Page 137 of Burned & Bound

Hours later, I sat on my porch with that stupid letter in my lap. West’s handwriting taunted me. One-half of me wanted to open it. The other half of me wanted to feed it to my bull and call it a fucking day.

Yeah, I’d bought the fucking bull that trampled me.

When Mickey had told me in the hospital that they planned to put him down, something inside me broke. He was just a bull turned into a monster for entertainment. He didn’t deserve to die for that. It took a little convincing but Mickey managed to secure the sale for me.

Bringing Rampage back here hadn’t gone over as well as I’d hoped. None of my guys wanted the bull around, so I had Mickey put the bull in my yard. Was it my best fucking plan? No.

But the bull was so goddamn happy for grass and space to run that he quickly became the easiest animal to care for. Peter spent a lot of time with Rampage. He could say it was for work but no one believed him.

Oh, but I didn’t call him Rampage no more.I renamed him Ferdinand because the first five days that he was in my yard, he was glued to the corner where my mom’s flower beds were. He didn’t eat them. He just stared at them like he’d never seen them before. Maybe he hadn’t.

Ferdinand wandered to the edge of my porch, resting his head on the rail as he stared at me.

“Would you fucking open it?” I asked the bull. His long tongue stuck out as he attempted to lick me from where he stood—and thankfully couldn’t. “That ain’t helpful.”

The front door creaked as it opened.

“Did you know?” I demanded when my mom joined me. “Did you know where he was?”

“I did,” she said. She took her time pulling a chair up next to mine, but I refused to look at her. Disappointment and anger bled together inside me.Why wouldn’t she tell me?Why the fuck did my mom get to know where he was and I didn’t?

“How long?”

“He told me before he left the hospital,” she answered honestly. I wished she would’ve fucking lied as my anger spiked.

“Then why the fuck wouldn’t you tell me?”

“Because he asked me not to tell you.”

“And why the fuck does he get to be the one who decides that?” I snapped. “He left me. Not the other way around.”

“Because he wanted to tell you when you were ready,” my mom said.

“Ready for what—”

“You have to understand something about West, baby boy,” she cut me off. “West has been crawling through barbed wire most of his life. The world may offer him brief reprieves but he can’t escape it.”

“And what? Running away from me was the escape he needed?”Fuck, I even hated saying the words.Had I really been that bad for him?

“Maybe… just maybe, Jackson, this isn’t about you,” she replied. “Maybe West is just tired of crawling over barbed wire as a way of living.”

Standing, she combed her fingers through my hair and pressed a kiss to the top of my head.

“Read it or not, baby boy, that’s up to you,” she whispered. “But I think you need to read what’s in that letter.”

She left me alone sitting on the porch to stare at that stupid letter. I traced the lines of my name over and over as I debated it. I didn’t have a clue how long I sat there, but eventually, I opened it.

Jackson,

I hope this letter finds you… well, I hope this letter finds you in general. I know there’s a good chance I’m writing this just for you to burn it without ever reading it. But on the chance you are, I hope you’re doing as well as you can be.

I know this letter can’t make up for the way I left, but I’m hoping it’ll give you some answers. You deserve that much. I owe you that much. I’m not expecting anything from you. I just want a chance to say what I need to say.

First off, I’m sorry I left you when you needed me most. I know you needed me, but I couldn’t be that person for you. Not when I could barely help myself. The truth is, I’m so fucking tired of living this way. I want more out of my life. I deserve more.

But I didn’t know how to get there. How to do that for myself. I needed help, Jackson. I still do.

I met a psychiatrist at the hospital. She helped me when I needed it most. When I broke. She helped me get into a clinic in Washington. The clinic is primarily for domestic violence survivors—a place for them to get the help they need and to start over. I’ve been fortunate enough that they let me take part in their inpatient program.

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