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“The club knows you did time. Right?”
“Yeah.”
“And the Old Ladies? Do they know?”
“They know.”
“So, everyone knows. And now I know,” I said.
“I’m losing the point of this conversation.”
“I guess the point I’m trying to make is, should I run off? Should I back away because of what you’ve done? Fuck, Viper, what kind of person would I be to judge you for what you’ve done when I’ve killed in self-defense. Are we any different? You and I?”
We shared the bottle for a few quiet moments and then he said, “Now you.”
Nodding, I realized I couldn’t hide the truth from him any longer. Not after what he’d shared with me. When he’d been prepared to see me walk away and end all of this for the truth. We both refused to admit that this was more than just sleeping together.
But it was.
“My dad is in prison,” I said as I met his gaze. “For something far less noble than what you did.”
“What’d he do?” Viper asked.
“Tried to rob a bank and failed. He went in when I was nineteen. He’s serving a twenty-year sentence. He’s the one who’s been calling me.” I gripped the neck of the bottle.
“You take his calls?” Viper asked.
“Usually. It’s been kind of hard…what with where I’m currently living. I haven’t had a lot of privacy.”
“You mean you were trying to hide it.”
“Like you were hiding that you went to prison?”
“I wasn’t hiding that.”
“Maybe not, but you weren’t forthcoming about it either.”
“So, was it the tattoo that finally made you ask?”
“Yeah, but honestly that was just the culmination of things, I guess.” I didn’t want to throw South Paw under the bus. I doubted Viper would’ve appreciated South Paw’s slip up.
“Why do you take the calls from your dad?” Viper asked.
“Because he’s mydad,” I explained. “He did a bad thing. I get that. But he’s still my dad and he’s all I have left.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment as he scratched his jaw. “You visit him?”
I nodded. “It’s been hard, without a car. But there’s a bus route that gets me within walking distance of the prison.”
I’d sold the car I had for the down payment on the trailer. I’d worked like a dog the last few years. The trailer had just been paid off. And now I’d cash in on the insurance money and move on with my life.
“Where’s your mom?” he asked.
“Died when I was a baby. Despite my dad being a criminal, he was a pretty good dad growing up. We bounced around a lot, but it is what it is.”
We sipped on the bourbon in pensive silence and then I asked, “Are we going to continue lying about this?”
“Lying about what?”
