Page 24 of The Maverick

“You’re doing that thing again,” she said. “Where you act like you’re fine and in control, but your jaw keeps twitching like you want to put a hole through a wall.”

He didn’t deny it. “I should’ve seen this sooner,” he said.

“You couldn’t have.”

“I should’ve.”

Vanessa reached across the table and touched his hand—just barely. Fingertips grazing knuckles. “You’re seeing it now. That’s what matters.”

He didn’t close his hand over hers. Didn’t lean into it, but he didn’t pull away, either. In his world, that was the same as a promise.

Hawke read the names on the page like they were confessions.

Most of them were vague—scene names only, no last initials, no identifying markers. Vanessa had sugarcoated nothing. She’d marked the ones that raised red flags. She even added details. Language used, energy shifts, subtle control grabs disguised as flattery. It wasn’t just a list. It was a behavioral map of men who thought dominance gave them license.

One name stood out. Charles. No last name, just a memory attached to it that made Hawke’s hand curl into a fist.

She’d written it in a tight, slanted script.

Charles—played twice. He’d pushed collaring her mid-scene. Used the word ‘mine’ without discussion. Didn't respond well to rejection. Creeped Roxie out too.

He remembered that night.

Charles had shown up at The Iron Spur with a spotless record from another club in Houston—quiet, polished, well-mannered in all the ways that made people overlook him. But there’d been something off. Too smooth. Too still. The kind of man who watched more than he took part, always two steps outside the room but listening too hard.

Hawke had flagged him in his own head, but there hadn’t been enough to act on. Not then. Now, Vanessa’s handwriting told a different story.

He looked up and found her sitting across the room, arms tucked around her knees on the sofa. Her face was blank, but he saw the truth in the set of her shoulders.

She’d known that name would hit him.

“You should’ve told me about Charles,” he said.

Her eyes flicked toward him. “What would it have changed?”

“I would’ve pulled him from the club.”

“Would you have believed me?”

Hawke didn’t flinch. “Always.”

She looked away, jaw tight. “I didn’t want to be the problem. Again.”

He stood slowly. Walked across the space and stopped in front of her.

“Vanessa,” he said, voice low. “You’ve never been the problem.”

She didn’t look up. “He didn’t touch me. He said nothing that would’ve gotten him thrown out. I just… knew.”

“Sometimes that’s enough.”

Now she met his eyes. “But it wasn’t then.”

That sat between them—heavy… true.

He crouched beside her, resting one hand on her ankle. “It is now.”

She gave him a long, unreadable look. Then nodded once.

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