Chapter 10

10

SUTTON

E mery and I had been somewhat close in high school. She had always been in with a more popular, sporty crowd, but we’d always meshed well. Since our parents had been friends and we’d lived on the same street, we’d known each other in a different way. Unlike her brother, Emery had never been put off by my status as a nerd.

Walking around the carnival with her after dark, we clutched our spiked cider and chowed down on lobster rolls, laughing as we talked about our woes as single moms.

“I swear.” She giggled as she took another sip of her cider. “If one of them tells me again that I’m not their father, I’m going to say that I know, and I know it because I’m not in rehab right now.”

I grimaced. “Their father is in rehab?”

“Yep,” she said cheerfully, but I could hear she was faking it. “For the third time. Honestly, I don’t even know why he goes anymore. It’s the same thing every time and it doesn’t work.”

“Maybe he really wants it to?” I suggested, though from what little she’d told me about the guy tonight, he was a heavy drinker who loved the alcohol more than anything or anyone in his life—including himself and his own health.

Emery scoffed and shook her head at me. “Trust me, he doesn’t want it to work. In order for it to work, he would have to give up drinking, which is just never going to happen.”

“I’m sorry.” I didn’t really know what else to say. “If he does eventually stop drinking, do you think you’ll give him another chance?”

“No,” she said decisively. “I know that’s what he thinks is going to happen. He keeps saying that he’s trying and that he wants his family back, but he’s proven time and time again that we can’t trust him.”

“What did he do?”

“Other than always going back to the booze?” She sighed. “Honestly, I don’t even know where to begin. He’s never where he says he’s going to be. I can’t even tell you how many times he’s disappointed the kids by not being at whatever they’ve got going on. He’s been arrested for so many things. Fighting. Driving under the influence. Public intoxication.”

“Yikes,” I said, grimacing. “He sounds like a mess.”

Sadness filled her eyes as she glanced at me. “After his second DUI, I finally pulled the plug on our marriage. He had Logan in the car with him that night. I don’t even want to think about what might’ve happened. And not only was he drunk but he was belligerent. Cussing. Falling all over the place. He even tried taking a swing at a cop. He’s lucky they didn’t shoot his drunk ass.”

“Wow. To have one of the kids around for that? It’s awful.”

“Yep. It’s definitely not the kind of example I want for my boys, you know? I just feel bad for them because I wish they had a guy in their lives. A male role model.”

“I hear you,” I said, and I really did understand. “Winnie asks me every day why Daddy doesn’t want to see her anymore. She adored Calen. He was hardly ever at home, but when he was, he was like a hero to her. He never cared about seeing her every day, but now, he can’t even be bothered to answer the phone when she tries to call him.”

Sympathy softened her features as she drained her drink and we stopped strolling to buy another. “All our kids are going to end up with daddy issues if we don’t do something about this.”

I laughed. “I’m not disagreeing with you, but I fail to see what we can do about it. Other than build a time machine and go back so that we can conceive these very same children with men who aren’t completely selfish jackasses.”

“You might be onto something there.” She chuckled, rummaging around her handbag for her wallet. She handed over some cash to the guy at the cider stand.

He smiled at her when he gave her the drink, and as we walked away, I inclined my head back in his direction. “The bartender guy seemed to like you. He has a nice smile. Maybe that’s a way to give your boys a good male role model. Start dating again.”

Emery’s eyes widened to the point that she had to be in pain. Then she started laughing and didn’t stop for a long time. “No, thank you. I’m definitely not interested in dating. You?”

“Nope.” I chuckled. “Well, at least you have Hawk home. That must be nice. I’m sure the boys are enjoying it.”

She paused for a beat before she nodded. “Yeah, it is nice having him here. I’ve been a bitch to him, but it’s like I can’t help myself. Every time I look at his face, I just think about how he’s been living fast and free back in LA, while I’ve been stuck here trying to keep our family together with spit and duct tape.”

I hummed at the back of my throat. “It can’t be easy. If it helps, I think he knows he screwed up.”

