Chapter 8
JAX
T he overlook wasn’t much, just a widened spot where the county had forgotten to finish the guardrail, and the asphalt bled tar, as if someone had patched it with a blindfold on.
Pine needles gathered in the seams. Beer caps glinted in the dust when the sun hit them right.
Teenagers came up here to pretend they were wild.
I came because it was quiet, and the view stretched long and wide, out over the pine canopy toward Tallahassee.
At dusk, when the sun slid down behind the trees, the whole world turned gold.
And because it sat close enough to the neighborhood where I grew up that the air still smelled like my old life if you breathed deep—warm resin from the pines and wet earth from the creek below.
It was a perfect place to meet up with my sister. And one we hadn’t used in a while, since we never saw each other in the same spot twice in a row.
I leaned against my bike, my arms folded and boots planted in dust and pine needles.
The Harley ticked behind my hip, cooling while heat came off it in slow waves that made the air shimmer.
The leather of my cut lay open over a T-shirt soft from too many washes, humid air trapped under it, but I didn’t shrug out of it.
I didn’t take off my cut in places like this.
It felt wrong, like leaving the front door open.
My mind wandered to Lark, and for the hundredth time, I wondered if I should have brought her with me.
But I knew she was safest with my brothers right now.
Over the past few days, another itch had formed in my brain.
The marshals had contacted Kane again, attempting to persuade him to help convince me to stay away from Lark.
Predictably, he’d told them to fuck off.
I’d already patched all the holes in Lark’s ledger anyway.
But that itch…it was persistent. Then this morning it hit me.
What if the marshals hadn’t been the only ones tipped off by my intrusion into the database?
If someone had been sitting at the gate, waiting for a chance to ride in on the coattails of another breach?—
The growl of Alanna’s little sedan reached me before I saw the headlights, interrupting my thoughts.
It was a tired sound, the kind of engine that had lived past its good years and now limped along out of sheer stubbornness.
She rounded the bend, tires crunching gravel, and pulled up beside the bike.
The car gave one last rattle before shutting down, headlights dying slow.
Alanna’s ride had been on my list to fix for six months. She kept moving it to the bottom of hers.
I stayed where I was, arms crossed, watching her push open the door.
She stepped out with her bag slung across her shoulder, dark hair pulled back in a messy bun that hadn’t been planned so much as surrendered to.
Her sneakers scuffed the dirt. She’d dressed simple—jeans and a soft-looking gray T-shirt—but she had our mother’s posture, that stubborn straight spine, even when the world made her bend.
She also had our father’s steady gaze, but everything else was all hers.
When she saw me, her eyes softened the way they always did, then narrowed in the same breath.
“Thought I told you to get new tires,” I muttered as she came closer, unfolding my arms just long enough to pull her in.
The hug was tight, harder than I meant it to be. Tension lived in my chest these days, and I hadn’t figured out how to unclench. My hands curled against her back, protective in a way I hadn’t grown out of, even when she did.
She pressed her face into my chest for a beat, then leaned back, rolling her eyes. “Nice to see you too.”
My mouth tipped up—couldn’t help it. “I’m full of charm.”
“Full of something,” she shot back, sliding free but not going far. She leaned against the car door, and the dying light painted her cheek with a gold stripe.
“Those tires hit a wet patch, and you’ll be kissing guardrails,” I pointed out.
“Bossy,” she retorted. “Still, after all these years.”
“Genetics.” I shoved my hands into my pockets. “If our parents didn’t want me looking out for you, they should’ve raised less stubborn kids.”
She laughed, short and real. “Less stubborn? You broke into a federal database at sixteen. They probably had a point.”
I grinned. “I wasn’t caught.”
“You were recruited, which is kinda the same thing.”
“Semantics.” The corner of my mouth pulled a little sharper because the memory lived bright.
The northern side of Tallahassee felt like a different state when you were born into it—hotter, quieter, and with rules that made less sense.
I’d learned early that some doors stayed closed unless you picked them. When I was seventeen, I picked Kane’s.
Kane had been twenty-four, already dangerous in ways that put other men at ease because the danger was on their side.
Tatum—Edge now—was twenty-two with green eyes that looked at you like he’d already built the rifle that would end your day if you needed it ended.
