Keeping my mouth shut was absolutely the dumbest thing to do because I could not handle this mess on my own. I knew that. There was no way. “Mack was here. He was outside when I went out there. I guess he’d been waiting for me.”
Jax took a deep breath as his gaze sharpened and his shoulders hunched. “He approached you.”
“Yeah,” I said in a dry laugh.
His features hardened, telling me he did not think the laugh was funny. It wasn’t.
“He said that I needed to find my mom. That her being missing was my problem. And he said that if Mom didn’t show up by Thursday, it really was going to be my problem.” As I spoke, Jax’s face literally locked down. No emotion. Nothing. His expression was bland, but it was as cold as an arctic blast. “He said that I would become a message that they would send to Mom.”
There was a slight tremble in his hand and then Jax dropped it as he rose quickly. He took a step back. A muscle throbbed along his jaw.
“I don’t want to be a message,” I said, my voice small. “I really don’t want to be the kind of message he was talking about.”
He stared at me a moment and then understanding flickered across his face, and the whole atmosphere of the room changed. Tension poured like the rain had earlier. “I’m going to find that son of a bitch and fucking kill him.”
Whoa.
I stood, raising my hands. “Okay. I don’t think that would be the appropriate response.”
“He threatened you?” he shot back.
“Well, yeah, but . . .”
“He threatened with what I fucking think he did?” Although I didn’t confirm that, and it was a good thing I didn’t share that Mack thought it would also be a perfect message to send Jax, he still got it. “And he threatened you on my fucking ground?”
I wasn’t sure how this was his ground, but whatever. “Jax . . .”
“Did he touch you?” he asked, and I sucked in a breath.
I shook my head. “No. Not really.”
“Not really?” His voice was low, hitting a pitch that was beyond calm.
Nick was suddenly in the doorway. “Is everything okay?”
“Not now,” Jax spit those two words out in a way that would’ve sent me running in the opposite direction, but Nick stayed, his gaze bouncing between us, obviously reading that something was going down. “Calla.”
Maybe telling Jax wasn’t a good idea. I probably should’ve just gone straight to the police, because he was looking like he wanted to give some good old-fashioned redneck justice. I swallowed hard. “Mack had a knife.”
“Shit,” muttered Nick.
Jax stiffened, like his back went ramrod straight. “Did he hurt you?”
“No,” I whispered. “All he did was threaten me. He said he was . . .” I glanced at Nick, but he was like Jax, alert and ready. I lowered my voice. “He said he would even out my face if I screamed.”
There was a moment of silence and then Jax absolutely exploded. Like a bottle rocket. “Son of a bitch!” he shouted, and I jumped a good couple of inches off the floor. “I am gonna kill that motherfucker.”
“Jax, jail time really isn’t what you have in your four-year plan,” Nick said, and dumbly I wondered if Jax really had a four-year plan, and I’d also stupidly realized this was the most I’d ever heard Nick speak at one time. “You knew this was bound to happen.”
My gaze swung sharply to Nick, and they did know. Clyde had warned me. Jax had warned me. They’d said that Mom had been messed up in some bad shit, and they had said that shit would spread to me. They hadn’t been kidding around, but I hadn’t really thought it was this bad; even with the heroin, I hadn’t realized it was like this. I’d been more concerned with getting my own money back and being pissed off at Mom and feeling bad for myself.
I should’ve gone back to Shepherd. I should’ve called Teresa and asked if I could crash at her place. I should’ve gotten the hell out of Dodge.
Should’ve. Could’ve. Would’ve.
Truth was, though, even if I had known from the beginning that it was seriously this bad, I wasn’t sure I would’ve left knowing what Mom was messed up in. I probably would’ve tried to find her the first day here if I’d realized it was this bad. Find her, steal money, and send her on a one-way ticket to anywhere but here.
Jax twisted, thrusting a hand through his hair. “Knowing it was going to happen and seeing it go down are two different fucking things, Nick.”
“I know,” he replied quietly, way quietly.
I folded my arms around my stomach, shivering again. For the most part, I thought I was handling this pretty well. I wanted to clap myself on the back, but when I spoke, I heard the tremor in my own voice. “What am I going to do? I have no idea where Mom is and he said if I tried to leave, they knew where to find me. I’m going to end up as a real messed-up—”
Jax was suddenly right in front of me, cupping both sides of my face. His thumb touched my scar, but the look on his face was scarier than anything I’d ever seen in my whole twenty-one years of life, and I’d seen a lot of scary stuff.
“You’re not going to be a message. You aren’t going to be shit to any of them. You feel me? No one is touching you,” he said, and he said it right in front of Nick. He touched me right in front of Nick, touched my scar. “We’re going to take care of this and none of this shit is going to rub off on you. Okay?”
I believed him.
Wow. I really believed him.
“Okay,” I whispered.
Jax dipped his head, brushing his lips across my forehead, and he did that right in front of Nick, too. And that pulled at something in my chest, really tugged at it. Then he turned to Nick, and as he did it, he slipped an arm around my shoulders, dragging me against him. I hesitated for a second, but then I went. I leaned into him, because at this moment, I thought I really needed to lean into someone.
“We need to call the police,” Nick said. I opened my mouth, but he went on. “We’re going to have to wait and not do it here.”
“We need to do it where it’s not public,” Jax confirmed, his hand curving around my waist. “I’ll call Reece, let him know what’s going on. You got the bar for the night?”
Nick lifted his chin in universal boy-speak. “I’ve had it before you did.”
There was a beat of silence and then Jax said, “True.”