Chapter 52
Fifty-Two
THEN | SISK
Three months. Three shitty months since Jax disappeared like smoke. Three months since everyone decided what happened without knowing a single thing.
I’m not completely alone in my doubt. Ronny thinks there’s another explanation too, and I know he’s not just humoring me.
He proves it. I see his car parked down the street sometimes, and I get in, and we talk.
He’s out there searching for Jax—his mom sent him, sure, but his heart’s in it. He actually cares.
“This is gonna be good for you,” Millie says, folding one of my sweaters too neatly and placing it into the suitcase.
I stare at the open bag on my bed. The academy crest, all shiny and gold, stares back.
“What if he—” My voice betrays me before I can finish the sentence.
“How can you still be thinking about him?” she asks.
“Because I know him,” I say, and the defensiveness in my own voice pisses me off. “He didn’t do it.”
Millie stops folding and looks right at me. “He ran.” She yanks the suitcase zipper shut. “Only guilty people run.”
I scrub at my face, furious at the hot tears I can’t stop. “You don’t know him.”
“He left you,” she presses, stepping closer now. “You’re the one who dealt with the cops. The interrogations. The reports. The whispers. Detectives at our door every night like we were the criminals. They put us through hell because of him.”
“I’m alive because of him, Millie,” I say again, and she puffs out a breath like she’s humoring a child.
Everyone thinks my version of us climbing out of The Pit is some fairy tale I’ve cooked up.
Even Dad thinks I just… I don’t know, went through some trauma that scrambled my brain.
That I’m mixing up facts and memories with dreams. Nobody believes me because nobody ever climbed out of the Pit.
Somehow the fact that I made it out is the reason nobody believes a word I say.
I close my eyes and I can still hear it. The same questions on a loop. Did he ever mention the Pit? Did he threaten Ivan? Did he seem… unstable?
Lucky for me, Jax’s grandfather has a goddamn magic wand.
I don’t know how he made it stop. I don’t want to know.
But the questions stopped; the detectives vanished; the academy changed its mind.
I heard they almost yanked my acceptance.
Almost, then, poof. All forgiven, because of him, because the name St. Clair still means something in this town.
Leaving doesn’t stop me from checking the hospital registry every week.
Doesn’t stop me from going by his house.
Doesn’t stop me from knocking. Jax’s mom answers looking like she hasn’t slept since he left.
We’re two lost people standing on the same doorstep.
But his dad… his dad is a whole different story.
“I lost my son,” Daniel St. Clair told me once, right there in that doorway.
Not because Jax is gone, because he believes the crap everyone’s selling.
My brain throws me right back into that hospital room. The memory is so fresh I can still smell the antiseptic.
“I told you this would happen,” Daniel says.
“And I told you he was always going to take over,” Jaxwell replies.
The door swings open.
Daniel St. Clair looks nothing like his old man. The good genes skipped a generation. His sleeves are pushed up, a stethoscope still around his neck, his face tight with a mess of grief and pure rage.
“You filled his head with stories,” Daniel says to Jaxwell. “Blood. Debt. The Pit. You made it sound like a goddamn birthright.”
“It is an inheritance,” Jaxwell says, completely unfazed.
“Don’t you dare.” Daniel steps toward him, then sees me in the hospital bed and pivots instantly, professional instinct snapping into place.
“Are you dizzy?” he asks, fingers already finding my pulse. “Any nausea? Headache?”
“I’m fine,” I snap. “Do you know where Jax is?”
He doesn’t answer. He shines a penlight into my eyes. “Pupils reactive,” he mutters, as if that’s the only thing that matters.
“I said I’m fine.”
He lowers the light and really looks at me this time.
“You think he ran,” I say.
Daniel’s face tightens. “I think my son made a choice.”
“A choice?” My throat burns. “You think he’d just… throw them in?”
He doesn’t even look at me.
“If you believe he’s capable of that,” I say, my voice shaking, “then you don’t know your own son.”
“I’m afraid it’s you who doesn’t understand what Jax is capable of.” He turns to his father. “What this family is capable of.”
I shake my head. “No. You’re wrong.”
The grandfather watches me.
“He didn’t run,” I whisper again.
