Chapter 53
Fifty-Three
NOW | JAX
The bar is loud enough to drown her, but my entire body is a fucking tuning fork for her. I can hear the shift of her weight, the inhale before she speaks. If I focused hard enough, I could probably count her heartbeat.
Everyone in town seems to have sensed I’m not in the mood for company. So of course, everyone is here. The noise level spikes—some asshole sneezes, a glass smashes on the floor, a girl cries. It all grates against my skull.
I polish the same glass three times.
“Jax.”
I don’t look at her.
“We are not doing this again,” she yells over the noise. “We’re going to talk. Like two adults. We’re going to sit down, maybe have a proper meal for once, and talk about this.”
I set the glass down hard. “I have work to do.”
“The bar can wait an hour.”
“It can’t.”
It absolutely fucking can.
She turns slightly. “Matt.”
Matt is at the far end of the bar, stacking glasses like he’s deeply invested in the symmetry of it all. The motherfucker is always listening. He glances up, caught. “Yeah?”
“Can you cover him for an hour?” she asks calmly. “He needs a break.”
Matt turns to me.
I don’t look at him. “I don’t need a break,” I say evenly.
Matt walks over anyway, drying his hands on a rag. He studies both of us, eyes flicking back and forth. A slow, shit-eating grin spreads across his face. “Oh, hell yeah,” he says. “The ‘I’m gonna fuck her senseless later but right now I’m pretending she doesn’t exist’ classic. My favorite.”
Sisk folds her arms. “What did you say?”
Matt just smirks at her. “You know the kind of fight where he’s got a hard-on for being right and you’re about to prove him wrong. Again.” He looks me dead in the eye. “Am I wrong, Jax? Or you gonna stand there looking like a constipated statue all night?”
My head turns toward him, slowly. “You got a thing for broken bones?”
He just barks. “Nah. I just like watching you get your balls handed to you. It’s good for the soul.”
“Don’t.”
“Alright, alright. Touchy fucking subject. My bad.” He grins, backing away. “I’ll just be over here, enjoying the show. Let me know when you’re done being a little bitch.”
I’m about to remind him who the fuck he’s talking to when some whiskey-flushed asshole at the bar leans toward Sisk, emboldened by liquid courage and a fucking death wish.
“Well damn,” he says, eyeing her openly. “Didn’t know this place came with a view.”
I keep wiping the same spot on the counter, a perfect circle forming under the rag.
“Hey, bartender,” he adds, tapping the wood with two fingers. “Get her something decent. My tab.”
“She’s not drinking.”
He chuckles like we’re all in on the same joke. “And who asked your opinion?”
I go back to wiping.
He leans closer to her and Sisk shifts slightly on the stool. “I can speak for myself,” she says lightly.
The man smiles wider. “Even better.”
“I’ll have whatever he’s having.”
The guy grins at me. “You heard her.”
She thinks that’s going to push me over the edge after what she admitted earlier. She’s wrong. I’m already there.
I pour the drink and set it in front of her without breaking eye contact.
“So what’s your name?” the guy asks, leaning closer.
She tilts her head. “Why?” she asks mildly. “You planning to remember it tomorrow?”
The guy laughs, undeterred. “Maybe I am.”
“Doubt it,” she replies. “You don’t look like you remember much past midnight.”
Matt coughs to hide a laugh.
The guy’s smile tightens. He shifts closer on the stool, invading her space. “Try me,” he says. “I’m very good at follow-through.”
My jaw locks. “Careful.”
He snorts. “What, she your sister or something?”
Sisk turns on the stool, slow, giving him her full attention. The moron mistakes it for an invitation.
“Serious,” he says, leaning in like he’s sharing a secret. “A woman like you shouldn’t be in a shithole like this. Especially not arguing with the help.”
The glass in my hand doesn’t just crack, it shatters. Sisk’s eyes sink to the blood welling up between my knuckles, dripping onto the bar. The guy is too busy staring at her lips to notice.
“Let’s get out of here,” he murmurs. “I’ve got a place two blocks down.”
“Let me ask you something,” Sisk cuts in. “Are you the kind of man who can sit down and have an actual conversation about relationship issues? Or do you just hide behind a liquor bottle and hope no one notices you’re scared?”
My head snaps toward her.
