Chapter 42
Forty-Two
NOW | SISK
“How often do you come here?” I ask as Jax slows the bike.
His eyes are on the street, scanning for trouble. “Not as often as I should.”
Tar City never bothered pretending to be safe in this district. The Cut has only gotten worse since we walked these streets together for the first time all those years ago.
The buildings around us are barely standing, their facades stained with decades of grime and graffiti. Some windows are boarded up or painted black, while others are just empty holes, dark and open to the street.
Everyone knows better than to linger here after dark.
It’s a strange feeling—to be near a man this powerful in a place like this.
I’m not afraid of the people right now. I’m afraid of what Jax might do if someone looks at us wrong, if someone pushes, if someone reminds him of the fight he hasn’t come down from yet.
I can feel it on him, his power is barely leashed.
The pawn shop looks older too. The neon sign is long gone, all that’s left is a rusted metal awning and a faded stencil on the glass that once said PAWN and now just says PA.
I spot our reflection in the window. We look like we crawled out of a graveyard.
Not that Tar City has one—nobody gets buried here.
Superstition says the tar underground will steal your soul if you do.
People get cremated instead. Jax is shirtless, his jeans torn, his torso a canvas of drying blood and fading bruises.
My own shirt is ripped, my face stings, and I can feel the grit of the alley ground in my skin.
I’m exhausted in a way that goes deeper than muscle, an adrenaline crash mixed with the emotional fallout of what I saw him do back there—what he can do.
“Stay close,” he orders as we move toward the back alley. We cross fast, and he raps his knuckles against the steel door in a specific rhythm—three strong knocks, a pause, two slower ones, and then one final tap.
The door opens just enough to reveal a sliver of yellow light and a familiar, irritated voice. “The fuck happened?”
I don’t even hesitate. I slip inside and throw my arms around him. “It’s good to see you too, O,” I say, squeezing hard.
He grunts, stiff and annoyed, then—after a second—his arm comes up and pats my back once.
Jax rolls his eyes and heads straight for the fridge like it’s his place.
“Still treating my shop like a goddamn pantry,” O snaps.
“Still locking the door like you’re expecting the apocalypse,” Jax shoots back.
“Because I am,” O grunts. “And one of these days, you’re gonna be the reason it shows up early.”
Jax cracks a beer, then an energy drink.
O stares at him like he’s watching a slow-motion crime.
“Pitfire,” he says. “You trying to kill yourself or just insult me personally?”
Jax takes a long pull from the beer, then the energy drink, and finally looks at him. “We need your help.”
O’s expression changes. “The fuck you do now? Don’t tell me you need money. Again.”
Jax exhales through his nose and waves him off. “Bar’s doing great.”
O snorts. “Of course it is. City goes to hell, people drink like hell.”
“And I paid you back,” Jax says flatly. “Every cent you lent me. So quit it.”
“Yeah,” O complains. “Minus the interest.”
Jax shoots him a look. “I told you that’s not how favors work.”
O crosses his arms. “So. If this isn’t about money, what did you break?”
Jax doesn’t answer right away. He takes another drink instead.
I step in. “Did you see the… thing?” I ask.
Both of them look at me.
“The thing?” O repeats. “You mean the—” He stops himself.
Jax glances at me, then back at O. “You see it or not?”
O scrubs a hand through his wild gray hair. “Saw the sky go wrong if that’s what you’re asking. Everyone did.”
Jax shifts. “Did you ask Murtaugh?”
O huffs. “Yeah. He’s still pulling his hair out, swearing at equations like a madman.”
“Fucking great,” Jax curses.
“Murtaugh says it wasn’t a regular eclipse,” O continues. “Said some crap about ‘inverted veils’ and ‘peeking through the other side.’ I just filed it away with all the other shit that happens in this hell that nobody understands.” O’s eyes narrow. “That’s why you’re here?”
Jax opens his mouth. “I…” he starts, then stops. “I had an episode.”
O straightens. “What kind of episode?”
Jax shakes his head. “Don’t fucking remember.”
“We were at the hospital,” I say, swallowing. “When the sun was covered by it. The machines started stuttering and then everything just shut down at once. No power.” I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth. “He turned toward the window like he was being called.”
Jax shakes his head once. “Sisk—”
“You don’t remember,” I say, not unkindly. I look back at O. “But I do.”
O doesn’t interrupt.
“He looked at me with his red eyes.” I say.
Jax goes very still.
“He wasn’t himself anymore,” I continue.
O exhales slowly through his nose.
“He was hearing something, then he sunk to his knees and said—‘It’s not her fault. Stop.’”
Jax’s head snaps up. “I said that?”
