Page 19 of Justice for Radar

I nodded. Sounded similar to how Rodney had fallen down the alcoholism rabbit hole. Of course, at the end? I couldn’t be sure alcohol was the only thing he was on, but that was neither here nor there. I was genuinely interested in this man, who had taken me in, and his family and how things had come to be.

“She got pregnant again, lost that baby too, and really fell into addiction. Doctors told her she couldn’t get pregnant again after that and then lo and behold, she got pregnant with Mariposa out of the blue. She was clean then, and things were going alright. We made it – Mariposa was born, and things were good. Real good. I was working a lot though, and with the new baby – she was stressing. I couldn’t be two places at once and she ended up relapsing and that was rough. We got pregnant again after she got clean, but the call of the drugs got to be too much. I ended up losing her back to that shit and then we had Lucia. I had to file for sole custody and got divorced.” He stopped, hands buried in the pockets of his cargo shorts and sniffed, staring out over the open water. I could see the guilt weighting his shoulders down.

“I hadn’t been in love with my wife in a long time by that point,” he confessed. “I was just going through the motions trying to be a stand-up guy, the man of the house, but I was using work as my own drug of choice to cope with a failing marriage and the fact I was honestly not ready to be anyone’s dad. I fucked up a lot in the beginning, but eventually realized me and her together we were going down like the fuckin’ Titanic, you know? Slow, and eventually the casualties of us together in that relationship? Yeah… my buddy got me into the club at that point and, man, I fuckin’ needed it. Especially when he got shot by this guy we were trying to apprehend. He didn’t make it.”

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” I murmured.

“My mom and dad stepped up, and were doing most of the work raising my girls. My buddy, he left behind two kids of his own. By then, I wasn’t a prospect anymore and the demands on my time? Shit, Cutter was taking over from Mac, and heunderstood, you know? That I was and needed to be a father first. The girls were growing up so damn fast. Then I met Marisol, and everything changed.”

I perked up a bit and asked, “How so?”

“Man, that woman wasmy rock. She was my ride or die and she had itdown. She stepped up and stepped in and made everything better for all of us.” He looked wistful and sighed. “Everything was good for like a solid almost ten years and then she got sick. They tried everything, but we lost her right when the girls were turning twelve and fourteen. I was suddenly on my own again and what she taught me?” He shook his head. “I wasn’t gonna hide in my work or the club like before. I wasn’t gonna be that absentee dad when the girls had just lost their second mom. Their bio mom died several years before from an OD and it was a waste. It was all a big damn messy waste, and I had to be strong for them so I did.” He shrugged but there was a clear pain etched in his posture and on his face.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, and he nodded.

“Me too, about you,” he said and shrugged. “We all have fucked-up shit in our past,” he said. “Trick is to not let it define us and who we are now.”

“Wise words,” I murmured, and he smiled as we started to walk again.

“Hope they help you like they helped me,” he said.

I smiled at that. I didn’t know what they were doing, honestly, except theyweremaking me think.

7

Radar…

“You got it bad for her, don’t you?” Atlas asked, laughing.

I frowned and looked up from my phone and over at my partner and club brother.

“What you talking about?” I asked.

“Since when have you ever been prone to long walks on the beach?” he asked.

I rolled my eyes. “We were talking, that’s all.”

“Uh-huh, I haven’t seen you talk to a woman that much inyears, bro.”

“Most of the women in the last several years I wasn’t interested in talking to,” I said, scrolling down my screen.

“You interested in anything else with her other than talking?” he asked.

“Why you asking?” I demanded absently.

“Duh,” he said. “If you ain’t interested in tapping that, I damn sure am. She’s not half bad looking.”

“Don’t even fuckin’ think about it, man,” I growled, and he chuckled.

“That’s what I thought,” he said. “Youdohave a thing for her.”

I rolled my eyes and asked, “You watching for our suspect?”

“Yeah, I’m watching,” he muttered and turned to face back out the windshield of our decoy van.

“These fucking junkies are almost too easy to bag and tag,” he said, sighing.

“They are creatures of habit for all that they can be unpredictable,” I agreed coolly. I’d learned firsthand at both sides of that coin and still harbored some major bitterness about it.

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