Where was the one thing he had to take care of? Leave it to Reece to be late. When had she ever cared about inconveniencing anyone? Reece lived by her own rules—her own timetable. She was whimsical and flighty, and he’d known it from the moment he’d fallen in love with her.
Thinking about Reece never failed to bring up Jake. His face, his laughter, his determination to be something. Memories of his dead best friend crowded Jax’s head, shoving their way in after keeping them out for so long, making it throb.
Jake Landry had been his best friend since eighth grade. They’d bonded over Cheez Doodles at lunch on Jake’s first day of school, and it stayed that way right up until Reece.
The Jays—that’s what everyone called them back then. Wherever there was a Jax, there was a Jake, was the joke. He’d loved Jake—considered him a Hawthorne through and through. A brother. That’s what Jake had been. No different than Tag or Gage in his mind.
They’d played football together in high school, chased cheerleaders, drank their first illegal six-pack together. Jake had worked his ass off to get a scholarship to the same college as Jax just so they could keep Team Jay alive.
He was Jake’s lifeline—his link to healthy, normal relationships when his home life was so shitty. Raised by an alcoholic father, Jake was a welfare check—a six-pack of beer and cable TV for his dad after his mother left when he was just five.
It was a miracle none of it rubbed off on Jake. He attributed that to Jax and his family—pushing him to keep his grades up, inviting him into their tight circle, supporting him the way they’d supported their own sons.
First chance Jake got after he graduated, he got the hell out and never looked back, and Jax helped him, throwing his shoddy duffel bag in the back of the used truck they’d both worked to buy.
After college, they’d begun their own software development company. Jay. He wrote the code; Jake, and all his varied charms, marketed and designed it.
After four years of struggling to pay their rent, their big break came in the way of a top-secret defense contract with the government. After five years, they met Reece, who worked in the coffee shop just below their newly purchased warehouse space for Jay.
Jax fell in love with her, and then Jake slept with her.
Stole her right out from under his nose, and when Jax found out—he never spoke to Jake again. He’d never forget the second he realized Reece and Jake had betrayed him. Sitting across from them at the pub they frequented, offering up their bullshit, cliché excuses about how them falling into bed with one another had “just happened.”
He’d never forget how he couldn’t catch his breath. He’d never forget how in five minutes, everything he’d loved, his company, Jake, Reece, was all just gone. Done. Over.
He’d never forget how losing Jake was like losing a limb. There was the phantom pain of it—Jake, so much a part of his life, suddenly gone, but still there every time he did something they used to do. Yet, it was only Jake’s memory there, and that hurt like hell. There was the physical pain of it—every time he saw Jake pick Reece up from his office window. Every time he ran into him at the gym. Every time, it felt like his guts were being ripped from his stomach.
When Jax cut him off, refused to speak to him, wouldn’t take calls from him, shunned him like he’d never existed, Jake finally offered to sell his shares in Jay to Jax, and they cut all ties.
He’d run off to live happily ever after with Reece, and the next time Jax saw him was in his coffin.
He’d fed off his anger for a long time after that, letting it rule every decision he made, holding on to it, always with the skewed thought, somewhere far in the back of his mind, that someday, he’d have Jake back in his life again. Maybe it would just be to tell him to go the fuck to hell, maybe it would be when he and Reece broke up, but Jake would always be “around.”
Until he wasn’t. Until he damn well got himself killed in a car accident, and there was no Jake. There was no Jake to persecute. To slaughter him with his words, to rage at how soul crushing his betrayal had been, to get it all out. There was no physical Jake to yell his anger at. There was just a shell of Jake, pale and still in a suit he’d never have worn, in a coffin Jax wanted to haul him out of and hold him close until he breathed again.
Until Jax could tell him that no matter how much he’d hurt him with Reece—Jake was still his brother.
And now, he was about to meet with the woman who’d helped take everything he’d loved away—only to throw it all away.
I helped her, Jax. She didn’t do it alone.
A knock on his window startled him. Reece gazed into his truck, just as beautiful as she’d always been. He turned the ignition off and popped open the door, tucking his chin into the collar of his jacket and nodding in her direction. “Reece.”