Page 18 of Jax

“Yeah,” I said, looking over at Max. She was watching with weary eyes despite her head being low to the ground, tugging on a stray patch of grass she’d found growing through the dirt. Had Ronnie tried to get any closer to her, I feared Max would retreat and lead into another panic. I didn’t tell Ronnie that though, knowing just how important it was that the rider remained confident.

“Little steps.” Ronnie nodded, and it hit me hard.

I was transported back to almost fifteen years ago, looking down at a girl covered in dirt, bruises and scrapped knees from where she had been dragged across the dirt by Max’s lead rein, and I heard the same voice in my ears. Little steps. That’s how Ronnie had tamed the wild force that had been Max. Persistence, dedication, and little steps.

“I’m going to go let Max back into her pasture.” I coughed, tossing the rope over my shoulder and turned toward the pasture. “Be here at the same time tomorrow.”

“I will,” Ronnie promised, and with a lightness in her step, I heard her walk back to her truck and did my utmost best to not look at her walking away.

Chapter Four

Ronnie

As the clock nailed to the wall above me struck midnight, I found myself staring into the bottom of the whiskey glass thinking about Max. Our week had passed much the same as the first day when I had gotten into the pen with her. She let me step in, but if I took any step closer to her, she backed as far away as she could. By that point, Jax put a stop to it.

He told me he didn’t want to push it. That she’d adjust. I supposed I was feeling a little impatient. After being trapped in the dark for so long, I was just desperate to get to that light at the end of the tunnel. Both for mine and Max’s sake.

But I’d seen how long it’d taken others to get used to their horses again, and for the horses to get used to their riders. Traumatizing events might not mean the feelings were lost, but it didn’t mean everything could just go back to normal.

I sighed, putting the whiskey glass into the washer beneath the bar and returned to my unpleasant reality as a bartender.

Men sat around the long, wraparound bar, their breaths already stinking of booze and cigarettes before they had even walked through the door, only to light another and pop open a cheap cold one. Some wore leather jackets, their emblems saying they belonged to a club akin to the one that I had seen Jax wearing. He never wore it while working with Max, but I hadn’t had the courage to ask him why.

Anything beyond Max’s recovery was off-limits, after all.

Rules, rules, rules.

“Another, darlin’” a dark, cracked voice bellowed to me from down the way. Brown hair whipped me in the face as my pony tail swung me round, looking to see where the voice came from.

An overweight gentleman, who had a beer belly so big it was sticking out from underneath the white wife beater he wore, was signaling me with two fingers so wide they could pass for sausages, the gross, discount kind found in a clearance section at the grocery.

The man didn’t acknowledge me as his fat appendages wrapped around the new, cold beer I placed amongst his other empty ones before I quickly looked away at the sound of his teeth on the edge of the beer’s cap.

Its hiss and pop before it landed on the bar top gave me the all clear before I could look in his direction again without cringing. I hated when people did that. The fact he had any teeth left was a miracle.

Not that I had any right to complain about anything. Not when this was the only job going in this tiny town.

I lived rural all my life, so I expected that towns like this were always in need of a helping hand. Which was true—just not from a person who was living in a motel, paycheck to paycheck with the local MC club’s name stuck to her shoe. Gossip in this town was like gum from the pavement,annoying and impossible to scrape off.

Fortunately, there was a sleezy bar owner who only had enough time to look up from counting his money to stare at my tits when I asked about the job. He didn’t ask about my circumstances. Hell, he didn’t even care for my application. As I soon learned the only paper he cared about was the green kind he could sit in his office and count all day.

When he had me on the next available shift, not caring about my cluelessness behind a bar, register, or anything that involved more than a saddle and reins, I was satisfied.

I worked the night shifts the last three nights and although I had my odd stumble, I was getting my bearings.

“So, where you from, sweetie?” another man asked, this one more limber and lankier compared to the other men in the bar. He looked like he didn’t eat more than two sugar cubes a day and from the red marks around his arm, I could see his hunger wasn’t for food but for something else. Something he obviously had recently if the glazed look in his eyes was any indication.

I quickly reminded myself that it was this place or the strip joint on the other side of town, and with my body being how it was, I gave the man a gentle smile and, while trying not to breathe through my nose, said, “What can I get ya?”

“A beer,” he said, not at all bothered that I ignored his question. He instead began perusing the skin up and down my body, which thankfully my long shirt and jeans covered up.

Using his few discolored teeth, he popped open the lid, all without taking his eyes off my chest. I held back my cringe as his eyes glanced, for just a second, to my face, and then went back to my boobs.

I sighed, shaking my head. The only reason I was here was for the money. Otherwise I’d have been out of this place before the other boot could drop.

“You that Angel’s girl?” he popped, surprising me.

“Angel?”

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