“Do you really think that?” She scoffed. “You have met him recently, right? The guy doesn’t feel bad about anything and he’ll never think that he screwed up.”

I chuckled. “Okay, you might not be wrong. He does seem to have become a little bit like that.”

“A little bit?” She waved me off and gulped down her cider. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s my big brother and I love him, but the guy needs to get his priorities straight. I’m just not sure how to get him to do that.”

“You never know. He could get them straight all by himself.”

“I wish,” she said, and it sounded like she really did wish he would.

I understood it, though. Clearly, there had been a lot going on in Portsmouth that Emery had been dealing with all by herself. Deciding that I might just try to talk to him about it if the opportunity ever presented itself, I was surprised when she suddenly took my arm and started marching away from the festival.

“Where are we going?” I asked laughingly.

“Hen’s Bar,” she said. “A lot of the old crowd are in town for the holidays and rumor has it they’ve been hanging out there. Let’s go have some fun.”

I groaned. Hanging out with a bunch of kids from high school did not sound like fun to me, but when we walked in, it turned out that it was more like a freaking reunion than just a crowd hanging out. Unfortunately, I saw a lot of people I recognized and I had to explain my life story over and over again.

As the night drew on, I got tired of rehashing it to people who would only use my situation as fodder for the gossip machine, and I went to track down Emery. She was laughing with some girls at the bar when I finally found her.

“I think I’m going to head home,” I said, giving the other girls an apologetic smile for cutting into their conversation.

As Emery spun to face me, she nearly fell off her chair and I realized that she’d gotten pretty drunk. Reaching out to steady her, I kept a gentle hold on her arm. “On second thought, maybe you should come with me. What do you say about calling it a night?”

At first, she looked like she might argue, but then she blinked hard and started nodding. “Yeah. Good idea. You’re looking a little fuzzy.”

“As long as you’re not seeing double,” I said as I helped her up. She was a little unsteady on her feet, so I looped my arm around hers and we swayed out of the bar together. She was pretty much incoherent by the time we made it to the street, and I groaned as I realized I might just end up having to carry her home.

“Sutton?” Hawk’s voice suddenly called from behind us and I groaned. “Em? Are you guys okay?”

I glanced at him over my shoulder, seeing him emerge from Hen’s with his own eyes almost as glassy as I was sure mine were. “Hawk? Have you been here the whole time?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I was drinking. What’s wrong with her?”

“Drinking,” I echoed the word. “Are you going home?”

“I am now,” he said, picking up his pace to catch up to us. “Although I might need a wheelbarrow to cart you stumbling ladies back to the house.”

“That sounds lovely,” I said. “Go find one.”

His long legs ate up the distance, and the next thing I knew, he was right next to me. Those blue eyes burned into mine. “How much did she have?”

“ She had just enough to have fun for a change,” my sister muttered drunkenly. “But now I need to sit down. Bench?”

With surprising speed, she broke away from me, letting go of my arm and barreling toward a bus bench nearby. She looked almost graceful until she tried to sit. She missed and slid right off the edge of the seat onto her butt. Hawk groaned and raced over, picking her up and slinging her over his shoulder.

“You’ve always been such a lightweight,” he teased his sister as she hung with her arms extended down his back. “What did you do? Suck down a bottle of tequila?”

“Hard cider,” she muttered. “The lord’s apple juice. What about you? Are you missing your glitzy clubs back in LA?”

“More and more by the second,” he said, grinning.

We walked up the slight incline to our houses. Since my parents were with Winnie, I decided to walk them to theirs, wanting to make sure that they got there okay. When we arrived, Hawk disappeared into the house to tuck his sister in bed, but he’d hardly gone inside when he walked back out again.

“She insisted on doing it herself,” he explained, striding to the steps of their porch and sitting down. “Want to talk for a while? I’m a little keyed up to go to sleep.”

“Sure,” I agreed, not nearly as inebriated as Emery but having had enough to drink that my inhibitions were lowered, if not gone.

