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If ever a man wanted to hit something out of pure rage, then it was Dawg.
“Dammit, even Rowdy kept this from me.” The note of anger in his voice had Doogan shaking his head.
He was damned if he wanted to play therapist to the Mackays. Where the hell was Timothy when he was needed?
“Rowdy’s a little smarter at some things than you and Natches are.” He shrugged. “You could learn from him.”
“Learn how to let our daughters jump from the frying pan into the fire?” The other man’s voice was strangled with outrage.
“This is about your daughters?” Doogan asked, rather surprised. “I thought it was about Zoey. But I guess the same advice could apply.” Bending to access a mounting bolt, he tightened it carefully. “They’re not children all their lives. Zoey grew up.”
“Has nothing to do with it,” Dawg countered furiously.
Straightening, Doogan stared at the other man thoughtfully as he cleaned the ratchet he’d gotten oil on and placed it carefully in its designated slot in the case.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Dawg looked at the case, then to Doogan. “Are you fucking cleaning your tools?”
Surprised, Doogan looked at the case and back to Dawg. “You don’t clean the oil from yours?”
Dawg glared at him. “It’s oil. Keeps them from rusting.”
Doogan looked at the tools carefully. They were rather old, and he’d used them quite often actually. “Mine aren’t rusted.” He shrugged. “As to Zoey and your daughter, I suggest you take a few nerve pills a day and let them live their own lives. All of you will be happier for it.”
“What the fuck do you know about it? You don’t have kids,” Dawg snapped.
But he’d had a child. A perfect, beautiful little girl with dark eyes and an angel’s smile. So delicate he’d been terrified to hold her, certain if he breathed the wrong way she’d break.
“I guess I don’t,” Doogan had to admit bitterly, grief welling inside him. “What the bloody fuck do I know? And why the hell am I even trying to talk to you? Why don’t you just rant and rave and I’ll do as everyone else does, nod and agree with you and then do as I fucking please when your back’s turned?”
Snapping the lid of the tool case closed with a force that slammed it in place, Doogan clipped the locks, grabbed the handle, and all but threw it in the backseat as the image of his daughter taunted him, shadowed him.
“Why don’t you get the fuck upstairs, Mackay, and out of my damned face?” He slammed the truck door, anger surging inside him. “It’s more than apparent you already know everything you need to know, so I can’t tell you anything that would help you. Correct?”
Dawg tipped his head to the side for a minute, his gaze curiously haunted. “I’m sorry, Doogan,” he said simply, the words and the tone sincere.
“For what? Being a fuckin’ bastard where your sister’s concerned?” Yeah, he should apologize for that one. To Zoey.
“For your loss,” Dawg stated instead.
His loss. Doogan froze.
“And where do you get that?” Doogan knew he hadn’t said anything.
A shrug of heavy shoulders and Dawg swallowed tightly. “You have the same look on your face that I felt in my gut when I learned Christa lost our first child.”
“That is not a discussion we’re having,” Doogan warned him softly. “Not now, not ever. We clear?”
Laying his forearms across the top of the truck bed, he stared back at Dawg.
“We’re clear,” Dawg agreed. “But you ever need an understanding ear . . .”
“You can’t keep doing this to Zoey,” he stated reasonably, ignoring the offer. “She’ll be the one that hates you for it. Of all your sisters, she’ll not forgive what you take from her.”
Dawg looked away. “I can’t help it. If something happened, and I knew I could have stopped it somehow . . .”
“It will break off your soul, it will rip your guts to a thousand shreds,” Doogan finished when Dawg couldn’t. “But you’ll know you didn’t fail her, Dawg. You didn’t make her play with Barbies when she wanted to learn how to throw a ball when she was three. You’ll know that when she wanted to learn to ride a bike at four, you didn’t buy her a Big Wheel instead.” His throat felt tight, strangled. “You’ll know you let her be who she wanted to be, who she needed to be, even if it was Witchy, when she was killed because her mother promised her a bike if she would go to the park with her. Then the bitch let her run across a busy street when she became frightened of the man whose car her mother tried to force her into. Because if she had trusted me to let her ride that goddamned bike, maybe she wouldn’t have gone with her mother when she knew she wasn’t supposed to.” He all but yelled the words back at Dawg, his fingers curled into fists, rage eating at his soul. “Stop worrying about your own fucking comfort level all the time, Mackay. Let them ride their goddamned bikes.”
He was finished with the bastard.
