Concert days were a whole different beast than off or traveling days. Concert days involved a lot more attention from everyone on staff. Finn and crew had to scope out the venue, do sound checks, participate in meet-and-greets, and conduct interviews with radio people. Hawk was involved in almost all of that. Even though I still did not have a job description for him—but then, I didn’t have one, either—he seemed to be Finn’s right-hand man. And while I would sometimes be with them, I would mostly spend my time on those days talking on the phone with Reese and following through with social media posts. There were the standards—thanking fans for the concert the night before, counting down the minutes until the next concert, even the weather report was fair game.
And that was exactly what was causing havoc the day after my walk to the lake with Hawk. A big-time thunderstorm was threatening to cancel, or at least cut short, the outdoor South Carolina venue. Everyone was a little concerned. It had rained hard earlier in the day but quit rather quickly. It was the second round that had the potential for the most damage, though. No one wanted to cancel. That would mean rescheduling and refunds. But the safety of everyone—fans and crew alike—was the top priority.
When I popped in to a meeting of the minds to see if Finn needed me to post anything, he claimed they planned on going on as scheduled. I caught Hawk’s glance and closed smile as he leaned over the table, making his already muscular arms even more defined. I smiled back and left them to their own.
Seeing Hawk made me flash back to our kiss the night before…not that it had been far from my mind in the first place. It was hard not to compare it to my time with Jeff. It wasn’t that one was better than the other. It was that Jeff and I had been married for nearly seven years. While our love had not dulled, it had been a long time since we had been in the discovery phase—where everything was new, everything was an exploration, everything was an unfamiliar sensation. That was what each kiss had been with Hawk, and I knew there was so much more to find out and learn.
It wasn’t going to be that night, though. I wouldn’t even get close to him. Because even though the concert itself went on perfectly, there was a loud boom and the sky opened up during what had to be the last minute of the encore. Out from the clouds came a torrential downpour. I was in Finn and Lara’s trailer watching the kids. Chance woke up with the loud clap of thunder and, especially in his freshly awakened state, was frightened. I brought him into my arms and rocked him the best I could. But even though I was good with the kids and could create terrific pillow and blanket forts, Chance wanted his parents.
Having motherly intuition, Lara rolled in moments later, looking like she had just been rescued from being thrown overboard. “Hey.” She sounded winded.
“Mommy,” Chance whined.
“It’s all right, Little Man.” Lara took Chance from me. “You’re all right.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I tried.”
“Thanks, Maya.” Lara looked across her son to me. “Finn and I can’t even really do anything for him during storms.” She looked back at Chance. “Bud, it’s all right. I’m staying, okay?”
“I guess I’ll go then,” I said.
“No,” Lara replied, still soothing Chance’s back. “Just stay with us tonight. Everyone is taking cover. No one’s moving anywhere once they’re inside.”
“It’s that bad?” I peered out the window.
“Just a thunderstorm, but there’s no reason to risk anybody. We’re gonna pull out early and try to drive ahead of it.” She finished her comment before picking up her ringing cell phone. “Finn?” She called her superstar husband by name. “Yeah, we’re all good. Just getting Chance back to sleep.” He was trying to close his eyes, but his mother’s voice was actually making him flutter them open. “Yeah, I just told her.” Lara looked my direction that time—me being the obvious “her” in the statement. “Okay. See you in a bit.”
That settled, I was obviously in for the evening. There would be no after-show gathering. I wouldn’t even sleep in my own bunk. Instead, I would listen to the sound of rain hitting the windows and roof and the rolling of wheels as we pulled out.
***
The next morning, we were greeted by the sun. And shortly after that, the sound of little pitter-pattering feet. Chance joined Lara, Finn, and me in the living area of the moving bus. Thank goodness he looked none the worse for wear after his nightmarish late-night wake up call. Glancing shyly at me, the little boy crawled into Lara’s lap, while Finn went to get Arinn, who was calling out from her crib.
