Page 96 of Never Trust the Living (Battle Crows MC 7)

Our son.

Our son that was likely dead.

“Don’t know,” I admitted.

Didn’t want to know.

I didn’t want to hear that he might be gone before he’d even taken a breath of air outside of Dory’s womb.

If I closed my eyes, I could pretend that this day hadn’t happened.

That I was still sleeping with her at my side.

But she wouldn’t do that ever again if she was dead.

She wouldn’t laugh. She wouldn’t smile at me. She wouldn’t look at a piece of food and I wouldn’t have to coax her to eat it. I wouldn’t get to bring her home a cupcake anymore, or watch her wash her hair. I wouldn’t be able to see her holding our son in her arms.

I wouldn’t be able to do much of anything.

What was the point of living…

“How much more can she take before she can’t take anymore?” I asked aloud.

But I hadn’t aimed that question at anyone in particular.

It’d been more rhetorical than anything.

“Eventually, she won’t be able to get up anymore when life knocks her down.”

Jeremiah.

The one man in my family that’d always had Dory’s back.

I looked over at him and felt a sick sort of understanding with him.

One that acknowledged how much of a piece of shit I’d been in the beginning but had turned around to be the exact opposite.

Now, the thought of not having Dory was breaking me. Then? What would’ve happened before? Before I’d realized that she meant the world to me. Before, when I couldn’t see her standing in front of me when my head was buried in my own fucked up thoughts?

“She’s going to make it,” Shine declared.

Shine, one of the most vocal in the beginning of his dislike for Dory.

He’d changed.

In the last six months, as he’d gotten to know Dory for who she really was, and not for who he saw her as when she didn’t engage, had come to know and love her just like the rest of us.

That had a lot to do with his wife, Iris, though.

Would he have made that gesture if it’d been only him?

“I don’t think that she can,” I admitted. “Not after everything…”

I couldn’t tell them what happened to her. Couldn’t explain.

A shuffle had me glancing up to see Davis, or KD as Dory had dubbed him, limping toward us.

He looked at me like he wanted to rip his heart out and hand it to me.

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