Free Bad Apple (The Uncertain Saints MC #4) by Lani Lynn Vale Page B

was his idea, but I went along with it, and I shouldn’t have.”
    My voice cracked as I said those last few words.
    I needed another drink.
    “It’s okay, son,” Peek said in his lilting Irish accent.
    I closed my eyes.
    Then reopened them and stared Peek in the eyes when I said what I had to say next.
    “We both hated ourselves so much that we knew something had to be done. We made a deal. We shoot each other, that way it’s not a suicide. Our parents would get our life insurance, and that’d be the end of it.”
    “But he didn’t follow through,” Peek guessed.
    I gasped in a ragged breath, my chest so tight it hurt to breathe.
    “Yeah,” I choked. “That was one of those days that I could barely remember. I only know those few facts. That’s all.”
    “So what happened?” Mig asked, having stayed silent this whole time, I’d nearly forgotten about him. I’d nearly forgotten about all of them being at my back.
    “They thought I’d shot him out of self-defense,” I explained. “I was still in uniform. I’d come to see him during my lunch while on shift.”
    “Damn,” Ridley said.
    I was sure he was thinking better of asking me to tell Peek now.
    It was something that no man would ever want to divulge.
    Not that he wanted to kill himself.
    Not that he planned it out, and it would have happened if his friend had played his part and not chickened out when pulling the trigger.
    I couldn’t say the same for me.
    I’d done my job. I’d pulled the trigger.
    And I’d pay for that decision for the rest of my life.
    Stephen haunted me in my dreams. In my waking moments.
    There was never a time that Stephen wasn’t there.
    Until a certain lady had come into my life and had gone about changing my outlook on everything.
    “So, how are you better right now?” Casten chimed in . “You’re sitting here, not getting into a fights. What changed?”
    I lowered my head and removed my hat.
    The hat that I always wore, no matter what.
    “Surgery,” I twisted to the side and moved my hair out of the way. “After I quit my job, the next day, blaming it on the job, I went in to see a doc about my episodes. He ran a CT scan and then saw the blood. It was a bleed so fine that it was missed by everyone but me. I knew something was wrong. I just wasn’t willing to admit it.”
    “Fucking sucks, man,” Peek rumbled. “Glad you told us.”
    He gestured to the bartender.
    The bartender stopped in front of us once again, and Peek said, “Give me the bottle.”
    The bartender handed him the rest of the bottle of whiskey and walked to the end of the bar once again where the cute little redhead waitress was talking and flirting with him.
    Peek poured me another shot.
    “You still think about killing yourself?” Ridley asked bluntly.
    I turned my gaze to his.
    Then picked up the shot and downed it.
    Fire burned down my throat as I shrugged.
    “Not in the last two weeks,” I told him honestly.
    A slight gasp had me turning to see Kitt standing there, a look of shock covering her beautiful face.
    And my belly sank.
    Fuck me.
    I’d never wanted her to hear that story.
    Hell, I never wanted anyone to hear that story, but definitely not her.
    And I could tell that she’d definitely put the timeline together.
    It’d been exactly two weeks since I’d met her.
    Two weeks and eight hours to be exact.
    And it was the truth.
    I hadn’t once thought about killing myself in the last two weeks.
    Everybody else heard the gasp as well as me, and they turned to see Kitt’s ashen face.
    “You need help to your room ?” Ridley asked.
    She bit her lip.
    “No.”
    She wouldn’t look me in the eyes, and studiously avoided them, letting me know clearly what she thought.
    Ridley growled.
    “You know better, Kitt,” Ridley said through clenched teeth.
    Kitt shrugged.
    I turned around and presented Kitt with my back, shame pouring off of me in waves.
    And somehow I knew that I just had a setback.
    I was fucked, and not in a good