22. Jax
jax
“What the hell have you gotten yourself into?” I hear above me, my body landing on something soft beneath me.
I can hear someone moving around, but my brain is in a fog, and the only thing I can do is keep my eyes shut. “City.”
“Yeah, Felicity is fine.” I hear and recognize my brother’s voice. “No thanks to you, asshole.”
It’s the most I’ve heard out of my brother’s mouth in years, and I wish he’d shut up so the pounding in my head would stop. I can’t seem to get the image of Felicity, watching in horror as I got the shit beat out of me, out of my head.
“Where is she?” I ask, groaning when light tries to pry my eyes open. Those fuckers had to hit me in the head.
“I sent her home, genius.”
I ignore the slam from him, knowing that he is just giving me the dose of reality I deserve. After all, this is exactly what he thought would happen, exactly what he warned me of.
“So, it was him,” Mitch says after a minute, and finally I feel like my head isn’t going to cave in when I open my eyes.
My gaze connects with his, and it’s all he needs to give a nod and sigh.
I am ashamed of the way he looks at me, especially knowing that he is the one who told me to cut it out, and I didn’t.
“When you came home…” Mitch starts, waiting for me to fill in the blanks, and slowly, wincing with every breath, I push myself into a sitting position.
I look at my surroundings, seeing the inside of what appears to be a log cabin. There is a fireplace to the side that sits unlit and a table in the middle of the room where Mitch leans. I am sitting on a dark-brown leather couch that surprisingly matches the area.
“Where are we?” I ask, looking for pictures or anything to help identify the place.
“Jax,” Mitch snaps, his calm and controlled deep voice getting my attention.
I let out a heavy breath, reaching up to gingerly touch my cheekbone that is clearly bruised. “When I came home,” I wince, shaking my head. “I didn’t come home because of a rodeo accident.”
Mitch curses, shaking his head. “I knew it.”
“I’d gotten out, Mitch. I wasn’t fucking around anymore,” I reply, needing him to believe me even though I knew he wouldn’t.
“I told you not to get mixed up with him. He’s bad news, Jax.” Mitch’s glare sets my teeth on edge, and I feel my back straighten with a defensiveness our old man didn’t deserve.
“He’s our dad, Mitch.”
“No, Jax, he’s not.” Mitch starts to pace, his heavy booted feet landing with loud thumps on the wooden floor.
I look out the window, but all I can see is darkness with no lights to indicate where we are at.
“That asshole left Mom when Stetson was two, Jax. He doesn’t get to claim to be our father. ”
I bite my tongue, knowing this argument is useless, and frankly, I know I shouldn’t be defending him. He is a piece of shit and got me into a bad way of life. All I want is to wash my hands of him.
“Now he knows you’re with Felicity,” Mitch says, running a hand over the beard he usually sported.
I pale at the realization, not even considering the fact that those assholes who beat the shit out of me not only could have hurt her, but they might have recognized her. “He doesn’t know. Those guys didn’t know who she was.”
“Yeah, but if they’re here, then it won’t take long for them to figure it out.”
I sit in silence for a moment, wishing I could go back a few days when I thought all of this was behind me. I was pursuing the woman of my dreams, my jobs were fine, and I could afford life. I was moving on.
Now, my past is coming to bite me—and anyone else associated with me—in the ass.
“What do they want? Are you still using?”
I give him a look. “Don’t say it like that. It’s just weed. It’s legal here.”
“Lots of dangerous things are legal, Jax.”
Not wanting to get into it with my big brother, because I knew he was right, but I didn’t want to admit it. “It was just weed. But the last time I saw them, I didn’t have the funds, and even if I did…”
Mitch fills the silence with his own assumption. “He doesn’t want to let you go.”
I look at my hands, one hand bruised slightly from where I tried to throw a few punches back at them. “He wants me to work for him, to push the harder stuff.”
I chance a look at Mitch and see him staring in horror, an expression that is so vulnerable, I feel like I’m seeing my actual brother for the first time in years.
“Jax, tell me you haven’t.”
“I haven’t,” I insist, moving to stand. It takes great effort, and my ribs hurt like a bitch, my head spinning with every inch of gravity I gain. “I never have and never will.”
“So pay him off.”
I give him a look. “Like I haven’t already? He’s lying to get me back into his clutches.”
It isn’t like drug dealers—absent, shitty fathers or not—provide receipts to their clients.
Mitch sighs and shakes his head, and I know exactly what he is thinking. I told you.
Back when we were on the rodeo circuit, I’d had a really bad accident where the pain had been unbearable. But I didn’t—couldn’t—come home to recover. I couldn’t be in this town with all its memories tainting me. I just wanted out.
It was also around the same time that our father had come sniffing around, seeing the jackpots that Mitch was winning, which was far more than I ever earned competing at that point, and wanting a piece of it.
Mitch has a better head on his shoulders and told our father to get bent.
I, however, had been in pain.
Pain enough that I’d given in to the prospect of making that pain fade with some extra help.
It was the last time I’d seen Mitch outside of a random family event.
