Falls Boys (Hellbent 1)

I’d never done that before, and I never wanted to. I just wanted it all in this moment. I still do.

I come up and curl into his arms, draping my leg over his body.

“Friends do that, right?” I ask.

He shakes with a laugh, but he’s too spent to tease back.

I kiss his jaw, and we stay like that for another hour before I drag him back into the shower. Again.

Hawke

I hold her hand, heading down the sidewalk and feeling a few people stare. Maybe they think I’m still wanted by the cops. Maybe they know she’s a Rebel and from Green Street. Maybe they’re wondering if I have a girlfriend.

I guess she’s my girlfriend now. Not that I have a problem with it. But I honestly don’t think of it like that. It just feels good to need her. To finally feel everything with one person and know that it lived up to the hype.

Why did it suddenly work with her?

She pulls her hand out of mine and stops. “I don’t want to do this.”

I reach over and take her hand again, leading her to Rivertown, but she digs in her heels.

“Your mom is ordering pizza,” she argues.

“I don’t want pizza.” I pull her along. “I want a burger.”

“But they’re going to think the tattoo is because of me.”

I open the door to the hangout. “It is because of you.”

“You know what I mean.”

I pull her inside, and she lowers her voice as eyes turn on us.

“They’re going to think I initiated you into a gang or something,” she grits out between her teeth.

I see an empty table and drag her to it. “Not something. It’s a gang, Aro.”

People watch us as we pass their tables, and she groans as my friends and former classmates look up from their phones and turn away from their meals to follow us with their eyes.

Their gazes drop to our entwined hands.

I pull out her seat for her, and she slams her ass down, the legs scraping across the tile as she pulls out the menu.

I hold back my laugh. I actually wouldn’t have minded pizza. Or to just take her directly back to the tower and continue having her to myself, but Reeves knows I have him, so he’d be stupid to come after us. We’re free, and I’m taking her to dinner where everyone can see.

I take a seat, and Annabelle Foy comes up, placing coasters down for us. “Hi, Hawke,” she says. “Medium rare, gouda, dressed?”

I nod, but Aro shoots her a dirty look. Pursing her lips, she stuffs her menu back between the ketchup bottle and the napkin holder. “Same, I guess,” she mumbles.

I can’t contain my smile that time. I like her jealous.

“Two lemonades,” I tell Annabelle.

She nods and leaves, and I sit back in my seat, slipping my hand into Aro’s that lays on the table.

“Now you know my burger order too,” I tease.

“Whatever.”

I really shouldn’t like how territorial she is, but it means she’s afraid of losing me. I like that, because that was the exact reason that I didn’t tell her we were in the clear when I knew I had the evidence on Reeves. I just needed to keep her another day. Maybe two.

I thread my fingers through hers, in awe of her hands. How small and smooth they are. Like I half expected them to be made of grit and iron with how she uses them.

I graze the raised skin over the back of her hand that disappears up the sleeve of her gray and black flannel. “How did that happen?” I ask.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

She pulls her hand away, and I watch her, barely noticing Annabelle setting the lemonades down on the table. Aro unwraps her straw, sticking it into the glass.

“Do Hugo, Nicholas, and Axel know?” I press.

She meets my eyes.

“No one should know you better than me,” I tell her.

I understand if she doesn’t want to talk about it, but she has talked about it. She’s not telling me because she’s embarrassed for me to know about her life. She wasn’t with her foster brothers. That won’t do.

“My grandmother,” she says finally. “My father’s mother. She got tired of my shirts always being wrinkled. Lost her patience one Sunday before church and ironed the sleeve while I was wearing it.”

I look down at the scar again, knowing her sleeve wouldn’t have extended that far down her hand. I picture the woman holding her down, Aro screaming.

“Jesus Christ,” I say, taking a drink. “How old were you?”

“Seven.”

When I was seven, I was bummed, because I didn’t have grandparents. Not blood-related anyway, although Jared’s mom and Madoc’s dad did a good job of stepping in.

My dad’s mom abandoned him when he was a kid, his dad was in jail, and my mom never let me visit her mother unsupervised. She said the woman was unstable. Now I’m grateful they protected me. They knew some parents were bad, and we were better off without.