Page 2 of Hawk's Cry

“You’re twenty-five, almost twenty-six,” he replies, deceptively quietly. “Wraith was what, twenty-seven when he made VP? He ever say it was too much to handle? Fuck no. He ever want to walk away? Not that I’ve ever heard. From the day he became Drummer’s right-hand man, Wraith’s given his all to the club. You saying you can’t give the same support to Wizard?”

“I’m saying exactly that.” I’ve nothing to offer anymore. I feel like the club’s sucked the life right out of me. I’m wrung dry.

Throttle kicks at the tree trunk as though he’s kicking me. His steel-capped boot makes it rock. “How does Olivia feel about all this?”

I sigh as he mentions the woman I exchanged vows with just three months back. “I haven’t spoken to her about it,” I tell him, while acknowledging to myself, she’s part of the problem. “I was groomed and prepared to become an officer from the day I was born, Throttle. From my first breath, this was what Drummer wanted for me. I was put into that fuckin’ crib with Liv, the VP’s daughter. She was my first friend. We learned to walk and speak together. We played together, shared toys. Of course we were fuckin’ close. So I did what was expected, and now we’re married. Now the cycle’s happening all over again with a fuckin’ kid coming along.”

Throttle stares at me as though he can’t understand any of the words coming out of my mouth. “You love her,” he says after a moment, almost accusingly.

He’s not wrong. I do. I love her as much as my ability to breathe. She’s everything to me. But she wasn’t a choice that I made. That’s the point. Just another thing I was forced into.

What it comes down to is that I haven’t been allowed to make a choice over anything. Everything’s always been mapped out for me. To keep everyone happy, I’ve done exactly what was expected. I’ve had to pretend to be someone I’m not, and I just can’t do that anymore.

Throttle leans with his hands on his thighs. He looks like he’s struggling for something to say. It’s a few minutes before he speaks again. When he does, it’s with something akin to disgust and disappointment in his eyes. “Do me a fuckin’ favour, Hawk. Go speak to your wife.” Then he straightens, gives me one last glare, and walks off with his shoulders hunched over. I catch his mumbled someone needs to talk some sense into him before he disappears.

I haven’t any intention of ignoring his instruction. It’s something I’ve already put off far too long. A conversation I’d known was coming, but also one I dread, and with fucking good reason.

I stay in the forest for about ten minutes after Throttle leaves, trying to get my thoughts in order. Whether the enforcer will keep what I said to himself or tell others, I’ve no idea. But I can’t take the risk that he won’t, and Liv, who was my first and who remains my best friend, deserves better than to hear that shit secondhand.

My wife is folding laundry when I step into our house that’s built at the top of the compound. It sits in the midst of all those that have been constructed for anyone who wants to live here. Ours is a stone’s throw away from the one belonging to my dad, and next to that, there’s the home of her own parents. Another expectation I’d fulfilled, being swept along with the tide when it was taken as a given we’d live nowhere else. No choice. No one asked for my opinion.

“Hi.” She looks up expectantly and raises her chin, offering her cheek to me.

Automatically, I step to her side and place a kiss to it.

Her hand moves down and touches her stomach. At six months pregnant, she’s sporting a definite baby bump. “She’s active today. Do you want to feel her?”

I should reach out and caress where my baby’s lying inside her. I should take delight in these moments. I should laugh when she alludes to the fact that as she’s one of four sisters, girls run in her family. I should remind her that boys run in mine and insist she’s carrying my son as that’s all my sperm will give her.

But I don’t. I can’t. I feel frozen inside. Where once there was light, now it’s all dark.

She looks at me carefully, then shakes her head. “You ready to talk yet?” Her teeth worry her lip.

That’s exactly what I was intending, but something about the way she’s holding herself, how her arms go protectively around her body, shows me my talk was anticipated.

I’m hurting her. I never meant to. She’d gotten swept along in the same way I had.

Giving a deep sigh, she prompts me. “Eli, this has been too long coming. You’ve got something to tell me, so spit it out.” But she half turns away as though not wanting to hear it.

“Liv…” I start, then stop, finding it harder to tell her than it was to bare my soul to Throttle. Then, like a dam breaking, it all starts coming out. About how I’ve never been asked my opinion on anything. How I am who I am because of who I was born to. How I don’t know what I want anymore. How I don’t know me anymore, let alone my desires.

When I run out of things to say, at last I look at her and see a tear leaking out of her eye. From the day I was first conscious of her lying in the crib alongside me, I’ve hated to see her cry. It’s no different now. The only change is when I step closer to wipe it away, she takes a step back.

“You don’t get to comfort me,” she hisses, “when you’ve just told me I’m not what you want.”

“I didn’t say that,” I remind her quickly, certain I hadn’t expressed anything of the sort. Though perhaps that had been the implication.

But she ignores me. “Is it because of the baby? I thought we both were ready. It was you who didn’t want to wear the condom. We both took our chances. Then Dad got out his shotgun and you proposed—”

“It’s not the baby,” I refute quickly, while acknowledging deep down inside, perhaps it is. Yes, I was the asshole who’d taken the chance. She’d reminded me when I’d forgotten but, to feel myself inside her unprotected for once? That, I’d thought at the time, was well worth it. Wraith hadn’t needed to get his shotgun out; Dad would have killed me if I’d not stepped up and made an honest woman of her. Though why he’d wanted to see me married when he’d never officially tied the knot himself, I’ve no idea.

Though Drummer’s enduring love for my mom is clear to everyone, she has never needed a ring on her finger. Wraith and Sophie, Liv’s dad and mom, had made everything official, and their relationship had stood the test of time. Maybe, married or not, I’d be feeling no different.

My thoughts veer this way and that, and all the while my wife is trying to keep herself from crying. I’m an asshole, standing here, unable to take any of what I’ve just said back. I’d be a liar if I turned around and said I hadn’t meant any of it.

“What do you want to do?” she asks, her voice breaking.

What do I want? I can’t recall anyone before ever asking me that, or at least, not in relation to important decisions in my life. I give her the same answer as I’d given to Throttle earlier. “I want to step down as VP. More than that, I want to leave the club. I want to live off compound and get a proper job.”

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