Chapter Ten
Dylan
“I thought I made it clear that this is completely unnecessary,” I told him as he followed me out the door of the clubhouse many hours later.
It seemed that Everleigh put the word out that there was a new girl at the club. Then a bunch of the old ladies descended on the clubhouse to check me out.
Except they weren’t jealous or possessive like I’d expected. If anything, they were just curious and welcoming. And even thankful.
Apparently, all of the women had a soft spot for Colter.
Even Sway’s woman, Murphy, who was a little on the standoffish side.
Which, naturally, made me gravitate a little more toward her at first. And she was genuinely interesting, too, being a weapons designer.
I didn’t even know that kind of thing existed.
But it seemed like her designs were pretty highly sought after.
The club made a fortune shipping them down to the sister clubs, who sold them directly or offloaded them to international arms dealers.
It wasn’t long, though, before I was being led outside to see Morgaine’s flock of chickens. All of whom had names and personalities I was told all about. I also learned that Morgaine’s claim to fame was being a poison expert who used to punish bad men with her little concoctions.
Then there was Rook’s woman, Tessa. Who had been a victim of one of the many terrible biker clubs that treated women like holes to be plugged and faces to be smacked around when they were in a bad mood. We’d connected over what it was like to grow up in and around those kinds of toxic clubs.
The one thing all the women had to say, though, was how different this club was from others. About how all these men were good.
I was a little dubious about that, even if all the men had been pretty decent to me so far.
I mean, Detroit had been careful to point out every ingredient in dinner to me so I knew exactly how much insulin I would need to compensate for the carb content.
And Raff had entertained us all through dinner with stories about his adventures traveling from California to Florida and back. While it was clear he definitely enjoyed women along the way, how he spoke of them was always with genuine affection.
I just sat back and listened, observing all of them and how they interacted.
Like how Saint and Syn didn’t have the typical teasing brother kind of relationship. It was a deep bond. And there seemed to be something, I don’t know, fragile about it. But I didn’t know enough about them to understand it.
It had been an interesting night.
It almost felt a bit like being in my club. Just with some more dudes. But it was there. That thing I’d loved so much. The connection. The togetherness. The ‘we’re in this together’ mindset.
It made my heart warm.
But that feeling was quickly replaced by nostalgia.
Then grief.
Because no matter what, even if everything went exactly to plan, even if all my girls got into recovery and came back to me, it would be different. We were all too different.
That was a reality I’d been trying not to think about once I knew how bad things had gotten.
There was no tamping it back down now, though. It was the pit in my stomach. It was the heaviness of my limbs as I walked down the driveway with Sugar on one side and Colter on the other.
“And yet, I’m still going to walk you,” Colter said, shrugging it off. “She seems slower than last night.” He nodded at Sugar, who was half-heartedly sniffing at the grass as she passed.
“She’s beat. That Betty had already run her ragged. Then the two shepherds sapped everything she had left.
“We could turn back and take a car,” he offered.
“Nah. It’s good for dogs to get really worn out now and again. They’re not meant to be sedentary. She will sleep like the dead now.”
“Is she allowed on the bed?”
“She’s allowed to take out a loan in my name if she wants.”
That got a huff of a laugh out of him.
“I bet she helped you not feel so alone after the whole… hostile takeover thing.”
“Yeah. I mean, I think she’s helped a lot with the anxiety around the diabetes too.”
“Been a hard adjustment, huh?”
“It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it. And I say that as someone who absolutely would not have understood a year ago. It was like one day all the rules changed… but no one gave me the rules book.”
“It sounds destabilizing.”
“Yeah. Before, my body was kind of just background noise. Now it’s a dashboard full of flashing warning lights I have to watch all the time. And there is no option to ignore it, to say ‘I’ll deal with this later.’ It’s… a lot.”
“Were there no signs before you were diagnosed?” he asked.
“No. I have Type 1. It’s different. It’s an autoimmune thing. My pancreas just suddenly stopped doing what it was meant to do.”
“And getting sick caused it?”
“Yeah. Crazy. I didn’t even know that could happen.”
“Am I wrong in thinking Type 1 usually happens in kids?”
“Kind of, yeah. The term ‘juvenile diabetes’ was thrown around a lot and a lot of people—even a lot of doctors—thought it was more common in kids. But about half of cases occur in adulthood.”
