Page 17 of Hawk

I look at him and ask, “Is it okay if I cook breakfast? I haven’t had a decent meal in some time.”

“Neither have I.”

I grin.

He doesn’t.

I guess his answer was a confirmation that it was okay, so I find two pans – one for eggs, and the other for smoked sausage. I’m just now noticing there’s no toaster. I know there used to be one, but not sure what happened to it. Anyway, plain bread will have to do.

I whip the eggs in a bowl and scramble them to a perfect consistency. After I put the sausage in the skillet, Gideon finally breaks his silence by saying, “I’ll make sure you have my new number.”

“Okay.”

He whips out a chair at the table, sits and crosses his legs.

Crap! Now, I’m going to have to talk to him. And it’s not really the talking part that I’m worried about. It’s the looking him in the face while taking ownership of the fact that he’s not treating me the same way I treated him. I straight-up abandoned him. I had my reasons, but still, I left him when he needed me the most. Now, he’s rescuing me.

I fix him a plate and place it on the table in front of him. I say, “There’s not a toaster, so it’s just plain bread.”

“I don’t care anything about that. Bread is bread. Anything is better than what I had in the slammer.”

I take my plate and sit on the opposite side of the small table, opting for the adjacent seat instead of the one directly in front of him.

He starts eating. I glance up intermittently to watch him, but the last time I thought I’d sneak a glance, his eyes were beaming directly at me.

Busted!

“If you want to say something, just say it,” he tells me.

“I—I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“Then why were you staring at me?”

“Sorry,” I tell him. “It was a mistake.”

“A mistake…” he tsks. “Then, I’ll say something since I didn’t get the opportunity to say it to you—you know, after you hung up on me.”

“Gideon—”

“How about you let me talk now? Can you at least give me that much?”

Veins bulge at his temple as his chest moves in and out rapidly.

“Okay. Fine,” I reply, because what else was I going to say?

He says, “I know you hate the MC, but they weren’t the reason I went to prison. It was my brother.”

“I know. I heard the story.”

“From who?”

“From the streets. Everybody was talking about it.” I take a sip of coffee and say, “I just don’t understand why you would do something like that.”

“Because it was my brother. I was trying to watch his six.”

“I realize that, but you made a deal with me that you’d live the lifestyle you live and not get caught. I was planning for our future. You were living for the present.”

He clenches his jaw and asks, “And how’s planning for the future working out for you when you’re running from a man you thought was going to provide you with that? I am who I am, Ivy, but I never laid a hand on you!”