Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 94897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 474(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 474(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
“You could have told me that, Eli.”
He sounded impatient when he replied, “I guess I’m not a great communicator, Archie.”
“Trust me, take stock on that too, brother,” she advised. “Not just for me, Dad, our family, but anyone in your life. You acting like an asshole to get your way is going to get old real fast with people who are not bound to you. You with me?”
“I’ll take stock.”
That sounded like it was gritted through his teeth.
Archie grinned at Jag.
And that was a little sister who liked to make her big brother squirm.
Jag smiled back.
“Though, your big takeaway from this is that I love you,” she said. “I’m done putting up with your shit, but I’ll never be done loving you. You dig?”
“Dig?”
“You hardly need me to define that slang, bro.”
“You’re such a hippie,” Elijah muttered.
“I’m not a hippie. I’m not anything. Why do people need to label? It’s gross.”
“Okay, I have thirty minutes to write a five-thousand-word paper before I have to haul my ass back into the office, so I don’t have time for this. Your takeaway is, I love you too. And you’ve been heard. It’s time I try to be the son my mother raised.”
“Your father too,” Arch pushed.
It took a second before he said, “My father too.”
“All right, go get at that paper. Love you, bro.”
“Love you too, you goof.”
Hearing that, Jag let out a breath.
Archie also relaxed on top of him.
“Later,” she said into the phone.
“’Bye, Arch.”
They disconnected, she tossed her phone to the floor at the side of the bed and smiled huge at him.
He gave her a squeeze. “Happy?”
“So happy, I’m give-my-guy-a-blowjob happy.”
For fuck’s sake.
“Baby, I just came not twenty minutes ago.”
“Bet I can make you come again.”
He wouldn’t take that bet because he’d bet she was right.
He also was never gonna stand in the way of a blowjob.
Twenty minutes later, she proved they were both right.
Chapter Eighteen
That Is Everything
Tack
Thirty years before…
The lights of Denver lay out before them.
“She’s the one.”
“You haven’t hid that, brother.”
“I can’t go on.”
A beat.
Two.
Three.
All loaded.
Then the response…
“Nope.”
“Gonna fill her up with babies, and I’m not giving them this, Tack. I’m not givin’ them the Club like it is. They’re not inheriting this block of pure shit from me.”
They’d rode together, side by side, up to Lookout Mountain so they could see this view.
It was Black’s idea.
He’d met Keely.
The fall had been hard and swift.
But they both already knew where their path led as brothers.
Keely just solidified it for Black.
“Getting the Club right needs patience,” Tack told him. “This is gonna be slow, Black. We can’t make any sudden moves. Every step planned out, purposeful.”
“You need to cut Naomi loose.”
That made Tack look to his left.
To his brother.
To Graham Black.
“Brother—”
Black looked right, their gazes caught and hung.
“She’s draining you and you know it,” he said. “And we need your shit sharp.”
He was not wrong. If Tack had ever loved his wife—and those days, he asked himself frequently if he ever had, and came up short every time—he’d fallen out of that as hard and swift as Black had recently fallen in.
“A man in love wants that to be contagious,” Tack noted.
“No, a man finds love, he wants the men he loves to have that bounty. She looks at me, brother, and the world takes flight in her eyes. All I wanna do is follow, and I couldn’t give that first fuck where it goes, as long as it’s never lost to me.”
“Always a poet,” Tack muttered.
“I’m not fucking around with you, Tack,” Black bit. “Life is too goddamned short to waste it on leeches like Naomi and you know that better than me.”
Tack clenched his teeth.
“Cut her loose,” Black advised.
“First, she’s the mother of my kids, and second, Black, we got some important matters at hand, brother, and Naomi is not one of them,” Tack pointed out.
Black held his eyes and sighed.
He then looked to the lights.
Tack did too.
“The babies you two will make will be beautiful,” Tack told him, and it was no lie.
Black was a good-looking man.
Keely was amazing.
“Oh yeah, they will. Boys. We’re gonna have a crew of boys,” Black declared. “She pops one out, fill her with another one.”
Tack felt one side of his lips hitch up. “Not sure you can make that call.”
“Keely is so on board with that, it isn’t funny.”
“I meant about them all being boys,” Tack shared.
“I’ll take girls, love ’em with all I got. That baby is her mixed with me, love every cell in their bodies with everything that makes me.”
“Good you got that attitude, ’cause far as I can tell, chances are fifty-fifty.”
“We can have five girls and we’ll go until we got at least two boys.”
Tack looked at his brother again. “Why?”
Black looked at him too. “You gotta ask that?”
“I did, didn’t I?”
“Okay then, a man needs a brother.”