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HIS SON WAS DEAD. GONE.
A victim of his own stupidity and youth and baser urges. Clive understood that. He wasn’t a stupid man, nor was he blind to the ways of the world. His boy Jay had never been the best sort, nor had he been the brightest.
Dog mean, some had said about his younger son. His real son. His blood.
Clint was just the bastard his wife, Paula, had foisted on him the day they’d wed. He’d given the boy his name out of duty and obligation. Because the father of that boy had been his own brother, who’d taken off into the hills when Paula had said she was pregnant. Women in Masterson, Wyoming, were hard to come by. He’d taken the first woman he could stand talking to who knew her way around the bedroom.
He hadn’t truly regretted it. Paula had been a riot to play with. Always up for an adventure in the sack, too.
Ovarian cancer had taken her out of the world, and his life, when the boy she’d given him had been all of sixteen months old.
He’d had the raising of Jay and his older stepson, Clint, ever since. Jay had made some missteps along the way, but Clive had never expected his boy to end up like this.
His boy hadn’t deserved to suffer like he had there at the end. No human being did. Hell, not even a dog deserved this.
Jay had made mistakes, but his boy had died in pain. No amount of drugs could completely dull the pain of the burns that would never have healed. Or the pain of losing the girl Jay had wanted.
That it was his boy’s fault for setting the fire mattered little.
Those damned Masterson boys should have gotten Jay out faster than they had. It would have been the right thing to do.
Why couldn’t they have done the right thing to do?
Clive collapsed next to his son’s hospital bed as the tears almost destroyed him.
Jay hadn’t deserved to die this way. Not because of some damned girl. It just wasn’t right. Jay had deserved better.
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PERCI: PROLOGUE OF Error! Bookmark not defined.