The guy laughs too loudly. “Oh, I’m not scared of anything.”
She arches a brow. “Really?”
He leans too close. “Come on, a mouth like that shouldn’t be wasted on talking.”
That’s the fucking line.
I move.
Matt groans, “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
I take one step out from behind the bar. The world narrows to this one piece of shit. He finally looks up, and the smug smile on his face dies when he sees me.
“Hey,” he says, putting hands up like he’s surrendering. “Didn’t do anything.”
I stop two feet from him, take the glass from his hand and set it carefully back on the counter.
He laughs, nervous but trying to recover. “Alright, man. No need to get dramatic.”
I just look at him. “OUT.”
He laughs again, weaker. “You don’t get to tell me where I can—”
I lean in. “If you’re still standing here in five seconds, I’m going to break your jaw so they have to wire it shut for six weeks. And I’m going to fucking enjoy it.”
He looks at Sisk for help, but she’s just watching me.
Matt moves behind the bar. “You heard him. Go.”
The guy backs off the stool. “Whatever,” he gruffs out, and practically runs for the door.
The bar noise comes back.
Sisk’s eyes are on me, burning. “You don’t get to ignore me and then act like a fucking animal.”
“Cool off,” Matt mutters near my shoulder. “Before you break something we can’t afford to replace.”
I look down, my hand is bleeding all over the bar.
Sisk grabs my cigarettes. “We’re not done.” She walks out and I follow her because that’s my life’s purpose, apparently.
Sisk is standing under the metal awning, her hands shaking as she tries to get a flame.
The lighter sparks, dies. Sparks, dies. She swears under her breath.
The third time she tries, I step forward.
I take the lighter from her cold fingers, cupping the flame against the wind.
The cigarette catches. I take a drag first, a deep, pulling inhale that does nothing to calm the rage thrumming under my skin, then I pass it to her.
She drags too hard, smoke rushing out of her in a shaky cloud.
“I’ve been gone all day. I gave you space,” she says. “I know what I did. I know I should’ve told you, but you need to give me a chance to explain.”
Explain what? That she made a deal with the same black shit that’s eating me alive from the inside out? That she decided I didn’t deserve to know? I can’t even look at her face.
“My parents are fine, by the way,” she tells me like I don’t fucking already know. “Thanks for asking.”
“I know they’re fine.”
She passes me the cigarette.
“I met the nurse you hired,” she adds. “When were you planning on telling me about that?”
“It slipped my mind.”
She laughs disbelieving. “Slipped your mind.”
“You don’t get to fight me on honesty today,” I say.
She leans closer. “Millie wasn’t home.”
My hand stills around the cigarette.
“She went back to work,” Sisk says carefully. “I can’t stand the thought of her back there again.”
I nod once, but it’s automatic. Millie can wait. This can’t.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask finally. “Ten fucking years. And you didn’t think to mention it?”
She looks at me. “I didn’t know how to tell you,” she admits.
“You were always pushing me away as it was. If I had told you… if I had admitted we were tied by something that dark, you would have never looked at me again. You would have used it as another excuse, another reason to say this was too dangerous, that I needed to get as far away from you as possible. It would have sealed our fate.” She takes a shaky breath.
“Then I thought your father had told you already. I thought maybe you knew and just… chose not to say anything.”
“My father?”
“He helped me.”
“Helped how?”
She swallows, and I see the fight it takes to get the words out. “I had to take measures, Jax. To make sure it would never happen.”
“Measures?” I repeat. “What did you do?”
I glance down at my hand. The blood dripping from my knuckles has slowed and it’s now darker and thicker, but her next words pull my focus back.
“I went to him,” she says quietly. “After. I asked him to do surgery, to do anything to prevent it from happening.”
I lean back against the brick wall. “What surgery?”
She hesitates. “I wanted him to take them out. My ovaries. Anything that would make it permanent. I didn’t tell him why,” she says. “I just told him my life wasn’t the kind you bring a child into.”
I can’t think straight.
“He refused,” she rushes. “He said there were alternatives. That I was young, that it wasn’t something you can undo later.”
She swallows. “I wanted to tell you,” she says. “So many times.” Her fingers tremble around the cigarette. “Every time I tried, I thought… maybe not now. Maybe when we’re steadier. Maybe when we’ve figured our shit out. I kept waiting for the right moment.”
