Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
“You’re wearing a suit?”
Jaxon turned from the mirror he’d been using to tie his tie and looked at his brother who leaned in the doorway. It was ironic Dawson had the looks of an angel with his golden hair and pretty-boy features when he was the rowdiest Hennessy brother with the worst attitude.
Not that Jaxon’s attitude was much better.
His gaze swept over his brother. “And you’re wearing that?”
Dawson glanced down at his black T-shirt, faded jeans, and scuffed boots. “What’s wrong with what I have on?”
“It’s disrespectful.” Jaxon turned back to the mirror, noting his brother’s scowl in the reflection.
“Disrespectful? Why do I have to respect a woman who never gave us the time of day?”
“It’s not about our mama. It’s about how it will look to the entire town if we walk in like a bunch of disrespectful hooligans.”
“And why would you care what the people of this stinking shithole town think? Especially when they’ll always think we’re nothing but a bunch of criminals.”
Dawson did have a good point. Jaxon shouldn’t give a damn about a bunch of narrow-minded assholes who only saw what they wanted to see.
But, for some strange reason, he did give a damn.
Or maybe he just wanted to prove them wrong.
To prove he wasn’t just a good-for-nothing hell raiser who belonged behind bars.
Maybe he wanted to walk into the church, in a suit he’d spent way too much money on, with his head held high.
Which was foolish.
It didn’t matter if he wore a fancy suit or a cape of diamonds. The folks of Promise Springs would always see him as Rosie Hennessy’s delinquent son.
He gave up on the tie and jerked it from his collar, unbuttoning the top button of the designer dress shirt.
“Wear what you want to wear. Where’s Huck?”
“He was sleeping like a log until I woke him up and told him to get dressed. That kid could sleep away his life if you let him.”
Jaxon picked up a brush and smoothed his hair back before placing it into a ponytail. “And Poppy? Have you heard anything from her?” He glanced at Dawson’s reflection to see his brother shake his head.
“She’s not coming, Jax. She made it clear when she left she was never coming back.”
Jaxon’s jaw tightened. “You should have forced her.”
“She’s a grown woman. I can’t tell her what to do like she’s some little kid.”
“Bullshit!” He thumped the top of the dresser with his fist before turning around. “She’s our baby sister. It’s our job to make sure she doesn’t end up in jail or a drug addict. And from the sounds of the band creep she’s hanging out with, that’s exactly where she’s headed.”
Dawson’s eyes darkened, which was never a good sign. “If you’re so damned worried about Poppy, you shouldn’t have left Texas to work on that off-shore oilrig.”
“You know why I did it. It pays good money—money I sent to you to make sure you, Huck, and Poppy had what y’all needed.”
Dawson stared him down. “We didn’t need money, Jax. For all of Rosie’s inattentiveness, she never let us go hungry or without clothes.”
Yes, they’d had clothes and food, but they hadn’t gotten the thing they craved most: their mama’s attention. That was what Dawson was saying. Jaxon had sent money, but he hadn’t been there for them.
Which pissed him off because he’d paid his dues.
“I was here for twenty fuckin’ years of my life, Dawson. I wiped your snotty noses and cleaned your poopy butts. And took the blame for all the trouble y’all got into—which consequently landed my ass in jail.”
Dawson pushed away from the doorjamb and got in Jaxon’s face. “Well, no one asked you to take the blame! You gave yourself that job, Jax.”
“Exactly! That’s called being responsible, Dawson.
Something you struggle with. You were next in line to take over the job of watching out for Huck and Poppy.
And look how that turned out. Poppy’s now traveling around Texas with some lowlife guitar player and Huck spends all his time raising hell and chasing women. ”
“Not all my time.” Huck stood in the doorway wearing a wrinkled western shirt and torn jeans with his brown hair standing on end and his lips tipped up in their usual cocky smile. “Occasionally, I do have to work.”
Dawson snorted. “What have you come up with this time to make money? Shit, you’re just like our daddy. Always coming one with some harebrained scheme or another to strike it rich.”
Huck’s smile faded. Dawson always knew what buttons to press to get their little brother riled.
“Fuck you, Dawg!” Huck rushed into the room and shoved Dawson.
Dawson stumbled back into the dresser, rattling the mirror. His eyes narrowed. “Oh, so you think you can take me on now that you’re no longer a snot-nosed kid?”
“I’ve always been able to take you on.”
