I nodded against my pillow, studying the flecks of paint on the ceiling that were peeling off.
“You sure this is the only way?”
“It’s the right way, Clint.”
“You’ve done well to hide it.”
“The pain will only show if I allow it to.”
“It shows,” he told me roughly. “You’re just a good actor.”
I smirked, thinking about all the secrets I’d kept from my club over the years. Things for their benefit only. Eric Tucker had been forced to leave Babylon for reasons out of his control. He’d done what he’d had to do to save his son… I just hoped his son understood when all the facts and the histories were laid in front of him to study. Drew Tucker wasn’t the easiest man to convince. He was stubborn. He was brutally violent. He needed outside pain to cover up his internal pain. He was hard-headed. He was arrogant. Did I mention that he was stubborn?
But, my God, he was the most incredible president our club would ever see.
No man was as loyal. No man wore his patch with asmuch pride. No man would have spent every waking hour on the phone to the prison and the police trying to get me out of this place. He never gave up on those he loved. Drew Tucker would rather be stabbed in the heart with a rusty blade and left to bleed out than see one of us hurt.
I knew what I was doing was going to cripple him. I’d seen the pain he’d worn every day since Pete’s death. But I could not let his future be ruined by another stint in prison when I was about to die anyway. He was going to have to grieve my death no matter where I was. I’d rather it mean something than be wasted.
I smirked as I thought of the son I’d never had.
Those five years without him had been tough. Every day, I’d thought of ways to get him out. I’d lived to free him. I knew he was doing the same for me now.
The only thing that reassured me he would be okay had come in the form of Ayda Hanagan—the broken little waitress with the heart of a lion and the roar of a beast.
She would never let him fall again.
I’d never seen any couple more perfect for each other than those two.
I imagined their wedding day and the vows they would make. I imagined her with a swollen belly that Tucker would fall asleep against every night. I imagined their long lives together, and I wished that they, more than anyone else, would make it to the mark of a hundred years together.
Clint blew out a breath beside me, and I rolled my head on the pillow to look at him.
“Thank you,” I said quietly. “For being the confession booth I needed in these last few weeks of my life.”
“The stories I could tell.” He smiled, showing off twogold teeth among the rest.
“But you won’t.”
“Prison honor.” He beat his fist against his heart, and I smiled with a hint of regret. Clint was someone I could have been good friends with on the outside. He was someone I could have taken under my wing and introduced to my brothers. He was honest and open to real talk. None of the small stuff. We’d spent nights awake, bleeding our horror stories out on one another. He’d been a soothing balm on my itching, plague-ridden skin.
“Are you ready?” I asked him, knowing what a big thing this was for him to do.
Clint looked into my eyes and offered a sad smile. “I have all the letters. I’ll make sure they get them.”
“And you’ve remembered all the stories I’ve told you. So if any of them ever come knocking on your door, you can tell them—”
“How much they were loved and how happy you were to do this.”
I nodded, feeling the first flashes of death start to loom above me.
“Hound for life,” I whispered.
“And in the afterlife,” he finished for me.
“Especially then.”
I pushed myself up and immediately started coughing. The blood rose in my throat that morning. It was thicker than before. Like glue. Glue that tasted like acid. A daily reminder that the cancer within me wasn’t cute, it was deadly. I didn’t have long left. If anything, I’d been lucky to make it so far.
