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16.

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HE JUST COULDN’T STAY away. Clive had found himself following the girl and that damned Masterson when they’d left the market. They had a kid with them. A girl he didn’t recognize. Had to be one of those damned Tylers, though.

Nothing but a bunch of trouble, that family. They always had been.

Clive had had more than his fair share of trouble with the Tylers.

Masterson took her inside. She had the kid on her hip. They looked perfect, damn them. Their lives were going to go so damned smooth, while he had to spend the rest of his grieving his boy.

It wasn’t right.

Clive stayed on the outskirts of that Masterson property, just thinking. Remembering. He remembered every interaction he’d had with any of those Tyler girls, starting with the night Jay had gotten too carried away over that quieter twin.

That was the night that had changed everything. Clive should have handled it differently. Maybe if he had treated those girls a bit better, they would have been willing to help his son more when Jay had needed it most.

But it wasn’t Clive’s fault. It wasn’t. And what he’d done those nights alongside the road had been to protect Jay. To protect his son.

He thought about going back to town, to that vet’s office, and finding her.

Seeing what was so special about her that his son had died because of it.

But he didn’t.

Not because he was a coward or anything. But that husband of hers would just complicate things in a way Clive didn’t want to mess with now.

He knew Perci better. She would be the one most likely to give him the answers he needed. If he decided to ask those questions. He had enough experience with her to know just how to scare the shit out of her, if he needed to.

And she’d leave that doctor eventually, anyway. She wouldn’t have that Masterson around to protect her forever.

Clive could ask her exactly what was burning in his head.

If he wanted to.

Clive wasn’t certain that he did. It didn’t matter, after all. What was done was done.

Jay was dead.

Nothing Clive did was going to change that.