Page 26 of Burned & Bound

Jackson!” My mom’s facelit up when she opened the door to her apartment. When I didn’t return the gesture, her expression fell.Yeah, I wasn’t in the fucking mood.

I was running on coffee and rage alone—not a great fucking combination. West was gone when I woke up. Not dead but not in my house either. No, he was spacing out in a field somewhere with Daisy and her friends not doing his damn job. I left him. Better not touch the horses while drunk anyway.

“We need to talk,” I said. “And I do mean talk because I’m real tired of everyone keeping me out of the loop.”

“Oh, honey—”

“Don’toh honeyme, Ma,” I interrupted. She opened the door wider to let me in. “I know you and Mickey are keeping shit from me. Shit that West seems to think I know. And you know what? I’d like to fucking know.”

“Jackson—”

“Now.”

“Jackson—”

“He thinks I know something I don’t know,” I snapped. “Mickey knows shit about the chaos going down on my ranch that I don’t know. And so do you. Start talking, Ma.”

She sighed, her shoulders visibly rising and falling with her defeat. I crossed my arms, and she reached out, slapping them down.

“Stop that grumpy shit, son,” she ordered. “Go sit at the table. I’ll be there in a few minutes. The least you can do is humor an old lady. These knees ain’t what they used to be.”

I did as she asked and crossed my boots over one another as I waited.And waited.When she swore loudly, I tensed. I knew better than to rush in and help. Mom wasn’t one for unsolicited help.

“You have to understand, we Myles don’t get to pick our business partner,” Mom said as she rejoined me with a file in hand. She eased into the chair across from me and put her hand on top of the file. “Your great-great-whatever-grandfather, he picked his partner in the McNamaras. They were good together. But all these generations later, that’s who we’re stuck with. If we’d had a choice, we never would’ve associated with the likes of Harrison McNamara.”

“Don’t blame you,” I replied. “The man was a fucking dick.”

“That’s putting it mildly, yes,” she agreed. She paused, her head tipping slightly as she considered me. “Are you sure you want to know, Jackson? There’s no going back once you know.”

“It’s impacting my business, it’s impacting my employees,” I ticked each one off on my fingers, “and frankly, I’m real fucking tired of it being thrown around that I need to handle West with kiddie gloves but no one will tell me why. I deserve to fucking know.”

“Okay.” She let out a deep breath and stared out her balcony door, her fingers drumming on the file. I just sat there because what the hell else was I going to do? “Do you remember when you came out to us?”

“Vaguely,” I said.Honestly, I hadn’t put much stock in the moment because my parents just let me know that they were already aware I was gay.It made the moment pointless.

“We knew you were gay because we knew what happened between you and West the night he left,” she told me. I carefully held my expression as I waited for something more. They hadn’t said a damn thing about the night West left—and definitely not about knowing what we’d done in that field. “We got a call from Sheriff Keating that following morning. West had been picked up from the bus station in Merrillville and taken to the hospital. While we were told it wasn’t pretty, we weren’t really sure what to expect when we got there, but we were told not to tell Harrison.”

I frowned.Why the hell not?

She opened the folder showing off what looked like a police report—complete with pictures.Gruesome ones. She only handed one to me, which I was honestly grateful for.

The aged picture was of West in a hospital bed, and fuck, he was in bad shape. One eye was swollen shut and his brow was split while his lip was busted open and his nose had been broken. His entire face was a cascade of purple bruises that matched the deeply bruised band of angry flesh around his neck.

He looked like hell—a kid beaten senseless. It made me sick to my stomach.

“Harrison did this to him?” I whispered. My brows furrowed together tighter as I stared at the picture hard like it’d give me all the answers as to what the hell West had gone through. Mom nodded, and I asked, “Why?”

“Because West told him that he loved you.”He what?My gaze snapped up to meet hers. “We knew that Harrison wasn’t treating that boy right for years, but we never imagined… we never imagined Harrison would try to kill him.”

“What do you mean you knew?” I demanded. “How could you know and not do anything?”

“West wouldn’t talk about it,” Mom told me.I wanted to be mad, but how many times had I teased West about being clumsy?A sprained wrist, a black eye, a busted lip. West had always laughed it off as being clumsy as fuck, and I let him. “There was nothing we could do.”

I didn’t buy that for shit, but I didn’t say a fucking thing otherwise. To be honest, I didn’t know what the hell to think.

“He was afraid to come back with us,” she continued. “He didn’t think we could protect him, but we were determined to try. And he wouldn’t press charges against Harrison—he was too scared for that. Your dad paid for his hospital bill outright to make sure Harrison’s insurance wasn’t charged, and he made sure Keating never told a soul. We have the only police report made.”

“Why?” I asked. I couldn’t let go of that stupid picture, and I couldn’t look away. “Why would you keep this?”

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