Sweet Ache

“Shut the fuck up, Vin!” Hawke shouts but my mind is still focused on what Vince said, the amusement in his voice even more confusing than the irritation in Hawkin’s.

If my head wasn’t so hell-bent on leaving I’d laugh at the thought of the two of them, half dressed and yelling at each other, but my focus is on getting dressed. I hurriedly throw on my jeans and shirt, bra left somewhere in the darkness, and open the bedroom door to leave.

“Quin. Wait!” Hawke’s voice calls to me but Vince cuts him off.

“Dude, what’s your fucking problem?” he asks, a mocking tone in his voice I never expected, and I’m so confused how I could have been so wrong about him. I’m instantly pissed at myself and my misjudgment but I can process that later because right now I’m hurt. And angry.

“You. Her. This!” Hawke shouts, but I’m so busy being upset I don’t stop to consider just what he’s referring to.

And I mean so much to Hawke that he chooses to go toe-to-toe with Vince rather than chase after me. The question is after everything that just happened, do I really want him to?

The notion hangs in the back of my mind as I hurry down the stairs, fighting the tears that now come with my head down, the walk of shame written all over my face, and I’m so hurt I don’t care who sees it. A few people ask me if I’m okay but I just keep moving forward because if I’m moving then I’m focused on that and not the shit running around in my head: shame, anger, disbelief at my poor judgment, hurt.

I’m pulled from my internal struggle when I swear I hear my name being called but after I stop for a moment, I don’t hear anything. The hope I had that I was wrong crashes back down around me because if I mattered, if whatever we are mattered, he would be chasing after me, right?

Pushing open the door I hurry into the darkness of the backyard and welcome the cool night air, needing some time to wrap my head around everything. I head as far as possible away from the house, into the shadows of the garden to lose myself for a bit.

People are milling around the grounds but no one gives me a second glance, so lost in their own conversations or so drunk I don’t register. I find a bench and sit down, elbows on my knees and head in my hands. The eddy of chaos still remains and I just need to slow my mind down, feel my way through the fog of everything that happened, deal in concretes, not emotions.

Something is niggling at the back of my mind that I can’t put my finger on and I need to calm down so that I can figure it all out.

Lying back on the bench, I straddle my legs on either side of it and close my eyes as I start to go through everything from the moment that Hawkin came into the room. At first it all seems pretty clear-cut, that there is no room for misinterpretation, but the longer I sit here with the fresh air clearing my mind and my buzz abating, my perspective starts to shift and change.

In my mind, I hear the tone of Hawke’s voice again, the hesitancy, and of course I curse myself for being so nervous that I grabbed him and kissed him and never let him finish whatever he was going to say to me. Because now that I think about it without the anxiety and lust and alcohol interfering with my thoughts, I almost feel like he was going to tell me something.

My mind starts to spin now, to look at everything from another angle, and I realize that Hawkin’s anger wasn’t directed at me, I think it was at Vince. I replay everything over and over again, my heart starting to pound again but for a very different reason as my supposition becomes more and more concrete.

Oh my God. How stupid could I have been? I’m so used to being the one treated like crap in a relationship that I inherently assumed the worst rather than giving him the benefit of the doubt. I sit up and wipe the tears from my cheeks that I didn’t even realize were there and try to steady myself. I have to figure out how to explain my overreaction when there really is nothing I can even say but I’m sorry.

“You’re so stupid, Westin,” I mutter to myself as the tiny bubbles of hope start to rise to the surface. Hawkin didn’t care that I changed my mind, in fact he was probably glad that I did because now with a clear head, I realize he wasn’t mad at me at all. No. He wanted me all to himself, thought enough of me that he didn’t want to share. The revelation buoys me as I start back across the grounds to find him and explain myself as best as possible.

I laugh softly in exasperation as one of my mom’s go-to comments she used to tell me as a teenager flickers through my mind, “If you’re not willing to sound stupid, then you don’t deserve to be in love.”

And then it hits me. My laugh and feet falter, my breath hitches, and my heart stumbles and falls completely off the cliff. I’m in love with Hawkin. The thought staggers me momentarily because my mom was right, with anybody else that I’ve been with, I wouldn’t have even thought twice about feeling stupid. I would have laughed this all off as a misunderstanding and if it worked, it worked, and if it didn’t, it didn’t.

Standing here in the darkness as the awareness hits me, I feel stupid once again, but not only for my freak-out upstairs but because I never saw this coming. I’ve been blindsided. Hell, I’ve fallen for men time and again, but never like this to the point where when the awareness hits, my chest constricts and my heart thunders as every part of me wants to see him right now to right my wrong.

And then I hear him call my name. Relief surges through me and then crashes when a figure steps out of the house’s shadows. It’s not Hawkin, it’s Hunter. I bristle immediately, self-conscious of my braless chest and the cold night air, feeling naked around him even though I’m clothed.