“No,” I whimpered.
His hand reached out to rest on my shoulder as I stared down at the seat. “Let me take this fall for you.”
“Not a fucking chance. We’ll… we’ll save you. We’ll get you help. Chemo. Treatment. Whatever the hell it is the docs can do. We’ll do it. I’ll pay for it all. I’ll give you whatever you need, even if it’s my kidneys, my liver, my heart, my…”
He cut me off with a squeeze of my shoulder. “All I need is you to be the president you were born to be and give your road captain his dying wish of kicking you out of this car, going to the police department, and taking the fall for my club. Please, Drew. Do this… for me.”
When his eyes met mine, I became lost in a vortex of confusion and grief.
All the words I wanted to say were drowning, lost under the sea of all the pain I felt at the thought of losing the main man in my life.
“I can’t lose you, Harry,” I sobbed.
“You’re going to lose me in a few weeks anyway, son,” he confessed in a whisper.
Weeks?
Fucking weeks?
My head rolled back between my shoulders, my eyes closing as I tried to find some way to contain the breaking of my heart.
“Get out of the car, Tucker.”
“No.”
“For me.”
“Harry…” I dropped my head back down and opened my eyes, trying to focus on him through blurry eyes. “I can’t. You can’t ask me to do this. Ican’tdo this.”
“When did you become so fucking soft?” He smirked, his own silent tears descending down his face.
“Please…” I gasped. “Don’t…”
“It’s already done.” He shrugged. “I’ve spoken to Sutton. He thinks I’m enough for them. I’ve experienced every bit of Hound history in my life. I’ve been there through it all. I’ll sate their thirst. Let me go have one last fight. I can even get a sly hit into that bastard Jon Taylor who gave you so much grief on the inside.”
I growled, getting really fucking angry. “They’ll kill you in there. They’ll kill you ‘cause of me. ‘Cause of who you are. ‘Cause of who you belong to.”
“And I can’t think of a better way to go.”
I broke again, my face scrunching up in agony. He grabbed it with both his hands, squeezing it in his grip as he searched my fucked up eyes.
“You go out there and you tell our men I love them. You hear me? You go out there and you tell them that I’m doing this for me. Not for you. Not for them. Not for anyone. For me. And don’t you dare come fucking find me.”
Before I could take a breath, he’d pulled my head down to his and kissed the top of it. His mouth lingered there, and I heard theI love you, sonhe breathed upon me.
Then everything happened quickly. Sutton opened the door and whispered his apology as Harry used all his strength to push me out. I rolled to the ground a sobbing mess, unableto get up with my hands still cuffed behind my back and my vision blurred from the tears and the earlier fight.
“Let’s go, Chief,” Harry shouted.
“I’m sorry, Drew,” Sutton muttered, but he wasted no time in hopping into his car, locking the door and switching on his sirens.
The tires kicked up dust as the car tore off, leaving me bent over on my knees as the man I loved most in this world rode away to save me from any more pain.
If only he knew how much agony I was suffering as I watched him go to die.
“HARRY!”
It was my last cry of blood-curdling desperation before I fell forward, sobbing my brother’s name and feeling the loss hit me like a bullet in the chest all over again.