Daniel presses the stethoscope to my chest anyway. “Take a deep breath.”
I do, because some reflexes override pride. “He’s missing,” I say. “We need to look for him.”
“He’s not missing. He ran.”
“Stop,” I say.
Daniel pulls the stethoscope from his ears and turns back to his father. “I tried to keep him out of it,” he says to his father. “I tried to give him a different life.”
“He chose wiser.” Jaxwell replies, smooth as polished stone.
Daniel closes his eyes.
“He didn’t run,” I whisper again.
Neither of them argue. They simply don’t believe me.
Millie watches me tie my hair.
“You’re going to put this behind you,” she says firmly. “Even if I have to drag you there myself. Our family worked too hard for this. You worked too hard for this.”
I turn from her.
“Do you hear me?” she presses. “You will go, you will focus, and you will not look back. And in a few months,” she says, selling the lie with a sad little smile, “you won’t even think about him anymore. I promise.”
* * *
As I turn the corner toward the train station, a voice stops me cold. “Ms. Zaitseva.”
“Pitfire—” I spin around.
Ronny stands a few steps behind me, hat in his hands like he’s just stepped out of a funeral. I notice how the sky behind him is a dark gray, the sun completely hidden by the heavy clouds, matching my mood perfectly.
“Ronny, what are you doing here?”
“I found him.”
A choked sound escapes my throat, and before I can think, I’m running. I throw my arms around him, burying my face in his stiff suit jacket. “You found him? Oh, Ronny, you found him!”
He pats my back awkwardly, his body rigid beneath my hands. The relief I expected to feel isn’t radiating off him.
I pull back, my hands still gripping his arms. “Where is he? Is he okay?” I search his face, looking for the joy, the confirmation that everything is going to be alright. It’s not there. The hope in my chest curdles into dread.
“Ronny?” My voice is barely a whisper. “What’s wrong? Is he… hurt?”
He studies me the way people do when they’re deciding how much truth someone can handle. He gently takes my wrists and removes my hands from his arms.
“I think you should see for yourself, ma’am.”
The train station is twenty yards ahead of me. My ticket is folded in my pocket, my bag is packed, my life is supposed to be moving on.
“I… I have to go.” It’s an impossible choice to make.
Ronny gestures toward the black car idling at the curb.
“I can take you to him.”
I look from the car to the train station entrance just down the street. I give a short, quick nod and follow him to the car.
Ronny drives in silence, and I bite my tongue to keep from asking for more information. The silence is the problem. Is Ronny quiet because the news is bad? Or is he just being Ronny?
Every block we drive, the city gets uglier, meaner.
The panic starts to bubble up my throat, hot and acidic.
Please no, not to The Cut, I think to myself.
The Cut definitely doesn’t mean good news.
Not for anyone, but especially for Jax. He wouldn’t have lasted there an hour, it’s been three months.
“Are you heading to The Cut?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
Ronny catches my eye in the rearview mirror and gives a short, sharp nod.
As we slow down, I notice a group of men standing near the entrance of the Redline. Their eyes follow the car as it passes.
“You’re sure he’s here?” I ask quietly.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The Cut isn’t where boys with St. Clair blood spend their afternoons. It’s where people go when they don’t want to be found. So why doesn’t Jax want to be found?
Ronny slows as we turn onto a narrower street. I recognize the place instantly: The pawn shop. The front entrance of the same place Jax and I snuck into when we were still chasing answers and calling The Pit a stupid urban legend. Months. It’s only been months, but it feels like a lifetime ago.
Ronny pulls to the curb and I look at him. “He’s in there,” he points. “I’ll wait right here, Miss. Take your time, I’m not going anywhere. This is not the safest area.”
That’s an understatement, but I step out anyway.
For a moment I stand still, remembering the last time we were here. When everything felt dangerous in a way that was almost thrilling. Stupid kids, the owner had said that night. Damn, was he right.
I think about going in, but instead, I move closer to the side window, my breath fogging the grimy glass. It looks empty, but then I see him. Jax’s back is turned, but he’s here. Alive. Breathing. Whole.
A tidal wave of pure, unadulterated relief rushes through me and just as fast, it sours. He looks… fine. Not just alive, but fine. Why is he here?
