Page 237 of Smooth Sailing

“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.

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