me cranky. That must be it.
And the fact that my girl won’t talk to me, won’t open up, and the fact I’m not even sure she wants to be my girl.
Fuck.
I pass by a kitchen with two plates on the table, and then a patio with a Jacuzzi—which gives me lots of ideas involving Layla and my dick, and yeah, not now, dammit—as I search for her.
I enter a living room with a dining room on one side. There are Storm and Raylin and Rook—and Layla.
Relief surges through me. I stride toward her—well, a sort of limping stride, I guess—and sink beside her on the sofa.
“Hey.” All eyes are on me as I reach for her hand, but she clenches it in her lap. “Lay?”