He’d told me not to get involved, to ignore our father and never trust him. But I’d always wanted to be able to trust him. I’d always hoped that someday he’d come around, and we’d have a dad again.
It was na?ve, and as a young twenty-two-year-old with no hope or prospects, I’d given into it.
Seven years.
Seven years of coming and going, of taking every ounce of affection and weed the dude would give me. I buried myself in pot and beer and girls and rodeo and didn’t care about bettering myself whatsoever.
Hell, I’d just been a month clean when I came home for Logan’s wedding.
I’d seen my family there, clean and dressed and smiling and happy. It was another slap of a wake-up call that I knew I had to change. I’d seen the way my niece had grown and felt like a fucking failure.
I’d already told myself I was done, but that event solidified everything for me, making me get my act together.
Until I’d pissed the old man off.
“He used the fact that I quit to tell everyone I haven’t paid up, and he sends his fucking goons after me,” I say, feeling like a right piece of shit. “I paid. Over and over, I paid until I have almost nothing saved now, and finally, I told him I was done and over it.”
“But he found you.”
“Not hard to do when I announce the fucking rodeos I do on the internet,” I admit, wishing I could go back in time and find that thirty grand I’d paid him. I could really fucking use it.
“So you stopped rodeo, you came home, stopped posting online.”
I shrug. “He must have just figured it out. It’s not that hard, not like he didn’t know where we were born.”
“Or where Mom lives.”
I feel myself pale. “He won’t go after Mom.”
“You don’t know that.”
“He loves Mom still.” I shudder, thinking about the fact that he talked about her all the time to me when I was getting high off of his crappy supply. “Or so he says.”
Mitch shakes his head, and I wish I could decipher what he is thinking. I bet it is along the lines of, “Jax is an idiot.”
Lights beam through the windows of the cabin, and Mitch tenses, telling me that no one really knows we’re here, and he wasn’t expecting anyone.
“Who is it?” I ask, shuffling my legs toward the window, keeping my body to the side of it in case someone tries to get stupid and shoot us or something.
“No one knows I live here,” Mitch says, taking a handgun out of the back of his waistband and moving toward the door.
My leg is acting up, and I limp closer to the window, my chest freezing when I see the white vehicle.
“Wait!” I call out, moving through a long hallway that Mitch went down. It leads to the front door, and I run to it, injuries be damned. “Don’t do anything.”
Mitch has his hand on the door and opens it, getting a glimpse of the blonde hair that is barely visible through the tinted window.
When I come into view, Felicity swings her door open, her face a picture of horrified, and she runs to me, wrapping her arms around my body.
I shouldn’t give in to it. I shouldn’t rely on her or let her comfort me in this moment.
But I couldn’t stop myself even if I wanted to.
I let myself fall into her arms, let myself feel the immense relief that her presence gives me, let myself rely on her comfort and strength.
“Jax.” Her mouth is by my ear, but she just says my name on a release of breath, relief that I am okay, that we are okay, coursing through her trembling body.
I hold her to me, letting myself soak her in, inhale her scent, and swear to myself that I will do right by her, no matter what it takes.
“How’d you find this place?”
Mitch’s voice interrupts us, and Felicity pulls back, giving Mitch a firm look. It’s a look that tells me no matter what she feels for him, friendship or love, she is on my side.
It feels good to have someone there.
“I followed you.”
His eyes narrow. “I led you home. You went inside.”
Felicity lifts her chin. “If you thought I was going to just go home quietly while you took him somewhere no one knew where, you were kidding yourself.”
Mitch scoffs. “City, I’d never hurt my brother.”
“Maybe not you,” she says, accusation in her tone.
For a moment, they stare each other down, and I’m both flattered and wildly confused.
“My club won’t hurt my family.” Mitch’s voice is low, nearly a growl, and I realize there must have been words exchanged when I wasn’t around.
“I don’t know that either, Mitch.” Her words are soft and quiet, but the slight tremble in her hand has me wrapping her cold fingers into mine, willing warmth to seep into her bones.
Mitch looks away, and I see the hurt placed there. It feels like my fault. I am the one that put those suspicions of Felicity’s there, who said I didn’t understand why he was in the club. I’m the reason they’re both here tonight.
“It’s okay, City Girl. Mitch was helping,” I say softly, running a hand over her shoulder and pulling her in tight.
Her eyes meet mine for a minute, and her defensive posture softens, her hand coming up to cup my cheek.
“Come on,” she says, tugging my hand.
“Mitch.” I start, giving myself a moment to look my brother in the eyes. He’s still standing there quietly, and for the first time in years, I see a vulnerability in his expression.
He doesn’t want this mistrust.
He’s never done anything to earn it.
That is something I—and my brothers—need to work on.
“Thanks, man,” I say, holding out a hand. He reluctantly accepts. “I’ll figure this out.”
He shakes his head. “Not alone.”
I don’t answer him, mostly because I don’t want to break into this story with City standing right there. I know I am going to have to give her a version of the truth, at the very least, but I am not sure how much I am going to admit.
Moving to the car, I open Felicity’s door before rounding the back and sinking into the passenger side seat.
This whole night took a one-eighty, and I have a feeling it isn’t quite over.