Not to mention she had great curves and a perfect set of tits.
She was the total package.
We watched as she jogged down the steps of her camper, slammed the door, then walked over to the fence where she spoke soothingly to Neo.
He looked at her, curious.
But he didn’t move closer.
She tossed him a pig ear and cooed something at him.
Neo didn’t reach for the treat until she’d rounded the hood of her Mazda.
“That thing ain’t gonna survive the winter,” he pointed out.
“No,” I agreed. “It won’t.”
“Why’d you let her get that anyhow?”
I grimaced. “I didn’t let her get anything. Before I even knew she was here, she’d already purchased it. I about killed Daniels when I found out that he sold it to her. But she seems to like it, so I didn’t have the heart to tell her that she’d never be able to get around anywhere in the winter in it.”
“She can have two cars,” he suggested. “You have that old truck in the shop that you don’t drive.”
When I’d bought the place, the house had come with a farm truck that had seen better days.
I’d put some new tires on it, had Court, the local mechanic, give it a tune-up, and I’d had it in the garage since I’d asked Apollo to get Sage here for when she finally arrived.
“That’s my plan,” I said. “One day when it snows for the first time, she’ll have to admit she needs something different. And I’ll offer her the truck.”
“She’ll fight you.” He laughed.
I looked at the ceiling and admitted, “I know.”
“You sound excited about that.”
I thought about his words for a long minute before replying, “When I was in jail, I had a lot of time to think. I thought about my boy, and what I missed out on. I thought about what I would do to the Irish Mob if I ever got out and found a way to keep it secret who was messing with them. I thought about getting rid of Dario O’Neal so that Sage never had to deal with him again. I thought about Sage’s parents and her brother, how they threw her to the wolves. I thought a lot about Sage, and what I would do differently had I had all the information. But the thing is, most of my thoughts centered around her and my boy. My boy’s not here anymore. There’s no way I’ll ever get him back. But Sage? She’s here. And I only have to reach out and try. And fuck, do I love looking at her out my back door every morning.”
Black cleared his throat. “Wish I could say that one day you’ll wake up and the pain of losing your kid won’t be there anymore. But it’s definitely there. It’s never ending, too. Some days are better than others, but the ache? It’s always there. Right in the middle of your heart where it will never go away.”
I’d experienced that myself over the last seven years.
I hadn’t had much time with Dean.
In fact, I’d had a whole lot less time with Dean than I should have.
It didn’t make sense to me, this sense of loss.
One would think that having him for less than six months, and seeing him for less than a month total if you added up all the time I’d had with him, that I wouldn’t have this sense of loss weighing me down.
But sometimes, I felt like it hurt worse.
I’d missed out on so much.
His first crawl. His first step. His first word. His first laugh. I’d never see him walk across the stage at his graduation. I’d never teach him how to drive a stick shift. I’d never get to hear him call me dad.
Yeah, I would say it’s way worse, because I had nothing but an imagination, and it ran wild thinking about all the missed possibilities.
I looked down at the photos of the young boys that were missing and thought, at least I’ll never know what it feels like to lose him with all those memories buried deep.