Right after finishing the ever-nutritious breakfast of pastries and coffee, Finn’s phone rang. “Yeah?” He answered it immediately. “Yep. What’s up?” He listened to the person on the other end. “Oh, yeah, right.” There was another pause before he said, “No, I forgot. Hawk, can you take care of it?” he asked, revealing the caller. “Oh. All right. Hold on. Let me go into the other room. It’s in there. And, plus, I’m being rude to these lovely ladies by talking on the phone in front of them.” His voice faded as he started to walk off, obviously still answering Hawk’s questions. “Arinn, Lara, and Maya.”
Knowing Hawk was on the other line, damn it, made me think of him again. I tried to restrain myself, but I just couldn’t help it. It was like I was a crushy, hormonal thirteen-year-old instead of a thirty-five-year-old.
Trying to act cool, I decided to see if I could get some information from Lara about the man who was still somewhat of a mystery. “So Hawk…he does a lot of stuff for Finn, huh?”
Lara scooted Chance back a little from the television set as she replied to my question. “He’s a good guy.”
I noted immediately how she answered. She could have gone into all of Hawk’s duties, but she hadn’t. She knew that wasn’t what I was really asking. It was that woman-to-woman intuition thing, and, luckily, she was playing it cool with me.
“He’s been such a great friend and more to Finn… and then to me and our kids, too.”
“I can tell,” I offered.
“He’s one of those guys who will do anything for you once you get to know him,” she continued.
“Yeah.”
“I mean, you kinda know that, though, right, Maya?” Lara was keeping an eye on a rambling Arinn, who didn’t have as much patience for the television show as her brother.
“Sorta. I mean, I’d like to.” Oh, geez, did I just say that?
Lara’s smile was so genuine I almost cried in embarrassment. “Let me tell you, Hawk puts everything into his job—too much, I think, sometimes—meaning there hasn’t been a lot of time for relationships. I’m lucky. Finn has sacrificed a lot for me. And with the right person, Haw—”
Finn literally made me jump when he entered the room and interrupted our conversation. “And vice versa, Beauty. You’ve sacrificed a lot for me.” He kissed her quickly on top of her head. “Are you talking about Hawk?”
Oh, dear God. I was absolutely mortified. Was I that transparent? Or had the country music singer been listening to our conversation?
“Oh, God.” I looked at the phone in Finn’s hand and trusted he had hung up. “Please don’t tell him.” I was resorting to my teenager stage again. “I know I have no right to ask you. You’re like besties or something.”
“Besties.” Finn belly-laughed while sitting down with Lara and I again. “I have no omissions from my wife.” When Lara smiled, he continued, “But if you ask me not to say something to Hawk and it’s not going to hurt him, I’m good.”
“Thanks,” I said, hoping that was enough to just let it be.
But Finn had one more thing to add, and I was glad he did. “Let me just tell you something, and you promise not to tell Hawk.” He paused, and the silence was my understood promise. “I have never heard the man of little words talk so much about someone.” And then he poignantly tilted his head toward mine as if I didn’t already know the person he was referencing was me…and I smiled internally.
***
Because we left the last venue ahead of schedule, we arrived early at the next. Having some free time before any of the preshow things needed to be done, Lara and Finn asked if I could take the kids for a little while. I was happy to because I really truly adored those kids, and I appreciated the honest, sort-of-advice the Murphys had given me the night before. It was also nice to see they seemed more at ease letting me do the kid part of my job.
As I played with Arinn on the blanket and watched Chance run around like a mad superhero saving the world, I saw Hawk approach our grassy spot near the bank of buses. “Hi,” I said, thinking how the sun brought out the hues of red in his dark brown hair.
“Hi,” he echoed, sitting down next to me. “How you doing?”
“Good.” I gave the generic answer most humans did. “You?” I liked that he was once again sitting close to me and knowing, via Finn, that we both had been thinking of one another.
He didn’t directly answer me but threw out another question. “You find it weird knowing you are basically watching them so mommy and daddy can get it on?”
If I’d had a beverage in my mouth, it would have been spit out. “They need time together,” I tried instead. “It’s hard out here. I’m sure especially for Finn.”
“The crew’s glad you’re here. We love these little rugrats.” Hawk tossed a soft ball toward Arinn, who giggled. “But rotating babysitting duty got old.”
