“You lost or something, brother?” Ryder asks, his eyes twinkling with amusement.
“Seems that way,” D mutters. “Just came from a hospital appointment with Mom.”
“Oh shit. Is everything okay?” I ask, forgetting about his request for a coffee and planting my ass on the arm of the chair.
He drops his head into his hands and blows out a long breath.
“I mean, nothing new has happened. Everything’s just… getting worse. Every fucking day. And it’s going to keep going that way until…”
“Sorry, man,” Ryder says softly, reaching out to squeeze D’s shoulder in support.
“It’s… it is what it is. I’ll be okay. I’ve got River, the club. It’s just Kat. Watching her drown with all this is fucking killing me.”
“Did she go to the hospital with you?”
“No.”
“So shouldn’t you be telling her all of this instead of us.”
“I have.”
“Then you should be with her. You just said so yourself that she’s drowning.” His eyes narrow the more heated my argument gets, my concern for his sister showing through probably a little too much for his liking. Well, fuck him. He’s the one who asked me for help.
“She’s home with Mom and Cassie.”
“You should be there,” I argue. What I really want to say is that I need to be there but I keep that thought locked down.
“She made me leave. Apparently, I was stifling them all.”
“Sounds about right,” Ryder quips.
“Fuck you, man,” D spits lightly, but the words don’t hold any heat. If anyone understands what D and Kat are going through then it’s Ryder.
“Do you have any kind of timeline for this shit or…” he asks.
“Nope. We’ve just got to take each day as it comes.”
Silence falls as the weight of the situation presses down on all of us.
“Do I get a fucking coffee or not?” D grunts, forcing me to get up and head to the kitchen.
By the time I get back, D has stolen the game controller from the coffee table and Ryder is busy tapping away on his phone. The smirk on his face clues me into who he might be texting.
“That your secret club whore from last night?” I ask, placing two mugs down for them.
“None of your fucking business.”
“Whoa, since when don’t you discuss your conquests,” D says, sounding as shocked as I was when he refused to spill.
“What can I say? This one was special.”
“If she was whoring it up in the compound, I doubt it.”
“Who says it was a club whore anyway.”
“That’s true. You’ve already tapped them all at least once. Fuck, yes,” D barks as he completes the level Ryder was struggling on. Not that Ryder notices when his cell pings again and he resumes sexting his whore.
While they’re both distracted, I pull my own cell from my pocket and find my conversation with Kat. If Diesel and Evelyn have just come back with bad news then she might need me, or at the very least give me a chance to apologize… again.