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“Sad.”
“Yeah. But at least she has the club. She’s not alone. She’ll never be alone.”
I watched Rach saying goodbye to the Old Ladies, hugging them and smiling. How could she smile after what she’d been through? Losing a husband, having to raise a son alone…
“Hey,” Viper said, grasping my chin and turning my face to his. “She’ll be okay. She’s strong.”
“How do they do it?” I asked softly. “How do they live knowing that at any moment one of their men could just die? Joni could lose Zip. Or her brother. Or—”
“That’s the club life, Sutton. If you choose it, at some point you’ll lose someone you love. It’s just part of how we live.”
“I guess, yeah. You’re right. I know you’re right.”
My dad had gone to prison. He wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t really alive, either. And I’d lost my mom when I was too young to miss her.
Still, life went on. The world turned. And you found a way.
“None of us know how long we have on this planet,” Viper said quietly. “You just live life as best you can, knowing it could all end tomorrow.”
“How do you live with that kind of conviction?” I asked.
He paused in thought. “Have you ever almost died?”
I shook my head.
“Then you don’t know.”
“Know what?”
“There’s this clarity,” he said. “It washes over you. All of a sudden, the trivial, meaningless bullshit part of life just falls away and you’re left with this fearlessness… You’re left with this bravery, and you hold on to that feeling and you live your life every day from that newfound place. And suddenly you’re not so scared of it all ending tomorrow, because you live for today.”
It felt like I’d lived my entire life up until this point, waiting for these words.
“I’d like to try to live like that,” I said quietly.
“I’ll help you.”
I slowly sat up so I could reach his face. I gently ran a finger down the side of his cheek, to brush behind his ear.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For letting me in.”
He smiled slightly. “I didn’t let you in. You took a battering ram and got in yourself.”
“Crossed the moat, scaled the walls, crashed through the drawbridge?”
“Something like that.”
“If it makes you feel any better, you did the same to me, Viper. You did the same to me.”
Chapter30
“That’swhy you sleep with a knife,” I murmured, my cheek pressed to Viper’s bare chest. “Isn’t it? Because you were in prison?”
Viper tightened his arm around me, and his palm settled on the curve of my back. “Old habits.”