Drift was the same age, quiet where the other two were loud, with fists like anchors and a jaw like he’d carved it with his own hands. They weren’t a club yet.
I’d slipped past a firewall Kane paid a contractor too much to build, left a note that read do better, and went about my night.
The next afternoon, all three stood on my parents’ porch while I tried to look like I was not home, not me, and definitely not the kid who moved through code like it was air.
My mother had answered the door and gone pale at the sight of men who looked like trouble but smelled like the kind that paid cash and didn’t apologize.
My father came down the hall with his jaw hard.
Kane didn’t chew me out. He asked me questions. Two minutes into the answers, he hired me.
He also made me finish high school. No negotiation. I still heard his voice in my head sometimes, “You don’t get to be vicious and stupid. Pick one.”
I attended class in the morning and spent the afternoon in a back room at a warehouse, learning systems that were so old they should have been in museums and systems that were so new they felt like rumors.
Kane and Edge split time between Tennessee and Crossbend back then, but Drift only lived half an hour south.
We hung out more and more, ate cheap pizza, and wrote bad code, then fixed it until it wasn’t bad anymore.
When I left my parents’ house at eighteen, I moved into his spare room.
And when Kane and Edge made Crossbend permanent, we did too.
My parents didn’t like it. They liked me not getting arrested, but they didn’t approve of the men who made sure I didn’t.
Things got quiet and brittle until they broke.
When I patched with the Redline Kings, they forbade Alanna from seeing me.
She ignored that order more than she obeyed it, but we learned the rhythm—quiet meets, careful texts, and holidays threaded like wires through a wall.
“You’re far away,” Alanna observed now, reading my face like she always had. “Want to come back?”
I exhaled, a slow pull that loosened something between my shoulder blades. “Always.”
She shook her head, hair slipping loose from her bun, and leaned against the car again, like it might hold her steady. The last rays of the sun caught the curve of her cheek, painting her in the same gold that set the pines on fire. For a second, it almost looked like peace.
Her voice dropped quieter, and she sighed. “I miss this. I miss you. I hate that we have to meet like this—out in the middle of nowhere like it’s some big secret.”
My chest pinched. I shifted my weight, crossing my arms again, jaw working tight before I forced it loose. “I know. But I’m not giving our parents one more reason to hate me. If this is how it has to be, we make it work.”
She bit her lip and looked down. “It feels like I’m already losing them.”
I didn’t answer right away. Couldn’t. Because I’d seen it too—the way our parents grew colder the longer I wore the cut, the deeper I sank into the Kings.
Alanna was still theirs, but the leash was tightening.
One day, it would choke her, and she’d have to cut it herself.
I saw the flicker of it in her eyes now.
“Then that’s on them,” I said finally, voice low. “Not you.”
Her throat bobbed like she wanted to argue, but she didn’t. She just looked at me for a long second, soft gray eyes steady.
She tipped her head toward my bike, her glasses flashing the last smear of light. Her lips tipped up in a clear attempt to lighten the mood. “You couldn’t have picked a coffee shop? Somewhere with air-conditioning? I look like humidity is my personality.”
“You look like you’re late for new tires.”
She kicked lightly at my boot toe. “If your strategy is to nag me until I love you more, it’s working.”
“Not a strategy. A lifestyle.”
“Uh-huh.” Her mouth softened, eyes scanning my face. “You look tense. More than usual.”
“It’s been a week,” I answered, keeping it vague.
“Work?” she pressed, not letting it go.
I shrugged, aiming for casual and hoping to change the direction of the conversation.
She tilted her head, not buying it. “You’ve always been a terrible liar.”
“Don’t start.”
“I’m serious, Jaxton.” Her voice cut sharp enough that I looked at her again. “Something’s going on. What is it?”
For a second, I considered deflecting harder. But she wasn’t wrong. I was stretched tighter than I’d been in years.
“Work,” I finally confirmed, then sigh-laughed because my sister wasn’t a wall I could bounce lies off and hope they stuck. “And…someone I’m looking out for.”
Her brows climbed. “A woman.”
I didn’t reply, which was an answer of its own. The pines hissed when the breeze pushed through them. Somewhere down by the creek, frogs started their evening chorus, and crickets chirped along.
“You’ve got…a look,” she added.
“What look?”