How About No (Bear Bottom Guardians MC 3)

The last thing I wanted to do was talk to this man about my life, but it didn’t look like I had much choice in the matter seeing as Kourt was now sitting down and I was fairly sure that if I attempted to stand up to get away from him, I’d fall flat on my face.

“Fine,” I moved until I was up farther in the bed and ignored the pain that shafted straight through my thigh the moment that I did. “Enlighten me. I’m just not promising that I’ll like what you have to say.”

He laughed harshly, without humor. “Oh, I don’t doubt it for a second. The moment that I ‘enlighten’ you, you’re going to lose your shit.”

I had a feeling that I wasn’t going to like what he had to say either, but as it turned out, it was not for the reasons that I’d thought it would be.

I looked over at Bayou to gauge his reaction to the comment and found him leaning against the wall, appearing as if he was uninterested even though I knew damn well and good that he was.

Bayou had adored Landry, and sadly, he’d had to choose sides when we’d divorced. He had chosen me.

“We met each other online years ago, on Reddit, actually. Then, she moved here because I was here doing my residency.” He paused. “But at first, it was both of us just talking, expressing our frustrations online that started all of this.”

I already didn’t like where this was going.

“We were both on the verge of killing ourselves when we met up.” He frowned. “She was very depressed and talking to me about having a plan. I knew that if she had a plan to kill herself, it was likely that she would accomplish it. That was when I met her face-to-face for the first time.”

Every single thing that’d been going through my mind—the pain in my thigh, the throbbing in my skull, the pain in my heart at watching the woman that I loved leave me—it was all gone. It was replaced with a sudden horrible sense of dread that made my already uneasy breaths stall in my chest.

“I’ve wanted to have this discussion with you for a very long time,” Kourt said calmly. “But she made me promise to keep my distance. I was not, under any circumstances, to ever tell you a thing without her express permission.”

I felt something inside of me clench.

I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know what he was about to tell me.

I had a feeling that I was not going to like it.

“How much do you know about her family?” he asked.

“You mean other than her sister having leukemia, and them living in Mexico for her first seventeen years of life?” I clarified.

My voice sounded raspy as hell, and I would kill for a drink of water.

Kourt got up and handed me one before I could even think to ask.

I didn’t want to drink it on general principle alone, but then I’d just look petty, and I wasn’t normally a petty person.

Then again, the man living with my wife, living the life that I wanted to be living, and he was now handing me water while looking at me like I was a small child that needed to be taken care of.

“I’m sure that you think the Hills are good people,” Kourt started. “But they’re not. They’re awful people.”

I frowned. “I haven’t had many dealings with them. I know I was upset when they didn’t visit Landry in the hospital when she was donating bone marrow to her sister. Sure, I see them around town. Actually, saw Lina recently. Was it this morning?”

“Oh, yeah, you saw her this morning. I know all about that visit with Lina,” Kourt rumbled.

I would’ve snorted had I had the energy.

At this point, I had just enough to keep my eyes open and that was it.

“How about I tell you how we met, and we’ll go from there,” he explained, sensing my tiredness. “It all began when we found each other online. We were in an online community for bone marrow donors. Landry and I were the only members of that forum who had endured what we had experienced, and that was probably why we’d latched onto each other so fast.

“Everybody else was so proud of themselves, telling everyone that they felt so good about donating, while Landry and I…weren’t.” He laughed bitterly, his eyes going far away like he was no longer seeing what was right in front of him. “We bonded over an infection that we both got after one of our donations, and from there we became great friends. She became my sounding board, and I became the only person who understood how much—and why—she hated her family, because I felt exactly the same way.”