Page 27 of The Maverick

She stared at his back as he washed the dish. The line of his shoulders beneath the fabric of his shirt. The cut of his forearms. The fact that her body still hummed just looking at him.

And then, for no reason at all, she blurted it out. “My father used to read my journals.”

Hawke stilled.

“He did it for years,” she said, voice quiet but steady. “I didn’t find out until college. I came home for Christmas break, and he quoted a paragraph I’d written about a boy I had a crush on. Word for word. Called it a ‘concern.’ Said it didn’t reflect well on the image I was supposed to be projecting.”

She didn’t look at him. Couldn’t.

“After that, I stopped writing by hand. Went digital. Passwords. Encryption. Firewalls. Like maybe if I locked it down hard enough, no one could crawl inside my head again.”

Hawke turned off the water and dried his hands. Still silent.

“I don’t trust people easily,” she said. “Not because I don’t want to. But because too many of them have used what they learned about me as leverage. As something they could twist or claim or use.”

He turned and walked over to her, dropped to one knee beside her chair, and rested a hand on her thigh. Warm. Grounding.

“You’ve told no one that, have you?”

She shook her head.

His thumb moved in slow circles, soothing without coddling. “You don’t have to tell me more.”

“I know,” she said. “That’s why I did.”

They sat in silence. Not awkward. Not heavy. Just… there.

And that was what shook her the most.

She hadn’t meant to fall back into rhythm with him. Hadn’t meant to settle into his space like it fit. But it did. Too well. And if she let it go too far, she wouldn’t be able to walk away again.

“I hated you let me go,” she said. He didn’t flinch. “I left because I thought it would hurt less than staying. And then you didn’t chase me. You didn’t call. You didn’t fight.”

“I was trying to respect your decision,” he said. “I thought that’s what you wanted.”

She met his eyes. “It wasn’t.”

“Then I failed.”

“No,” she whispered. “We both did.”

Hawke rose, pulled out the chair beside her, and sat close. Too close.

“You still don’t trust me completely,” he said.

“No.”

“You still think I might disappoint you.”

She nodded.

“But you’re here,” he said. “You’re still here.”

And that was the truth of it. She didn’t know what tomorrow held. Didn’t know how deep the stalker problem ran. Didn’t know if her old wounds would rip open again before this was over.

But she was still here, and Hawke wasn’t going anywhere.

That should’ve made her feel stronger. Instead, it made her feel like she was standing at the edge of a cliff—terrified that this time, if she jumped, there wouldn’t be a safe place to land.

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