Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 137310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
He smiled down at her.
The doors opened and their group was ushered in.
Di put on her headphones and tinkered with the machine.
Hugger followed suit.
And at the Denver Art Museum, with Diana, Hugger walked through the first art exhibit he’d ever seen.
It was the absolute shit.
The Problem We All Live With was powerful.
But as he discussed it with Di on their way to the Highlands after they left DAM, he shared his favorites were Saying Grace, Before the Shot and The Lineman.
25
TAKE IT FROM HERE
Big Petey
Several years ago…
The place was quiet as a tomb, and Big Petey didn’t like to make that comparison, but there it was.
It was dark, late-ish, but there were still lots of staff and visitors, people taking time, eking out the last dregs, trying to make a miracle by making what was proved finite, last longer.
He found her room, he also found her alone.
He wasn’t expecting this, he thought for sure Harlan would be there.
When Jackie noticed him loitering at the door, she raised her hand to him, and since it looked like it took a lot out of her to do it, he rushed forward and held it.
“Pete,” she whispered.
“Hey, pretty girl,” he whispered back.
“Thank you…for coming,” she pushed out with some effort.
“Anytime you need me, Jackie. You know that.”
She gave him a ghost of a smile.
He glanced around the room then down to her. “Where’s your boy?”
“Asked him to go out and get me some DQ.”
It was Pete’s turn to give her a ghost of a smile. “Bet he got right on that.”
“Didn’t want to.” Her weak voice came at him. “Didn’t want to leave me. But you’re right, he went right out to get it.” She gave him a feeble squeeze of fingers. “We don’t have a lot of time. I wanna do this before he gets back.”
“Okay, sweetheart. What you need?”
“Look after him?”
Pete hid his affront. “A’ course.”
“No, Pete. Look after him.”
Big Petey continued to hide his affront. “Jackie, you don’t gotta ask that. Me and all the boys got you covered.”
“I mean Chaos.”
“I know.”
“I mean get him to earn his patch.”
Pete gave her fingers a careful squeeze. “Jackie, baby, I know.”
She stared at him and whispered, “You know.”
“You’re ours, he’s ours. Just gotta figure out a way around it to make him understand it.”
“I’m yours, he’s yours,” she said so quiet, he almost didn’t hear her.
But he saw the wet gather and fall out the side of her eye.
So he leaned close. “Hey, hey, hey, none of that. You got nothin’ to worry about. We got him.”
The tears still in her eyes, she looked at him hard, like she was trying to read any hint of lie on him.
There was none, so she couldn’t find it.
“I should have gotten him to you earlier,” she mumbled.
“He needed to be with you. You know that, Jackie. No way he’d commit to a club when his only commitment was you.”
“I shouldn’t have done that to him, made him feel like that.”
“Darlin’,”—Pete leaned even closer—“you didn’t. You raised that boy right. Any good son will look after his momma.”
She nodded vaguely, fatigue showing even starker on her face.
“Not gonna have the energy to eat that Blizzard when it gets here, you push yourself too hard,” Big Petey warned.
“I’ll just take a bite. All I need. I asked for Oreo, Harlan’s favorite.”
Of course she did.
“He’ll eat the rest,” she finished.
It’d taste like dust, but Harlan would eat the rest.
“Help him find a good woman, Pete,” she begged. “A pretty one, with sass and class, with a brain in her head, like Tack found.”
“You got it.”
“Make sure she’s sweet too.”
“I will.”
“Tell the boys—”
Another careful squeeze of her fingers. “Don’t gotta tell ’em nothin’.”
“Tell them anyway,” she whispered.
“I will, sweetheart.”
Suddenly, her face got fierce, and he saw a little of the old Jackie there.
Even now, wasted to nothing, she was beautiful.
Harlan got all his momma. That thick, leonine hair. That long, strong body. Like she willed it, and maybe she did, there was nothing of his father in him.
Harlan McCain was all Jackie.
“I don’t regret it. Not a second of it,” she declared.
“I know.”
“Got him out of it, no regrets in that.”
“I know, girl.”
“No regrets,” she whispered, her eyes fluttering.
“Nothing to regret, Jackie.”
“He’ll do you boys right,” she promised.
“Not a doubt in my mind.”
Her frail fingers curled a bit around his then went slack as her eyes closed.
Pete instantly felt panic, but when he raised his gaze to the heart monitor, he saw the slow but steady blip.
He took her in, seeing her there in that bed, but remembering how she used to be. Tall and golden, not beaten down by a life that would break most, standing strong because that was Jacqueline McCain, and because she had to for her boy.
Then Big Petey bent in, kissed her forehead and whispered, “Don’t worry about a thing, Jackie, we’ll take it from here.”