I’m trying to process everything she’s saying.
“I was selfish,” she says quietly. “I was terrified you’d walk away. That one day you’d want a family. A child. And I wouldn’t be able to give that to you.”
The words affect me more than I think she realizes.
This is something she’s been carrying alone for a decade.
Something she’s been bracing for. I look at her differently now.
Ten years of her swallowing this every time I talked about the future like it was some abstract fucking concept.
I hadn’t even realized how light I’d always treated that word: family. She’s been living under a sentence.
“For the record,” I tell her, “there was never a version of my life that didn’t have you in it. If I ever wanted a family,” I say, “it would’ve been with you, not instead of you.” I steady my voice again, shoving the emotion back down where it belongs. “So what did my father do?”
She recovers enough to explain. “You know I take the shot,” she says. “But it’s only ninety-nine percent effective.”
“And you needed one hundred.”
Her eyes hold on mine. “Yes. He gave me something experimental,” she continues.
“Long-term suppression. Strong enough that it shouldn’t be possible.
” She’s crying now. “I thought… if it can’t exist, it can’t be taken.
” She takes a long breath. “I’m sorry, Jax.
” She wipes at her face angrily. “Up until that night I never thought about children. Not really, but the moment it asked for it…” She presses her fist to her mouth.
“I didn’t know what to offer. I didn’t know how to bargain.
I just begged it to save us all. And when you started to pull me out I thought it worked. ”
She looks at me.
“Then it asked what I would give. And we were almost out and I just said anything.” Her shoulders shake now. “When I climbed out,” she whispers, “it said that’s what it wanted, and if I didn’t give it willingly, it would find a way to take it anyway.”
The tar inside me shifts, telling me it’s listening.
“I’m sorry,” she says again. “I wanted to live. I wanted you alive. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
I step forward and pull her into me. I cup her face with my uninjured hand and kiss the tears.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I say.
“It was,” she breathes against my chest.
“You were trying to save us.”
She presses her face to my chest. “Do you think Murtaugh’s right?” she whispers. “That it doesn’t just want my baby. That it wants our baby, a St. Clair baby?”
A fucking war starts under my skin. “I don’t know,” I admit. “He keeps talking about bloodlines. I don’t know what to think anymore.”
She pulls back slightly, her eyes searching mine for something solid to hold onto. “But we don’t have to worry, right?” she says quickly, desperate for logic. “I take the shot. It works. I’ve never even had a scare.”
“I don’t know what the fuck my father gave you, but I’m not gambling with this.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’ll get the surgery. First thing tomorrow.”
I look down at my hand. The blood isn’t blood anymore. Thick, oily tar drips from my hand onto the dirty snow at my feet. Her eyes go wide when she notices it. The tar hits the snow and spreads in thin, branching lines like veins beneath us.
YOU CANNOT BARGAIN TWICE.
The voice lands in my head like a fact carved into stone.
Sisk stiffens in my arms. “Did you hear that?” she whispers.
Another drop falls.
“I’ll burn this whole fucking city to the ground before I let that happen,” I snarl, pulling her tighter against me.
There’s a pull in my palm and the tar on the snow stops moving, then it begins to crawl back. Upward.
Sisk grabs my wrist before I can jerk away. “Jax—”
The black veins retract across the ground, threading back toward me, sliding over my boot, climbing my wrist, pouring into the split in my skin. The cut seals but it doesn’t heal clean. A thin black seam runs down the center of my palm. Halfway down, it forks and two smaller cracks branch off.
It’s raised like a brand, black, settled deep as if it’s been there for years. I flex my hand.
Sisk is staring at my palm, her face pale.
“Jax,” she breathes. “That’s the symbol.”
“What symbol?”
She steps closer and turns my hand slightly toward the streetlight.
I don’t see it until she turns my hand.
|
/|\
Everyone in Tar City knows those four lines. They’re carved into the rusted sign at The Cut. They are spray-painted on brick. They’re stamped into old mining barriers no one bothered to tear down. They’re scratched into the fence that circles the Pit.
I stare at my hand. It’s the mark of The Cut—the original shaft from the first tunnels. The symbol my grandfather used to trace with his ring finger when he talked about legacy.
It’s The St. Clair claim.