Chapter 18
eighteen
“You should apologize to Jax.”
Those words had bounced around in Ghost’s head since Naomi murmured them that morning, and by afternoon, they’d wormed in so deep he couldn’t scrub them out, and that pissed him off. He didn’t owe anyone apologies. Not Jax. Not Naomi.
“If you keep pushing everybody away, you’re going to have a very lonely life.”
Yeah. Like that was news.
He was fine with being alone.
Lonely was what he deserved.
Lonely was safe.
Hadn’t he proved, over and over, that letting anyone close was just begging for trouble?
He kept telling himself that, but the words scraped in his skull all afternoon.
While he took Coyote out to check the perimeter.
While he avoided Boone and Jax and everyone else at the ranch.
While he made a fresh pot of coffee and poured it into a white mug that felt wrong in his hand.
While he checked and double-checked every system he had in place at the ranch, at Nessie’s bakery, and at Naomi’s house, which she would kill him for if she knew about it.
And while he watched that feed a little longer than usual this afternoon, hoping to get a glimpse of her.
“If you keep pushing everybody away, you’re going to have a very lonely life.”
By evening, he found himself staring out the Hub’s window at Jax’s cabin.
He watched Nessie arrive home from the bakery.
A short time later, Oliver came flying up the driveway from the school bus, his backpack thumping on his back, and Echo trailing behind him.
Jax returned from working with the rescue dogs the ranch took in, his new hat pulled low to keep the rain out of his eyes, and disappeared inside the cabin.
Smoke curled from the chimney, a thin gray ribbon against the darkening sky. Inside would be warmth, love, family…
An ache bloomed in the center of Ghost’s chest.
Cinder whined softly and bumped her head against his leg, startling him. He dropped the blind and strode over to his desk. “I’m not doing it.”
He wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince.
Cinder padded over to the door and sat there, staring at him with steady brown amber eyes, daring him.
“No.”
She huffed and pawed at the door.
He held her stare for a solid five seconds, refusing to budge. Cinder didn’t even blink. She just gave another pointed whine and pawed the door again, harder this time. If a dog could call a man’s bluff, she was doing it now.
He swore under his breath and yanked on his favorite jacket.
Fine. If it would get her off his back, he’d walk over there, say something civil to Jax, and be done with it. He could gut out five minutes of social bullshit. Then he could be alone again.
When he yanked open the door and stepped outside, Cinder trotted past, her feathered tail held high, swishing softly with each step.
“Yeah, you’re pleased with yourself, aren’t you?”
She just chuffed and continued across the road to Jax’s.
Ghost stalked after her, hands jammed in his jacket pockets, head down against the wind. The chill stung his face, but he didn’t slow. If he thought about it too hard, he’d turn around and head straight back to the Hub, but Cinder was already halfway to the porch before he’d crossed the drive.
It wasn’t raining anymore, just a sullen mist clinging to the trees and a dusting of snow on the mountaintops.
The ground squelched under his boots as he walked up the porch and caught the low thrum of music—some old country ballad.
He debated bailing out, telling himself it wasn’t necessary. Jax would get over it. They all did.
I’m not your next fucking project, and we’re not friends.
He’d meant them in the moment—or thought he had.
But the way Jax had looked at him afterwards, like he’d put a knife between Jax’s ribs, and left it there, twisting.
Most guys at the Ridge bounced back from an argument the way dogs shook off rain.
Jax wasn’t most guys. He absorbed shit and let it rot inside until it went septic.
Ghost didn’t care. He didn’t. But he knocked anyway, three short raps that sounded too loud in the dusk.
The music stopped. Footsteps approached, and then the door swung open, spilling gold light across the porch.
Jax stood there in a worn flannel shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, a smattering of sawdust clinging to his clothes.
Behind him, Echo lay sprawled across the rug on her back, but she perked when she spotted Cinder.
Surprise flickered across Jax’s face, then wariness. “Ghost.”
“Can I come in?” The words felt like gravel in his throat.
He wasn’t good at this shit. Had never been good at any of the “feelings” crap the Dr. Perrin, the ranch’s therapist, was always pushing.
He much preferred silence, or violence, or anything that didn’t require him to unseal something raw and festering inside.
Jax hesitated just long enough for him to feel the weight of what he’d broken. Then he stepped back, gesturing inside. “Yeah, sure.”
The cabin was warm, the air filled with apples and cinnamon and wood smoke. A half-carved piece of wood sat on the coffee table alongside a glass of something that smelled like cider. A black-and-white cat lay stretched out in front of the woodstove, purring loudly.
Socks.
Ghost had helped wrangle the beast this summer after Nessie’s Place had burned down, all because Oliver had worried about the strays in the alley behind the bakery.
Apparently, Socks had been happy to give up his life on the street while the other two—a gray tabby named Trouble and a calico named Princess Jellybean—now roamed around the ranch like it had always been their property.
Echo watched Ghost and Cinder with her mismatched eyes, tail thumping once against the floor in cautious greeting as they stopped just inside the threshold.
Ghost stood there awkwardly, hands at his sides, unable to find a natural place to put them. Cinder planted herself beside him as he searched for something to say.
