Page 51 of Feels Like the First Time
The faster Hawk got the first two out of way, the faster they’d get to the last, which was a topic he had strong opinions on.
Ali pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. Between the micro-mini-shorts, and her soft blue top, she appeared small and unexpectedly fragile.
“I can hear your smug smile all the way over here,” she said, taking the last bite of her cake pop.
“This one?” He flashed her a grin. “I can barely hear it over all of that moaning you did when scarfing down my burger.”
Ali shot him a glace, a penetrating flash of ocean blue. “I wasn’t moaning.”
“Sunshine, the fish poked their heads out to see what was going on.” She nudged him with her shoulder and he nudged her back until she smiled, then he took her hand in his.
She looked down at their intertwined fingers. “Too bad no one is around to see this sweet moment.”
“Huh, you’re right. I hadn’t noticed.” He tightened his grip.
Her smile went shy and she looked out at the water, but she didn’t let go. “So this is where you come to get away?”
Hawk looked behind him at the farmhouse in the near distance, the endless hills of apple trees speckled with white flowers, and a calming sense of rightness washed over him. “Yup, been coming here since I was twelve.”
“Did you come here with Luke and his parents?”
“To this property, yeah. To this spot on the bluff, no. This was my secret place, and they knew when I came down here, it was to think.”
She rested her cheek on her bent knee. “And what did twelve-year-old Hawk think about? Hockey, girls, Jenny Snider’s boobs?”
Hawk laughed. “Every red-blooded male in high school thought nonstop about Jenny Snider’s boobs; they didn’t need a special place to do it.” Knowing that in order to get her to open up, he had to share a part of himself first, he got serious. “My mom brought me here when I was a kid. During low tide we’d look at all of the little critters hiding in the rocks.”
“My dad and I used to do that up in Sunrise Cove. We’d pack a lunch and spend an entire afternoon poking around the tide pools, spelunking, collecting shells and sea glass, then we’d come home and decorate stuff with the treasures we’d found.”
Hawk tried to picture what a pig-tailed Ali would have looked like, tromping around in the tide pools, giving the crabs and guppies a scare. He chuckled, because he imagined it would look a lot like what she did for her art, only she was smaller.
“We collected shells, too. My mom would tell me that every day the tide would carry out things ready to spread their fins and explore, and bring in new critters, looking for a safe place to land.”
“It must have been hard, losing her so young,” Ali said, with soft understanding in her voice.
His mom never had the chance to explore, nor had she ever found her safe place to land. She’d been married young, had him young, and died young. She’d always said he was her biggest adventure.
“Yeah,” he agreed. He had very few good memories from those early years, trying to deal with the grief, stay out of his dad’s way. No matter how good he’d been on the ice, Bradley always demanded that he get better.
“After my mom died, I kept coming here,” he said, remembering painfully just how bad those first few years without her were. “When I was feeling trapped, I’d climb down the cliff side and sit right here, looking out over the water. It was as if when I was here, nothing could cage me in. It was the proof I needed.”
“Proof of what?”
“There was a world that was bigger than my dad’s controlling hands.”
Hawk took a deep breath to keep the familiar feelings of helplessness at bay, then looked at the ocean, past the outcropping of rocks and coastal trees, to the dark blue surface that sparkled in the fading sun, and expanded beyond what he could see. Cyprus trees rustled in the breeze and the water lapped gently against the rocky beach.
This view never failed to bring him peace. And today was no different.
They were completely isolated from problems that were awaiting them back in town, and Ali didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave. Most important, this was one of Hawk’s favorite spots, a place that had brought him comfort. And he wanted to share that comfort with her.
He could feel her gaze on him, steady and compassionate. “I never met your dad,” she said.
Even though Bradley Hawk Sr. had lived in Destiny Bay for all of his fifty-nine years, very few people really knew him. Including his own son. After Hawk’s mom passed away, Bradley spent his days up in the mountains logging trees, and his nights drinking himself stupid. And until Hawk had matched him in size, knocking his son stupid.
“You wouldn’t have liked him,” Hawk said truthfully. “He was a moody son of a bitch.” Whom Hawk worked tirelessly not to become.
There wasn’t a rule he hadn’t broken, or a person he hadn’t plowed down. Not if they stood in the way of his goal—securing his son a spot on a Stanley Cup team. In fact, Tom never wanted a son; he wanted a player to coach. Someone to control and mold in his likeness. Someone who could live out his lost dreams.
