Page 65 of Blackout

“What’s he going to do? Jack doesn’t know, but I reached out to Wolf a couple of weeks ago. I told him he was losing his mind, and I asked him to intervene.”

“What? Why wouldn’t you come to me?”

“Blackie, you forget that I was the one locked in a basement with you when Jimmy Gold took us. I was the one watching you spiral out of control and I know the signs. I know that you’re struggling with your own burdens.”

An addict always thinks he’s got control of his situation, but the people closest to him will always see through his façade. They will look at him with his plate filled to the top and shake their head because they know it’s only a matter of time before he drops it.

“Anthony’s here,” she says. “I have to go. Look, I’ll tell Wolf about the gun.”

“Reina, I’m—”

“Sorry,” she interjects. “Yeah, I know, Black.”

Reina disconnects the call and I toss the burner phone across the table. There’s no denying the hostility in her voice. It’s not like it’s not warranted. I’ve disappointed a lot of people in my life and my apologies have become worthless to everyone except Lacey. It’s only a matter of time before she steps in line behind Reina and realizes I’m a fucking lying sack of shit who only serves to break her heart.

If the cops have that gun, I’m finished. That puts me and my club at the scene and no one is going down for my negligence. Aside from my prints being all over the piece, a forensic report will conclude the bullets that killed those Mexicans came from my gun. They’ll try me on two counts of murder and I’ll never see the light of day. I can fight it. I can hire a whole fucking team of lawyers, but the odds aren’t in my favor.

They never are.

“Blackie?”

Lacey’s voice drags me away from my head and I turn to see her standing in the bedroom doorway looking all kinds of beautiful and so out of my reach.

“What’s wrong? Are you in pain?”

Pain.

We define it as physical suffering. We measure it on a scale from one to ten, ten being the most excruciating. But the pain I’m feeling, that physical suffering that’s tearing through my heart, it can’t be measured.

“I’m fine,” I lie, my throat clogged with emotion.

“Well come back to bed,” she says softly. “It’s lonely in there without you.”

If only she knew how many lonely nights she could possibly be in store for. I bet she wouldn’t ask me to come back to bed then. Instead, she’d take a page out of Reina’s book and give up on me. She’d tell me to save my apologies, that the damage has already been done.

“Blackie?”

“I’m coming,” I reply, rising to my feet. Keeping my eyes on her, I memorize her features as I make my way to the bedroom. She takes my hands and guides me back to bed before crawling in next to me. I commit her sweet scent to my memory and wrap my good arm around her soft body. My hand finds her flat belly and I close my eyes trying to picture what I’ll miss. It isn’t long before she falls back to sleep and I’m left staring at the ceiling fan.

I don’t see the paramedic, though.

This time it’s me hanging from the center.

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