“Are… Nessie and Oliver here?”
“No,” Jax said. “They’re at Mariah’s for the night. Oliver wanted a sleepover with Tate, and Nessie and Mariah are planning a project together for the fall festival thing in a few weeks.”
Mariah Duval was the owner of Pine & Bloom Floral in Solace, located across the street from Nessie’s Place and next door to Craig Foster’s office.
She did good work, if you liked that sort of thing, but he couldn’t puzzle out how a bakery and a flower shop had enough in common to work together on anything.
He opened his mouth to ask, but Jax was already shaking his head.
“Yeah, don’t ask me. I have no idea.”
An awkward pause.
“You want a drink?” Jax asked, picked up his mug, and headed for the kitchen. “Nessie’s been playing with cider recipes and we’re all but swimming in it.”
Tempting. He liked Nessie’s cider, but he shook his head. “No. Thanks.”
The silence stretched, the only sound the soft crackle of the fire, the cat’s continued purring, and the occasional drip of rainwater from the eaves outside.
“I don’t do this well,” Ghost said finally.
“Do what?”
“This.” He gestured vaguely between them. “The...talking. After.”
Jax leaned against the kitchen counter, arms folded, face unreadable. “Yeah, I noticed.”
His throat constricted, and he clenched his jaw against the emotion. Just say it. Get it over with.
“What I said. About not being friends. That was—”
“Bullshit?” Jax offered when he broke off.
“Yeah.”
The corner of Jax’s mouth twitched. Not quite a smile, but close. “You broke my heart, Ghost. Had to eat a whole pint of ice cream just to cope.”
The response was so unexpected that he almost laughed out loud. “Now that’s bullshit.”
Jax’s smile was real this time. “I did eat ice cream. It was just off Nessie’s—”
“Yeah, I don’t need to know. Jesus. You’ve been hanging out with River and X too much.”
Jax chuckled and finished his cider, then turned to set the mug in the sink. When he turned back, his expression was serious again. “You did hurt me.”
“I know. I was out of line.”
“You were an asshole,” Jax agreed easily. “But that’s your default setting, and at least you’re here now. Which, if I’m honest, is more than I expected.”
The tension in Ghost’s shoulders eased a fraction. He hadn’t expected it to be this simple. Hadn’t expected to be let off the hook so easily.
“The mug,” he started, then stopped. How to explain what that stupid piece of ceramic had meant, how its loss had scraped him raw in places he’d thought long scarred over?
Jax shook his head. “I get it.”
“You don’t.”
“Maybe not exactly. But everyone’s got their things, man.
The stuff that matters more than it should.
” His eyes drifted to the mantel, where a small black box sat, out of place among the river rocks that Oliver collected and a menagerie of hand-carved animals.
Ghost knew what was inside without asking—dog tags, maybe a letter, something Jax had carried out of hell and couldn’t let go.
“Yeah, well, I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”
“No,” Jax agreed. “You shouldn’t have.”
Ghost nodded, taking the hit. He deserved it. “It’s... been a long time since I had to explain myself to anyone, and I didn’t react well.”
“But I wasn’t asking you to explain a damn thing,” Jax said. “All I wanted was to check that you were okay.”
When was the last time someone had done that—just checked, no agenda, no angle? Ghost couldn’t remember, and the realization made his throat tight.
He cleared it, shifting his weight. “Well. I’m fine.”
Jax huffed. “Yeah, you’re the picture of mental health. Should put you on a poster.”
There it was again—that easy back-and-forth that had somehow slipped past his defenses over the months. Not friendship, he’d insisted to himself. But what else would you call it?
“I’m working on it,” he admitted, the closest thing to vulnerability he’d allowed himself in years.
No, that wasn’t true.
He’d been vulnerable with Naomi last night over the phone, and again today in his truck cab.
And look what that had gotten him.
Jax nodded. “That’s all any of us can do, right?”
He opened his mouth to respond, but his phone vibrated against his hip. He reached for it automatically, hoping it was Naomi.
It wasn’t.
ALERT: MOTION DETECTION - NAOMI LEFTHAND RESIDENCE
CAMERA 2: ARMED SUBJECTS - REAR APPROACH
Below the text, a grainy night-vision feed showed two figures moving through the shadows of Naomi’s back porch, weapons visible at their sides.
Every molecule of warmth drained from Ghost’s body, replaced by a savage, icy focus.
“What is it?” Jax asked, alarm edging into his voice.
“Naomi. Trouble.” The words came clipped, mechanical.
“I’ll grab my keys—”
But he was already out the door, boots hitting the wet earth in a dead run, Cinder keeping pace right beside him. The apology, the moment, Jax himself—all of it faded to background noise against the roaring in his head.
The last image—armed men approaching her cabin, her alone inside—burned behind his eyes like a brand. Whatever softness had flickered to life inside him moments ago now guttered out, replaced by something colder, more familiar.
The predator. The ghost. The man who knew exactly how fast a life could be extinguished when no one was watching.
He reached his truck and threw it into reverse, tires spinning in the mud before catching. The last thing he saw in his rearview was Jax on the porch, face tight with worry, a phone to his ear.
It didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered except getting to Naomi before those men took her from him.