“Yes. I tried to get help,” I say. “But the doors locked. I think you were in pain—real pain. Grinding your teeth. Growling.”
O curses.
“He dragged an exam table across the floor like it weighed nothing. Threw a chair between us when I got too close. Then the sun came back. Power came back. Everything rebooted like nothing happened.”
O leans back against the counter, scrubs a hand down his face. “First time that happened?”
Jax nods. “You would know.”
O opens his eyes slowly. “How the hell would I know?”
“Because I tell you everything,” Jax says. “Everything that matters.”
O watches him then sighs. “What were you doing in a hospital?”
“It was me,” I say. “My leg. We were getting it checked.”
O’s eyes flick down to me. “You good now?” he asks, already moving toward a shelf. He reaches for a glass timer with a slow-moving liquid the color of oil.
“I’m fine. Really. Good as new.”
“Hurt it dancing?”
“Something like that,” I say quickly.
He looks at me. “You two have never been able to lie—not to me or to each other—so why start now? Aren’t you both too old for this shit? I sure am. Spill it.”
“Well…” I start and look at Jax but he is just gulping his poisons.
“My leg recovered a bit too quickly.”
“How quickly?” O asks.
“Few days, and I had surgery and…”
He stops, straightens and looks at Jax. “You didn’t,” he sneers.
“I had to.”
“You absolutely did not,” O snaps. “You—” He cuts himself off then points at Jax like he’s trying not to throw something. “You don’t use it for that.”
“I wasn’t going to let her limp for the rest of her life.”
“You don’t get to decide that,” O fires back. “You don’t get to spend it like it’s yours.”
I step forward. “He was just helping me, like he helps the others…”
The second the words leave my mouth, I know I’ve gone too far.
“The others?” O barely gets it out.
Jax reaches for the glass timer on the counter.
“Don’t touch that,” O barks.
Jax freezes mid-reach. O steps in, physically blocking him. “You don’t touch anything in this room right now. Not until I say so.”
Jax’s hands curl into fists. “You’re acting like I killed someone. Which, by the way, fucking happened too.”
My stomach turns.
O lowers himself into the creaking chair behind the workbench like all the anger suddenly weighed too much to hold standing. “How did you fix her?” he asks, voice quieter now. “Did you bargain? Talk to it?”
Jax suddenly looks uncomfortable. “I—”
O’s eyes narrow. “For fuck’s sake, don’t tell me it was during sex.”
“No!” Jax snaps, too fast.
Heat floods my face anyway.
O gestures impatiently. “Then what?”
Jax exhales, annoyed, “I spit in her mouth.”
My jaw drops. Across from me, O’s does too. And suddenly it clicks. That wasn’t foreplay, or at least not just foreplay. “So that’s what that was,” I mumble.
O drags both hands down his face. “Fucking hell, you two.” O looks back at Jax, deadly serious again. “Have you… ever done that before?”
“What?”
“Healed people,” O snaps. “With your—whatever the hell this is. Body fluids.”
Jax hesitates. And that hesitation answers everything.
O stares at him.
“Yes,” Jax says finally. “Mostly kids.”
O exhales sharply. “Doomed pitfire. And you didn’t think to mention it?”
Jax bristles. “I hurt people all the time. I barely help anyone. I didn’t think it mattered.”
“Have you ever thought,” O shoots back, “that every time you fix something, something else breaks? That’s how this works.”
Jax frowns. “Why do you think that?”
“Why?” O barks a laugh. “Because the tar doesn’t thrive on happy customers.”
“But it’s different with me,” Jax insists. “I get to—”
“That’s because you’re a St. Clair,” O cuts in. “You still think the rules don’t apply to you.”
“That’s not it—”
The room tilts. Enough for me to notice that my body finally remembers everything it’s been through: the club; the alley; the hospital; the sky going wrong.
I move without a plan. I walk past them, brushing Jax’s arm as I go. He reaches for me automatically, fingers grazing my wrist. “Sisk—”
“I’ll be right back. One minute.”
The adjacent room is barely a room at all. More like a storage closet with stacked boxes, junk left and right, and the couch. It’s old, threadbare, indented like it remembers bodies that needed it just as badly as I do.
I sink into it and my eyes close immediately. I’ve slept on this couch before, woken up on it more times than I can count. O might be a grumpy ass to customers, but he never closes the door to the ones who need it, and that carves out a place in my heart for him that no one else can touch.
From the other room, their voices blur together.
“You don’t get it—”
“You’re not listening—”
“You’re playing with balances you don’t understand—”
I should get up. I should go back in there and ask questions. Important ones. The kind that feels like they might change everything. But my body refuses.
The last thing I register is Jax’s voice. “…she didn’t deserve that.”
Then darkness takes me and I fall asleep.