“Lucky you, huh?”
“Right?” I asked, shaking my head.
“Is Type 1 harder to manage than Type 2?”
“I mean, they’re completely different diseases.
But Type 1 basically means my body produces no insulin at all.
Type 2 people are still usually making some insulin, but their bodies are not using it effectively.
So Type 2 is kind of less… volatile. With Type 1, we’re basically thinking about it all day, every day. Because we have to for survival.”
“But it is manageable, right? With the correct medication, math, and testing?”
“It is. My doctor kept assuring me that I would get better at managing it. That it was expected for me to have a lot more issues at first since I was still getting to know the disease and the way my body functions now.”
“Do you think it’s gotten easier?”
Sugar took that moment to sniff hard at a spot of grass, making us both pause.
“That’s complicated. I think it’s easier now to do some things.”
“Like prick your fingers and stab yourself with a needle?”
“Exactly. I used to have to psych myself up to inject for like twenty minutes. That kind of thing has gotten easier. And I know what I should, and probably shouldn’t eat now. But I still fluctuate a bit more than I like.”
“Like yesterday?”
“Yeah. But there are highs, too.”
“How’s that? Isn’t it that you don’t have sugar?”
“Yeah, but the… damn math,” I said, shaking my head. “It was never my best subject. And everything is calculations now. How much insulin to how many carbs. So sometimes I can overcorrect. And sometimes my body just seems to react differently to foods, even if I took the right amount.”
“The high feels different?”
“Yeah, the highs usually mean I’m super thirsty, have dry mouth, fatigue, headache, blurry vision, mental fog, and sometimes… I’m a raging bitch. And it takes me a bit to realize the agitation is the sugar issue, not me.”
“The low is the shakiness?”
“And sweating, hunger, racing heart, dizziness, tingling, or something that feels like anxiety, but it’s just an adrenaline rush from my body trying to correct.”
“That’s a lot, babe,” he said, making me turn to find him watching me with something in his eyes that had my heart feel like it squeezed.
Like he was seeing me.
Like he was understanding.
As much as he could, anyway.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “But I’m figuring it out.”
“Yeah, but it’s still a lot if you have it all figured out. I take my body for granted.”
“I think we all do. Until it forces us not to anymore. We will pretty much all deal with some sort of chronic pain or illness if we live long enough.”
“True. But it probably hits a lot differently if you only have to deal with it for a few years, not most of your life.”
“Why does it feel like you’re trying to make it seem like a whole big thing?”
“Because it is. And you don’t need to downplay it because it makes you feel vulnerable to admit it.”
Damn him.
My gaze cut away. Hopefully before he noticed the glistening in my eyes.
He was right.
It was a big thing.
A life-altering thing.
And it was nice to hear that be acknowledged. Even if it did make me feel vulnerable.
“Okay. That’s enough,” I told Sugar. “Whatever it is, I’m sure you don’t need to eat it,” I said with a little tug on the leash until she left whatever it was and started walking again.
“I can’t believe Detroit made sure to buy enough steak for the dogs.”
Sugar had scoffed it up, her tail practically wagging off her butt.
She got some fancy fresh food on a rotating flavor schedule with different toppers so she never got bored. But, well, there was no beating steak. And she needed a meal after running around for hours.
“The club takes the pets very seriously.”
“That little fluffball was too much. She runs the whole place.”
“She’s a wolf at heart.”
“You don’t have a pet?”
“Not yet, no.”
“You don’t want one?”
“I’d love another Basset. I had one once. They’re stubborn pains in the ass, but they’re sweet dogs.”
“This is the only pet I’ve ever had,” I admitted.
“Why?”
“I think I knew from a young age that the clubhouse wouldn’t have been a safe place for a defenseless animal. Then, I guess, I just kind of forgot it was an option. What a waste of years, though,” I said, smiling down at Sugar.
“What if you eventually get that meter thing to track your sugar?”
“She gets to go into retirement. Maybe get a sibling.”
“What’s your plan when you get your club back?”
When.
I liked that.
Like he didn’t have a drop of doubt.
I’d been a swimming pool of doubt for months.
“What do you mean?”
“The same racket?” he asked.
“Oh. No. I mean… I dunno. I think things have changed too much. Don’t get me wrong, it was lucrative. We didn’t live rich, but we never had to worry about money.”