Page 57 of Stay with Me

Mack’s buddy chuckled darkly, sending a shiver up my spine.

“I ain’t planning to stay,” Mack responded, eyes never leaving mine. “I just got a message to deliver—a message I’m fucking thrilled to deliver.”

Jax got in between the bar and me. “I don’t give two shits, Mack. Get the fuck out of here before I make you get the fuck out of here.”

Whoa.

Mack’s dark eyes turned into flints of obsidian. “I told you once and I’ll tell you twice, you don’t know who you’re fucking with.”

“I know exactly who I’m fucking with.” Jax leaned against the bar top, his voice low and dangerously calm, like an eye of a hurricane. “Nobody.”

Mack looked like he wanted to say something, but his buddy shifted and he moved, too, so that he could see around Jax’s tense frame. “Isaiah needs to talk to your mom. Like last week.”

Who the hell was Isaiah?

“That’s not her problem,” Jax replied.

“She’s her mom’s bitch, and since her mom ain’t around, it’s her job to make sure her mom talks to Isaiah,” Mack fired back.

Mom’s bitch? What the—

The cop table was starting to pay attention, and I doubted that if this Isaiah dude was looking for Mom, he was on the up-and-up. So that had to make Mack and his buddy pretty stupid to do this in front of a bunch of off-duty cops.

“She’s got a week,” Mack said, backing toward the door. “Before Isaiah gets impatient.”

Mack and his buddy were out the door before I could say a word. My heart was pounding as Jax turned to me, a muscle throbbing along his jaw. “Who’s Isaiah? Like some kind of Amish mafioso?”

Some of the tension eased in his face as his lips twitched. The look in his brown eyes softened a bit. “Not quite. But close.”

Oh no. I didn’t like the close part.

“What’s going on?” Reece was at the bar, his gaze steady on Jax.

“Isaiah is looking for Mona,” Jax replied.

I glanced at Roxy, kind of surprised that she hadn’t hurried off to pretend to be doing something. “I don’t know who Isaiah is and I don’t know where my mom is,” I said, feeling like I needed to throw that out there.

“I know.” Jax’s voice was level. “Reece knows that, too.”

His cop buddy looked over at me. “You sure you want to hang out here for a while?”

I started to open my mouth.

“It’s a done deal,” Jax answered for me. “She’s staying.”

My gaze swung toward him; I was surprised that he’d done that. On the plus side, I was glad I didn’t have to stumble through a non-embarrassing explanation for why. On the negative side ... well, I wasn’t sure there was a negative side.

Reece blew out a breath as he focused on me again. “If you have any problem with that shithead or any of those shitheads, you let me know.”

I nodded.

“She’ll let me know first,” Jax said to me, and again, I all but gaped at him. “Then we’ll let you know.”

Reece arched a brow. “Man, I don’t know what you got going onhere,” he said, and my spine stiffened. “But you need to stay out of any shit with Isaiah.”

“I’m already in shit with Isaiah, because of this place, and you know this.” Jax tilted his chin up. “And it’s not my shit I’m worried about.”

Oh wow.

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