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He pushed up off the ground and loomed over me. Slash stared down at me for a second and then he removed his shirt.
“Stop,” I said. “You can’t—you won’t make this better with sex. That’s what you do, right? Every time I ask a question about your tattoos or your past, you distract me with sex and sweetness.”
His eyes were dull as he pointed to the heart clock tattoo. “This was the time they died.”
“They?”
“My wife…” He clenched his jaw. “And my daughter.”
He’d had a child.
A daughter.
My hands instinctively went to my belly in a protective gesture.
“I didn’t tell you to keep it from you,” he said, his voice grave, like he’d swallowed glass and he was choking on his own blood. “I didn’t tell you because I can barely think about it without—”
“I want to know it all,” I said softly. “Everything about your life before me. I need to know. I deserve to know.”
He was silent for a long moment, but finally, he nodded. “My wi—Hazel was driving to visit her mother,” he said. “I was supposed to go with her, but at the last minute some club shit I had to take care of came up. I was part of the Coeur d’Alene club chapter at the time. I told Hazel I’d meet up with her in a few days.”
He ran a hand through his tangled salt-and-pepper hair and then spoke as though he’d already cried every tear a man could cry, “She was T-boned at an intersection by a semi that ran a red light. Our three-year-old daughter was in the back seat. Her name was Daisy.”
“Daisy,” I whispered, my heart cracking open.
“The driver was drunk. He died in the crash. His rig clipped a light pole and turned over on its side and caught fire while he was passed out. He took everything from me, but he paid with his life.”
“Oh my God. This is why you never freaked out. This is why you want to be in the delivery room. This is why when I have my hormonal breakdowns, they don’t faze you. You’ve done all of this before.”
“Yeah. I have.”
I breathed deeply, trying to wrap my head around everything he was saying. “You’ve done this before,” I repeated. It needed repeating. I swallowed. “What did you…what happened…after?”
“The club was there for me, but I couldn’t stay in town. Everything reminded me of them. I went on the road, and I’ve been there ever since.”
He turned around and showed me his back. “I had a hazel tree inked onto my back when she became my Old Lady, and then when Daisy came along—”
“You had Daisy flowers tattooed on you,” I finished for him.
“Yeah. The tire swing, too.”
His tattoos made sense now, but only because I knew his story. A child’s tire swing hanging from the tree. An hourglass that held no sand because his wife and daughter’s time had run out.
The Grim Reaper, the harbinger of death.
“Is that why you stayed?” I asked him, tracing the ink on his shoulder blade. “When you found out I was pregnant?”
He hung his head. “I stayed, because for the first time in fifteen years I wanted someone that was worth staying for. I had the chance for some Goddamn happiness.”
I pressed my chest to his back and draped my arms around him.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” I asked softly.
“At some point, yeah. I just…”
“What?”
“Wanted more time with you. With us. Without all that other shit.”