A blonde with a sharp, messy ponytail steps into view from the back room, holding a tube of lotion. She’s laughing at something he says. The sound doesn’t reach me, but I can see it in the relaxed set of his shoulders, the way he turns his head slightly toward her.
She takes his hand, his left arm, and starts carefully unwrapping the plastic covering it.
She peels it back slowly, revealing a fresh tattoo underneath.
She squeezes a dollop of ointment onto her fingers and begins gently smoothing it over it.
They both lean in, looking down at his arm, and they laugh at something.
Her fingers linger on his forearm as she works, her thumb brushing over his muscle.
And most importantly, he doesn’t pull away.
For three months I have been checking hospital registries, knocking on doors, arguing with detectives, defending him against whispers in grocery store aisles. And he is here. In the Cut. Getting new tattoos. With her.
My hands start to shake and I don’t try to stop it.
A vicious, feral part of my brain I didn’t know existed wakes up and hisses.
All I can see is that ponytail. I think about going in there.
I think about grabbing it, using it like a handle to yank her away from him.
I want to make her run. I want to make her know that she’s touching something that belongs to me.
The thought is so raw, so animalistic, it shocks me.
I didn’t know I was capable of this level of rage. Or this kind of jealousy.
He turns slightly, and for one impossible second I think he sees me. But no. He says something to her and she laughs.
The rage doesn’t just leave; it drains away, leaving behind a vast, empty ache.
It’s the kind of stillness that happens when something cracks so deeply your body can’t even process the pain.
Numbness takes over, like a creeping frost. I step back from the window.
The glass catches my reflection and I watch as hope evaporates in real time.
Ronny straightens when he sees me walking back toward the car. He searches my face carefully.
“Is he—”
“Take me to the station,” I say.
“Ma’am—”
“Take me to the station, Ronny. Please.”
Ronny nods and opens the door.
As the car pulls away, I don’t look back. Not at the building. Not at the window. Not at the boy I thought I knew. If he wanted me there, he would have come. If he wanted me at all, he would have come.
The train station comes back into view and I tighten my grip on my bag.
“Ma’am—are you sure—”
“I’m done with Tar City,” I say as I step onto the platform. “And Tar City is done with me.”
* * *
On the train, Tar City shrinks behind me.
My life flashes in fragments: My mother’s last good day.
Millie coming home from work one afternoon and announcing she wasn’t leaving for college.
“Someone has to stay,” she’d said simply.
My father crying in the kitchen when he thought no one could hear him.
Millie learning how to measure medication.
The goodbye. My father smiling. Me leaning over my mother’s bed before leaving, waiting for her eyes to open. Millie’s happy tears.
My stomach knots as I press my forehead to the glass and watch my hometown fade away. I am leaving. I am finally leaving this place, and I have never felt more miserable.
For months I told myself there was no alternative.
I didn’t know where Jax was, I didn’t know if he was hiding, if he was hurt, if he was lying somewhere no one thought to look.
I told myself I had to go, that staying was dangerous, that Tar City would swallow me whole if I didn’t leave.
Yet, every time I packed a bag, I unpacked it again.
Not knowing meant there was still a version of the story where he came back.
Not even the fear of the Pit—of that voice—was strong enough to make me walk away. I still hear it every night when I close my eyes. The words it spoke as the bargain sealed. The way it accepted. I know what I traded. I know what it expects. And still… I wanted to stay. For him.
Walking to the train earlier, ticket ready, I was still unsure if I could actually get on and leave.
In a way, I should be thanking him. Seeing him like that finally made it possible. Knowing he doesn’t want me should make this easier. It doesn’t.
The train lurches forward, steady and unstoppable, and it feels like my entire life stays behind.
Across the aisle, a woman holds a sleeping child against her chest. Her coat is thin, her hands are cracked from hard work. Two rows ahead, a man stares at nothing, grease still under his fingernails, boots caked in factory dust.
I wonder how many of them would trade places with me without hesitation.
An academy. A scholarship. A way out. I swallow hard.
I am leaving with opportunity in my bag and I should feel grateful, I should feel relieved.
Tar City disappears behind the bend and a dark part of me wishes I had sunk into the tar that night and let it keep me.