“Why’re you notpushin’ thiswoman?”Hound went on.
“Timing’s never been right,” Jag lied.
“Cut the shit.”Hound knew he was lying.
Jag sighed.
Then he gave it to him.
“We’re completely connected and we’re totally not.”
Hound’s brows drifted up.“Why’sthat?”
Jag looked down at his bottle.
Then he looked at Hound.
“The first time I saw her, she was at her mother’s funeral,and I was sitting on Dad’s grave.”
Hound said nothing, just held Jag’s eyes.
“That’s how we’re connected, Hound,” Jagger pointed out.
“That’s an important connection, Jag.Now explain to me howyou never knew her name until today.”
“We’d connect, it was always brief, and then we’d missconnections that were meant not to be brief.”
“This is the girl across the way.”
Jag straightened from the bar.
Christ.
Hound always had his finger on the pulse of his boys.
So it shouldn’t surprise Jag that, even over a decade sincethat note was passed, he remembered.
It still surprised him.
“Hound—” Jag began.
“And you dicked around for all this time, notlearnin’ her name?”
“I don’t have what she has,” Jagger told him.
“What’s that?”
“Any time in with my dead dad.”
Hound got quiet.
“She needs me, Hound.She’s always needed me.And I’m animposter,” Jagger told him.
That made Hound straighten from his hunch over the bar.
“You are the fuck not,” he returned.
“Today, she told me she’s got troubles.All this way downthe line from her mom passing, she’s got trouble in her family.And she’spissed at me because I wasn’t there when she needed me, and her family fellapart.I got nothing for her.I didn’t keep our family together.Mom did.Youdid.Dutch did.I…”