As I sat down next to him, I turned to study his profile, so beautiful when he was softly lit with the orangey light of their front garden.

“What?” he asked suddenly.

“Nothing.” There was no way I was going to tell him that I’d realized I was still just as attracted to him as I’d ever been. “Is it weird for you being home?”

“Okay, that’s really not what I thought you were thinking.” He let out a low chuckle. “It’s weird for me, yes, but it’s probably weirder for you.”

“Why do you say that?”

He arched an eyebrow at me, his eyes swimming with humor and the faint shimmer of memories. “Well, I mean, Portsmouth has a college, but it’s not exactly Trinity or Oxford. If that’s where you thought you were going to end up, then it’s got to be a bit of wake-up call being back here.”

“You can say that again,” I agreed, turning to face the port instead of the man I’d spent so much time with there. “They were silly dreams, though. I was never going to be a tenured professor there.”

“You might’ve been,” he said softly, and it sounded like he really meant it. “There aren’t a lot of women who would’ve given that up to raise their children, though. You’re still one of a kind, Sutton Ashbury.”

“Technically, it’s still Megill.” I cringed. “Sutton Megill . I should change it back, though. It sounds like the name of a monster from a Godzilla movie.”

He chuckled. “Or you could just wait until you get married again. You’ll have a new last name then, anyway.”

I scoffed down a bark of laughter. “Yeah, that’s not going to work for me.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not getting married again.” I shook my head. “I only had to burn my hand on the stove once to know not to touch it again.”

“What if the right guy comes along?”

What if the right guy has been right here all along? The thought popped into my head out of nowhere and I frowned as I desperately tried to forget I’d even had it. The moonlight made him too handsome, highlighting his strong jaw and cheekbones. It was making me think crazy things.

Being here with Hawk felt right, but I knew that it shouldn’t. Even if I was starting to think that I might’ve read him wrong before. That guy he used to be—the one I was so completely, head over heels in love with—was still somewhere in there.

In stolen moments like this or when that walkie-talkie buzzed the other night, it was abundantly clear that he still existed. That guy was simply covered in a layer of LA glam.

I chuckled. “There is no right man for me. There can’t be because I won’t allow it. No thank you.”

Hawk’s blue eyes slid to mine and held them. His expression was intense as he drank me in like he used to right before he would kiss me. “Do you want to just spend the night? Save yourself the trip home?”

“It’s a couple houses away,” I said, even though I didn’t want to move from the porch.

“I know.”

“It’s not really a trip,” I murmured, but I couldn’t look away from him. I wanted him to lean in right now and do what it looked like he wanted to do. “Besides, you guys seem to have a pretty full house here.”

“We’ve got space,” he said.

I cocked my head at him. “Where?”

“In my bed.” He delivered the line with perfect ease and confidence, and those blue eyes were suddenly smoldering.

I groaned. The conversation had turned too flirty. Pull yourself out of the Hawk-haze, Sutton. Right now! You’re going to end up pregnant again.

As soon as I realized that I was, in fact, back in the same Hawk-haze I used to fall into when I’d spent every hour I had available with him, I forced my limbs to move and I stood up. “I should get going. Thanks for helping me with Emery.”

He nodded, not following me up. I waved and walked away, but when I reached the sidewalk, he called my name. “Sutt?”

“Yep?” I spun to face him, driven to do so by force of habit. I’d always loved hearing my name—or my nickname—from his lips. That low, commanding timbre made a shiver shoot down my spine, even now. “What’s up?”

“I meant it,” he said, those eyes locking directly on mine. “You can really crash here if you want.”

“Thanks, but I need a glass of water and to close my eyes.” I don’t to want go, but I definitely can’t stay . “Good night, Hawk. I’ll see you around.”

Immediately walking away before I changed my mind, I folded my arms across my chest and wondered how much longer he was staying in town. I knew I was already going to miss him when he left, but at this rate, I needed him to go.

Before I did something stupid like give my heart back to the first boy who had ever broken it.