“That’s what you were doing when—”
“Maya, watch!” Chance yelled while attempting to do a somersault.
I gave him two thumbs up and continued my thought. “That’s what you were doing when everything happened at the hotel in the Keys?”
“Yeah,” Hawk answered.
“Good job, Chance,” I called out. “We’re going to start calling you Captain Somersault.”
“I good.”
Hawk downright laughed because Chance was far from being good at tumbling. He turned his attention from the kids to me. “Maya, if I’m intruding, let me know. But why didn’t you and your husband have kids?”
“We tried. I…I can’t,” I admitted and then made light of my personal situation. “It’s actually kind of ironic. The name Maya means fertility goddess.”
He nodded in silence, and I wondered if I’d just shot everything to hell before it had even started. Well, my inability to have children was the truth, and it was bound to come out. There was no denying it.
“We didn’t know until a couple months or so before Jeff died. He was a rock. He helped me deal…” I stopped—not only because it was getting kind of personal, but it served no purpose other than to make me sad.
Hawk bailed me out. “I saw the pictures and articles about him Reese sent to Finn with your references and stuff. He seemed like a good guy.”
“He was,” I concurred but then decided to focus on the man in front of me. “What about you?” I turned the tables in hopes of revitalizing something. “You’re good with kids. But, yet, it seems like maybe you don’t want any of your own,” I added because of the comments he had said at the hotel about being a grandparent figure and returning the kids.
“It was a bone of contention with my ex,” he said plainly.
“Ex?” My mind swirled with potential information.
“Wife,” was his one-word answer, and then he did his intense squint thing like he was trying to gauge how I was going to react. He let the fact he had been married sit with me a minute before providing the additional information I desired. “High school sweethearts. Married too young…right out of school. She wanted to be barefoot and pregnant, and I wanted to live. It got so bad I found myself counting her birth control. Our marriage was done by the time we were twenty-two.” His reveal was more than I had ever heard him say before, and I think he realized it. “Sorry. You didn’t need to know all that.”
No, maybe not. But maybe, yes. After all, he knew so much about me already.
“Thanks for telling me. You keep in touch with her, then?”
“No,” he said immediately. “Not at all. Just friends of friends might mention something every once in a while. She remarried and has three kids…just like she planned,” he tacked on at the end, in a bit of a spiteful way.
I decided it was the perfect opportunity to change the subject. “When did you start your job with Finn?”
“A little while after the divorce. I needed a change. I needed out. I moved to Nashville, where a buddy of mine owned a bar. So while I took some business classes, I bounced for my friend. Finn began playing there. It was the beginning of his career. We became friends, and he brought me on. I’ve done everything from selling merch, to bouncing, to driving, to bodyguarding, you name it.” Hawk rattled off surely just some of his duties.
“He counts on you.” I spoke with confidence.
“He can.” He paused for a second and then said, “I’m driving one of the cars tomorrow. You wanta ride with? Won’t—”
“Yes!” I interrupted, not needing him to say anything more. I would be more than happy not to be in the compact girl bus for a change and ride in one of the few cars that made up our road train.
“Well, that didn’t take much convincing.” He blew air out of his nose more than laughed.
“Can I put the windows down?” I asked one of the first things that had come to my mind when he proposed the idea.
That time, Hawk gave me a more legit, yet puzzled, laugh. “Sure.”
“Great. That’ll be great,” I punctuated my acceptance.
“Well, I better get back to what I should be doing.” He shifted onto his knees.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
“Not doing the concert tonight?”
“Nah. I’m gonna have to be writing and getting some of tomorrow’s work done that will be too hard to do in the car,” I explained.
“Good deal. If I’m driving in the morning, I’m not staying up after the show.” And he leaned in for a quick kiss. “Tomorrow.”
Ah hell, I could really start getting used to that. The touch of his face on mine combined with the thoughtful consideration of getting some sleep, which he didn’t even know meant so much to me, made me want that tomorrow even more. The open road, the freedom, Hawk…I couldn’t wait.