“Is that so?” He lowered his shoulder and tackled Huck. They grunted as they landed on the floor and started wrestling around.
Jaxon rolled his eyes. Some things never changed. He let them fight it out for a few minutes until Dawson got Huck in a chokehold and his face started turning blue.
“Let him go, Dawg.”
Dawson grinned up at him. “Or what?”
“Or I’m going to remind you why I’m the big brother.”
Dawson’s grin got bigger. “I’d like to see you try.”
Jaxon sighed. “Shit.”
Now that he and Dawson were evenly matched in weight and muscle, it took much longer to prove his point than it had when they were kids. They took turns having the upper hand, while Huck sat on the bed and cheered Jaxon on. Finally, Jaxon was able to maneuver Dawson into a full Nelson.
“Cry uncle, Dawg.”
“When hell freezes over.”
Jaxon knew his little brother wasn’t kidding. Dawson would pass out before he gave in.
“Stubborn ass!” Jaxon released him and rolled to his feet. His pants were ripped in one knee and he glanced in the mirror to see his hair wild and a split lip dripping blood onto his new shirt.
He glared down at Dawson who sat on the floor testing his jaw. “Happy now?”
Dawson grinned. “As a matter of fact, I am.” The smile got even bigger. “You want to borrow a T-shirt and jeans, Jax?”
They arrived at the church looking exactly like what they were.
The Hennessey Hooligans.
Jaxon’s bottom lip was twice its normal size, Dawson had a swollen jaw and carpet burn on his forehead, and Huck had a red neck and a black eye that he’d gotten from a bar fight he’d been in three nights earlier.
What made matters worse was it looked like the entire town had shown up for their mama’s funeral.
Since Rosie had never been close to anyone in town, Jaxon figured the townsfolk were all there to see them.
When he and his brothers followed the funeral usher to the front pew, Jaxon could feel every eye in the church on them.
He knew exactly what they were thinking.
It wasn’t poor Hennessy boys. It was more like . . .
What a shame Rosie had such loser sons.
And they weren’t wrong.
Regardless of Rosie’s parenting skills, good sons wouldn’t have cut all ties with their mama so she couldn’t even contact one of them when she’d had her first stroke. Good sons would have been there when she drew her last breath.
The preacher took the pulpit and started droning on and on about how Rosie was now with the Lord.
But Rosie had never believed in God. She had believed in only one thing—Honky Tonk Heaven.
The bar she’d inherited from her daddy had been her life and her only love.
Not her one and only husband, Rory Hennessy.
Not their four children. And not any of the men who had come and gone after the car accident that killed their daddy.
All she’d ever cared about was a clapboard building that smelled like sweaty cowboys and stale beer.
“. . . so there’s no need to worry about the soul of our sweet sister,” the preacher continued. “I know for a fact she’s watching us from heaven as I speak.”
Dawson’s snort had Jaxon shooting him a warning look.
Although he understood how his brother felt.
If there was such a thing as heaven and hell, he doubted seriously that their mama would be looking down.
She drank, cussed, smoked, and had eaten nothing but greasy bar food all her life.
Her dying from a stroke hadn’t come as a shock to anyone in her family.
The cemetery where Mama would be buried was located just outside of town.
While Jaxon had never set foot in the town church before today, he had been to the cemetery.
Every New Year’s Day, his mama had him and his siblings placing flowers on their daddy’s and all their other relatives’ graves.
While they had few living relatives, they had a lot of dead ones—something that happened when your family were bar owners who loved to party.
Now, there was a brand new headstone amid all the other Hennessys’. This one twice as big with a smiling angel perched on top. Since his mother had been anything but angelic, Jaxon had to wonder if she’d done it as a joke.
Rosie had loved a good joke.
Jaxon didn’t find it amusing.
Nor did he find humor in the epitaph engraved in the hard, cold stone.
Rosie Frances Hennessy
Owner of the best damn bar in Texas!
Thankfully, the gravesite service didn’t take as long as the church service. The preacher only said a few words and a quick prayer before the groundskeepers started lowering the casket into the ground.
As he watched the coffin being lowered into the deep, dark hole, sweat broke out on his forehead and his palms dampened the brim of the black cowboy hat he clutched in his hands.
The lower the casket went, the more his ribs felt like they were collapsing around his lungs, as if the coffin was being lowered onto his chest. He wondered how long before he passed out and tumbled headfirst into the hole with his mama.
When a glint of light danced before his eyes, he figured not long.