“You keep saying that. What is my role?”
He wrapped a strand of her hair around his finger and she shivered. “To be my doting, smoldering sexpot who hangs over me like a cheap suit and does what I say.”
“Seems like you’re enjoying this more than you need to,” she muttered.
“One thing you’ll learn about me, babe. I take pleasure and find happiness wherever I can. Life’s too short to be all gloom and doom and the shit I deal with on a daily basis would break most people. I live for the fun, pretty girl. You should too.” He released her hair and peered into her eyes.
“I can’t live like you. By the seat of my pants with no concerns but the ones I choose to make a priority.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have responsibilities.”
“Like?”
“Bills, a mortgage, family…fuck.” Thought of her parents threw a monkey wrench into Hawk’s carefully laid plans.
“What?” he said.
“My parents are going through a nasty divorce. They’ll lose their shit if I drop off the face of the earth.”
“Why? You aren’t the one married.”
“No but I’m the only child, and it just came out my father’s been cheating for years. It’s messy and I’m the unofficial mediator.”
“That’s fucked up, babe. They need to hire a professional to do that shit, not put you in the middle of some fucked-up game of tug-of-war.”
The truth stung like nettles. “Family sticks together. You understand that. It’s how the club operates.”
“It’s not the same thing and you know it. I hate to speak ill of your folks, but it sounds like they’re being selfish as fuck right now.”
She turned away. “It’s a difficult time for everyone.”
“All the more reason for them to believe you need time to yourself.”
He isn’t going to let go of this. “So I just bail on them?” Her stomach churned at the thought. Some days she thought she was the only thing keeping them from murdering each other.
“What do you think your presence does?”
“Keeps things level and semi-calm. Without me there’d be total chaos.”
“So it’s your job to be the one who upholds the peace? That’s a heavy weight. I’m not a parent, but one thing I do know is kids come first. That doesn’t stop once they hit eighteen.”
“It’s easy to say when you’re on the outside looking in.”
Hawk shook his head. “I been there. You got to learn to step away from shit and let people work things out for themselves. One thing I know. You can’t be responsible for what someone else does. You can’t make them be the way you want them to.”
“Your parents?” she asked, shocked.
“No, my brother. Best thing I ever did was realizing I wasn’t his keeper, not really. Nothing I did or said was going to stop him from doing exactly what he wanted to do. Made life a lot simpler once I figured that out.”
She mulled over his words for a minute. “So you just stopped caring?”
“I’m not a cold-hearted bastard. I cared, still care, but I couldn’t waste my life bailing him out, bitching, and trying to force my will, and that of our parents on him. Rayen loved smoke more than he did anything else. I think jail was the best place for him. Forced him to get straight and think about shit.” Hawk shrugged. “Point is, you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved, and even if you could, it’s not your job.”
She blinked as his words hit her. What he said had a lot of validity. Still, guilt ate her up from the inside. What kind of daughter left her mother high and dry when she learned her whole marriage had been a lie?
“Just think on it. Either way, we’re going to have to go with my plan.”