***
The breeze through the windows helped create an easy flow of air in the silver crossover vehicle. Both the comfortable car and Hawk’s masterful driving skills helped put me at ease. And he must have felt the same, since he opened up a lot about his family, which included, thank goodness, no other ex-wives.
I found out his parents were never married, yet had three sons together. Hawk’s father had been in the armed forces and had been deployed for long times on end. When he would return home, he would, almost inevitably, knock up Hawk’s mom. Hawk was the middle child. His older brother was married with a boy of his own. And his younger brother was married with a son and a daughter.
A couple years after Hawk’s younger brother was born, his dad seemed to go through some sort of mid-life crisis. He bought a fancy car, met another woman and, instead of going overseas, retired early from the armed forces. His father married the other woman and Hawk’s half-sister was born six months later. Though, somehow, his parents still got along.
Because he was driving, it was hard to make any eye contact with Hawk while he was revealing so much of his past. I wished I could. I wished I could look into those hazel eyes and see how he felt about what he was saying because his tone was almost as if he was reading a book or telling a story about someone he knew—not of himself.
Even though I didn’t know Hawk well, I decided to dive in further. After all, since the first time we met, we always had an ease in our conversations. “Do you resent your dad?” I questioned, trying to put myself in his place.
“For which part?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “All of it—not marrying your mom all those years and then turning around and marrying someone else.”
“He was a good dad.” He didn’t shy away from my query. “I was young when the whole other-woman thing happened. So I didn’t really know any difference. He was always around for us boys. But as I got older, the thought that he never married my mom? I’m not sure I agree with it. But that was their business.” His slight pause seemed to be instantly filled with angst. “As far as Avia?”
“Who?” I asked.
And he clarified. “His wife. I don’t have the best relationship with her or my sister. Avia was pretty manipulative. She got what she wanted.” There was a pause again, and I let my obvious question hang silently. “She had their baby. I learned she had pretty much conned him into marrying her or she threatened to take the baby away from him. Like I said, if anything, my dad was a good dad. She ended up with most of his money, too.”
“They divorced?” I asked, thinking settlement money.
“No, but probably would have ended that way. He died.” Hawk just continued on. “It was an accident. He was a volunteer firefighter, and he fell. It was right when I graduated from high school.” And then Hawk got married…I silently connected some dots on his personal timeline.
“Oh,” I partially breathed, partially said. I wasn’t any different than all those others who didn’t know how to say their condolences.
“Pretty heavy shit for a lovely car ride down the interstate,” he joked.
“Yeah, right?” I decided to assist in easing the intensity, too. “Maybe we should start playing punch buggy.”
“Two hits for the classic Beetle.”
“You’re on.”
***
I think there were way more cows than Volkswagens on our drive before the meal break. So we ended up mooing more than punching. But either way, it was a fun release. I was glad we had a chance to talk and learn more about each other and, at the same time, have some fun, too.
Because we were in the car, we got to the designated meeting area a little sooner than the trailers and buses. Even though we would all split up and go to a few different restaurants, for a variety of reasons, Hawk and I still waited for the others to arrive. Just after we pulled into the parking spot and Hawk turned off the car, I noticed a blue VW Beetle across the lot.
“Punch bug blue,” I called out, and tapped him on the shoulder.
“We’re not moving. Doesn’t count,” he claimed.
“What?” I whined. “I thought until we said stop and ruled a victor, all is fair.”
“I’ll make you a deal.” His eyes squinted at me. “Parking lot Bugs count for a kiss.”
“Punch buggy blue,” I repeated and, approving the amendment to the rules, I met my lips with his.
“Punch buggy blue,” he said, once we parted, and then he kissed me again.
“Where?” I asked.
“Look in the rear-view mirror.”
I did. “It’s the same one!” I exclaimed with a light laugh.
“Are you arguing?” His eyebrows lifted.
“Uh, no, not exactly.”
“Punch buggy blue,” he claimed again and kissed me just a little bit longer. Before I could question, he said, “Side mirror. And look out, I believe you have a side mirror, too.”
“Punch buggy blue,” I called out before he had a chance to, but that one wasn’t the best of kisses because I was laughing too hard.