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“Your…Ms. Tara isn’t coming?” he hesitated.
I shook my head. “Tara decided that being with her son in his condition is too emotionally draining for her.”
I didn’t elaborate, but there was no hiding the derision in my voice or the fact that I was pissed off all over again by Tara’s selfish actions.
Tyler tensed beside me.
I hadn’t really had a chance to tell him over the last three days that she’d left for good…and when I did have a moment, I’d purposefully not broached the subject.
See, I still wasn’t all that confident when it came to everything that happened between Tara, Tyler, and me. I knew that he was trying to get over it, but that didn’t mean I needed to rub salt in that wound or reopen it if it was healed over.
I didn’t want to hurt him anymore. Hell, I didn’t intend to hurt him back then either.
And I needed him now.
Sure, I had the men in my club, and although they knew me well, they didn’t know me quite like Tyler did.
Tyler was like a brother to me and had been for the majority of my life.
Which was why I was so fuckin’ relieved to have him here with me.
Although I did have the distinct feeling that my club was outside, or would be momentarily seeing as the doctor’s receptionist was also Liner’s on-again-off-again girl.
Liner was the one who found me reeling and alone. At any other time, I don’t think that Liner would’ve given that first fuck about a man who looked like his dog had just died.
But, the more he saw me at Tara’s house—he was Tara’s neighbor, and she had hated him—the more he got to know me.
And since I didn’t like Tara any more than he did, a bond had formed between us that slowly grew into something much more. When I started prospecting with the Bear Bottom Guardians MC, I never expected to finally find a home where it just felt like a perfect fit.
It’d been perfect…or well, almost perfect.
I still missed Tyler.
We always said we were going to join a motorcycle club together.
However, with him being the chief of police, I didn’t see him joining one now, despite the fact that we had plenty of police officers in the local chapter that I was in—as well as the sister branches of the Dixie Wardens MC all over the South.
“Well, that’s unfortunate.” Dr. Zappata sighed. “I won’t keep you hanging, Mr. Pierce. I’ll just begin.”
I nodded at him in thanks.
Dr. Zappata bent forward and laid a few papers down in front of me on his desk. I glanced at them, but the numbers on them meant nothing to me.
“You don’t know what any of that means,” he said softly. “But, all of it indicates that the treatments are no longer working.”
I swallowed.
“What does that mean?” Tyler asked carefully, noticing that I couldn’t breathe…let alone speak.
“It means that treatment is no longer an option, and now, all we can do is make him comfortable for the last few weeks of his life.”
And just like that, the bomb was dropped, and my soul was obliterated just like I knew it would be.
A couple of weeks ago, I’d come to a very similar meeting with Tara and Dr. Zappata. He’d told me then that this treatment, depending on how Matias responded to it, might very well be his last.
I’d had hope, though.
I’d hoped and prayed and cried and raged.
Yet, the end had always been resolute.
I’d known, deep in my most secret of hearts, that this was the end for my son.
That Matias wasn’t going to make it.
His disease was just too advanced, too aggressive. He never responded to the treatments as we’d hoped. He’d always taken longer to bounce back after them, and we’d have to wait longer to start the next round.
If I were being honest, this had always been what we’d been moving toward.
I just didn’t want to admit it.
Not until right then.
“What now?” I questioned, voice rough, sounding like I’d swallowed razor wire.
Dr. Zappata pulled out another paper, this one a list of different hospice agencies.
“Now, we get him into hospice to handle end of life care,” he explained. “We make him comfortable. We do everything we can to keep him at home, where he’s the happiest.”
And when we walked out of the doctor’s office twenty minutes later, a single piece of paper the only thing in my hand, a list of the people who would help my son die in peace, I could no longer deal.
I looked up at the eight members of the Bear Bottom Guardians who were lined up on the bottom step. All of them looking like they were hoping for the best.
But they saw my face and the truth hit them just like it did me.
Matias Tyler Pierce wasn’t going to make it.
