Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 86455 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86455 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
Hawk slammed his keys down on the workbench. “Nothing!” he snapped. “Nothing’s going on. I just- I screwed up. It won’t happen again.”
“What won’t happen again?” Easy asked cautiously, taking note of Hawk’s foul mood.
Hawk sighed. They were all looking at him. He wasn’t getting out of it, not after his and Tildy’s little display. “I slept with her,” he mumbled.
“Come again?” Tex replied.
Hawk grimaced. “I slept with her,” he repeated more loudly.
“When?” Shooter asked.
Hawk hesitated. He wasn’t about to say they’d just finished going at each other like alley cats--in an alley no less. He hedged. “The first time was the night I picked her up at Maria’s when she was trashed.”
“The first time?” Easy asked incredulous.
“You mean you were Tildy’s first time,” Tex clarified, looking at Hawk with a sharp, disapproving glare.
Hawk felt indignant. “Well, she was just going to give it away! Give it to some asshole who would’ve hurt her!”
Shooter crossed his arms in front of his broad chest. “Why do I get the feeling that’s exactly what did happen?”
“I didn’t hurt her!” Hawk insisted.
“Oh, really?” Shooter asked. “And that’s why she’s showing up to the garage spitting nails and ready to get into a slap fight with you? Because you were such a gentleman?”
“Jesus, Hawk,” Tex groaned. “Did you just walk out on her afterward? Did you just bang her in the truck and dump her ass at her front door?”
“No!” Hawk shouted. “Not that it’s any of your damn business, but she left me, okay? Not the other way around.”
“After you did what?” Tex asked icily.
Hawk paused. “Nothing,” he muttered.
“Nothing,” Tex repeated in a way that clearly indicated nothing meant something.
“She didn’t like it,” he admitted.
Tex looked at Shooter, then back to Hawk. He frowned. “Yeah, okay. Understandable. You’re not a small guy and she’s definitely a small girl. No way around that for the first time.”
“How drunk was she?” Shooter demanded.
Hawk bristled at that. “Not drunk at all!” he spat. “She’d slept it off and woke up later. Fuck you, if you think that I would do some shit like that!”
“I don’t,” Shooter replied. “I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on here.”
Hawk was close to either walking out or taking on all three of them. “She-” Fuck. He hated feeling like he was on trial, especially to his brothers who had such high standards. Hawk usually lived up to them, but when he failed, it always seemed to sting just that much more to know he was disappointing more than just himself. “She asked me how it would be the next time.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Tex growled.
Hawk just shook his head. He was honest--always. He never lied to women or led them on. With him you always, always knew what you were getting. If you didn’t accept it, if you tried to ask for more, well, asking about the next time was the most sure fire way to make sure there would never be a next time.
“I didn’t know what to say,” he confessed. “So I didn’t say anything at all.”
“Hawk,” Shooter ground out. “Tildy is not some bar floozy that you picked up for a night of fun.”
“You think I don’t know that?!” Hawk snapped. “You think I don’t know I made a huge mistake?”
“The first time,” Easy chimed in. “You said the first time. So you made this huge mistake and you just went ahead and made it again?”
“She showed up at my house yesterday!”
“And you tripped? Both of you? And landed in bed together?” Tex asked dryly.
“I can’t say no to her,” Hawk snapped. “And stop acting like you can’t relate, Cowboy. When you tried to tell Abby no, she broke into your house, and you still fucked her eight ways from Sunday!”
“I wanted Abby,” Tex drawled.
“Well, I want Tildy.”
A heavy silence hung between them. “That why she’s wearing another man’s ring?”
Hawk glared at him. “It’s just sex.”
“Huh,” Tex replied with a shrug. “Wouldn’t have thought Tildy’d be into ‘just sex.’ ”
Hawk stalked past him and slammed the break room door, separating himself from the three pairs of judgmental eyes. He threw open the fridge and snatched out a bottle of water. As he drank, Tildy’s torn panties were practically burning a hole in the pocket of his pants. Slut. He was making her a slut. Other girls were built for ‘just sex’. Nothing wrong with that. But not Tildy. Not her. She’d waited for a time when it felt right, until she’d given up waiting and settled for him.
He closed his eyes and remembered her arms around him, less than an hour ago. He’d told himself she was just calming down not holding onto him for dear life.
Shooter was right; she did give it away to some asshole.
Chapter 48
Tildy parked her Mercedes in the restaurant lot and had a full-on panic attack. Her hair was wild, her lipstick was smudged, and, not that she could forget, she was missing her panties. Her fingers fumbled at the buttons of her blouse, as she tried to make herself presentable, but finally gave up. She was a mess, and she was late--Just ten minutes--but still. Tildy was never late, and God forbid Julia, Tate’s mother, mentioned this fact to Tildy’s own mother.