“Now it is,” Slider said. “But I feel like you deserve to know what happened to me all that time.”
Eyebrows shooting up, Dare shook his head. “You don’t owe me anything. Your wife died, Slider. The mother of your kids. I can’t even imagine what that was like.”
His stomach was a wreck. “It was more than that, Dare. It was so much fucking more.”
His friend’s eyes narrowed. “Okay. Whatever it is, brother, I’ll have your back. You know that.”
Slider sighed, his gaze catching on something down the street. And then he manned up and looked Dare in the eyes. “Kim was cheating on me. For about a year. Was going to leave me. She told me all this a few weeks before she got sick, and then the asshole she was with refused to care for her when it started getting bad.”
“Christ,” Dare bit out, his expression solid, no pity to be found. “But you stepped up and took care of her. That took a lot of fucking guts, man.”
“I just . . . I couldn’t let the boys know that their mother planned to leave them. Not after the way I grew up. I couldn’t let them have to live with that.” He shook his head. “But it ate at me from the inside out until it felt like there was nothing left to give, not even to my friends and this club I have loved most of my life.”
“Jesus, Slider, you’re a damn good man. And an even better father. Don’t think for a second you owe an explanation for doing the right thing or for being wrecked by having done it. You’re here now, and that’s what matters.” Dare held out his hand. “But know that I appreciate like hell that you trusted me with knowing this. You can count on me to keep it between us.”
Slider returned the shake, feeling like a weight he’d been carrying for so long lifted off his shoulders. It was the past, falling away, at long last. “I know I can.”
“Everything all right?” Cora asked when they returned.
He slid onto his stool and squeezed her thigh. “Never better, sweetheart. Never better.” And it was true. Somehow, Slider Evans had finally found love, belonging, and peace. That was everything he’d been searching for but thought for sure he’d never be able to have.
Now, just one more fight stood in his way of keeping what he’d found, once and for fucking all.
The big excitement at the shelter on Thursday was the arrival of a bunch of new dogs, neglected, but at least not abused. A farm in rural Maryland had been discovered housing—poorly—nearly fifty dogs of all ages, and the local shelter there hadn’t been able to take them all. So Cora got to help do intake on the eight dogs they were taking in, including two seven-week-old shepherd-collie mix puppies that were so cute she could hardly stand it.
“We get to name them,” Dr. Josh said. “Well, at least give them temporary names until they’re adopted. These guys are sure to go quick. Would you like to do the honors?”
“Me? Really?” Cora asked. She picked up the first of the puppies, who was so small he almost fit in her hand. Brown and tan with soulful little brown eyes. “I think this guy should be called Howie.”
The doc laughed. “Howie it is. And his brother?”
What went with Howie? She wanted something fun and silly, since he’d probably have another name before too long. “How about Horace.”
Dr. Josh pulled a face. “That is quite possibly the worst dog name I’ve ever heard.”
She laughed. “I like it! Howie and Horace. That’s cute!”
The names stuck, and Cora was still chuckling about it when she left at the end of her shift. And her smile just got bigger when she found Slider there on his bike to pick her up again. He’d taken her car to his shop and replaced her tires, and her red baby was now locked in his garage to keep it safe. Until the dogfight was over and Davis was finally behind bars, Slider wanted to personally take her wherever she needed to go.
That wasn’t much of a hardship.
Except that, unlike on Monday afternoon, Slider wasn’t smiling back at her today. “What’s wrong?” she asked, sensing it before he even said a word.
He pushed his sunglasses up on his head. “Caine just got a text. The dogfight’s been moved up.”
Standing beside his bike, her hand on his thigh, Cora frowned. “Okay, to when?”
“Tonight.”
Surprise rocked through her, along with a wave of nervous anticipation. “Okay, so . . . What does that mean? Why is that bad?”
Slider sighed. “Because Martin can’t get the other jurisdictions in place within the next two hours on this short notice. These dogfights can attract a hundred or more people, so the original plan was for the cops to be in place at least two hours beforehand, maybe more, to set up a perimeter that would contain all the participants without the Crew knowing. There’s no way to do that now.”