Summary:
While Bobby was first meeting Kit, Jon (aka Leo) was chatting up Kit’s best friend and bartender, Casey (aka Tink or Sunshine). He said that now that Bobby and Kit were going to be each other’s new best friends, they both needed new best friends too, so they should be each others; and so it was from that night on.
They secretly spent months together, watching movies, eating, and chatting. They even slept together (not have sex. Like they actually slept in the same bed just to sleep). But of course this caused them both to have deeper feelings for each other. Tink was okay with this, but Jon made it clear he never wanted kids and never wanted to get married.
After they finally broke down one night and had sex, Casey was having some serious pain in her abdomine, which wasn’t completely strange to her because she had endometriosis, but it was worse than usual, she was also vomiting a lot. When she went to the doctor, she found out she was pregnant, but it wasn’t viable. So they had to do an emergency surgery to remove the baby along with one of her philopian tubes.
Tink hid this from everyone. Kit had just had her big accident so she didn’t want to unload more onto her, and she couldn’t tell Jon because she knew he would be mad. She distanced herself for a while.
They kept going back and forth in similar spells of always being together to not being together. One night, Jon decided it was time to end their on and off relationship because Tink deserved someoen who could give her a marriage and kids. They have a huge fight, where Jon admits he was sexually assulted when he was growing up, on top of the physical abuse everyone else already knew about. This is also when Tink came out about her failed pregnancy. This put them on the outs with each other. But when it came to Aiden and Tina’s wedding in Vegas, Tink decided to get really drunk and when Jon joined her, she asked for one more night of Leo and Sunshine before they go their seperate ways. But they ended up getting married that night.
When Tink woke up in the morning and saw her ring and the marriage certificate, she ran. Little did she know that Jon remembered the whole thing and he even wrote himself a note the night before in case he didn’t.
This results in Tink having a heart to heart with the girls and sharing her failed pregnancy and her and Jon’s secret BFF relationship from the past 2 years.
Jon didn’t regret the marriage, but Tink was conviced he did because he had drilled it into her over the past 2 years. In order to get Tink to beleive him, he set up a series of stations when she came to get his signature on divorce papers. 1. Matching tattoos (which they had actually already both gotten). 2. Jon’s therapist available to talk to Tink about anything she had questions on about Jon. 3. Fertility specialist and adoption specialist. Tink finally accepted that Jon wanted to be married to her, so they ripped up the divorce papers.
In the epilogue, we learn that Jon kept a log off all the people who sexually assulted him. He kept the log in his copy of The King’s Courtney, which he always carried with him. His parents were put in jail as well as most of his offenders.
Izzy and Jimmy had a second boy, Jamie.
Kit and Bobby had a baby boy, Bryan (after the Kincaid’s dad). and then they had an oops baby girl, Brooklyn. She is also pregnant with her 3rd baby.
Jimmy and Bobby both went back in the octagon and won championships.
Aiden and Tina had another baby girl, Alexandra, and then another baby, Sarah.
Jack is about to turn 21. He has been fighting professionally since he turned 18. He has been crushing it and is even still with Steph.
Tina set up women’s shelters all around the country using the money from her ex (and Evie’s bio dad).
The ending scene is Jon forcing Tink to pee on a pregnancy test in the ally behind 188. They get arrested for public indecency, again… but they find out Tink is finally pregnant after 2 years of failed IVF. She actually has twins, Luke & Bobby.
Review:
Tink and Jon’s relationship feels a little toxic to me. There’s a lot going on there that doesn’t feel healthy…
There isn’t too much spice in this book, which is a commonality with the rest of the series.
It hurt my heart to know how much Jon went through as a child. And it hurt my heart that Tink went there that failed pregnancy pretty much alone.