Page 27 of Burned & Bound

Why couldn’t I stop staring at it?I ran my thumb over the damaged picture. How could such a simple thing blast through every wall I’d ever built around my memories and feelings for West? My chest was painfully tight at the thought of what he’d gone through. He never deserved this.And not because of me.

“Insurance,” Mom said. “Your dad had had enough of Harrison, but it wasn’t enough to end their business partnership. He wanted to keep it in case he ever figured out how to use it, and I just put it away and tried to forget it.”

“What happened?”

“Your dad and I set him up in a hotel in Merrillville—one of those pay-cash kind of places. Cash only, no names, no questions asked. We figured he’d be safe there. Mickey was supposed to find an apartment or a small house for him—something we could buy for him in our name so Harrison would never find him.”

“But?” I prompted. I could feel it coming. It was right there

“But he ran away in the middle of the night without either of us knowing,” she whispered. “I don’t think he thought we could protect him.”

“Do you blame him?” I asked. “It wasn’t like you ever had.”

“Jackson,” she began, but I shook my head.

“He needed your help long before it ever got to this point.” I dropped the picture on the table. “It never should’ve gotten to this point.”

“He wasn’t our son—”

“It doesn’t fucking matter,” I snapped.Bullshit. He wasn’t their son.West had practically been theirs. “He was a hurt kid in need, and you did nothing.”

“We did our best to keep him away from Harrison as much as we could without it turning into a legal battle that could’ve cost us the ranch,” Mom said. The words made my temper spike, but I bit back my angry response.

“What happened next?” I demanded instead. “That ain’t the whole story, is it?”

“No.”

“Keep talking, Ma.”Maybe I was being a little too mean, but I didn’t give a fuck.

“We gota call almost a year later. West was in prison in Texas—had been for a while. He’d been arrested for armed robbery. There was a riot, and the guards lost control for almost a day. West…” Mom choked up. I ran a hand over my beard and just fucking waited with my stomach in knots. There was no way in hell this story ended well. “I didn’t go, but your Dad and Mickey did. And your Dad… your Dad only cried three times in his life. The first was on our wedding day, the second was the day you were born, and the third… I sat with him on the phone as he cried outside the hospital. What those men did to him… oh, Jackson… it was so awful…”

She let out a small cry, her hand covering her mouth as she looked away. My heart lodged in my throat. I was torn between wanting to know and wanting to stay oblivious.

“No one should have done to them what those men did to West. He was just a baby. He was just trying to make it through, and they… they took him… and they… they…”

“It’s okay, Ma,” I cut her off as she struggled with words. I didn’t need her to say a damn thing to have a real strong inkling of what they’d done to him.And truthfully, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the words.The tears rolling down her cheeks killed me, and I covered her hand with mine. “I get it. I do. You don’t need to say anymore.”

We sat in silence as her shoulders shook. I gave her the time she needed to regain her composure before nodding, needing her to continue.

“Mickey stayed with West for a while,” she said quietly. “Your dad came back, and he confronted Harrison. You probably remember that fight. I had to call Keating because I thought your dad was going to kill him.”

“Yeah, I remember that.” It was the one and only time I’d ever seen my dad lose his temper. “What did Harrison say to set Dad off?”

“Your dad had hoped that maybe… some part of Harrison would care about what had happened to his son. The only thing that man could say was that maybe it’d cure the—it’s so horrible, baby boy,” she told me, interrupting herself. “He said… maybe it’d cure the faggot in him, and that was when your dad lost it.”

“That sounds about right,” I muttered. Nothing about that surprised me. Harrison had always had a special way of talking about people he didn’t approve of, which was pretty much everyone. I frowned as a thought occurred to me. “That was right around the time Dad taught me howto shoot and had me carrying a gun around the ranch. He said we had wolves.”

“The only wolf on our ranch was Harrison McNamara,” Mom replied. “Your Dad was real afraid of what he’d do to you if he ever got you alone. He didn’t think Mickey needed to teach you a damn thing. You were always so attentive to what running the ranch took. He just knew that Harrison wouldn’t start shit if Mickey was there with you.”

And that would explain why Mickey was my assigned shadow for fucking years.

“And West?” I asked. “What happened to him?”

“We decided it was better to let the memory of West McNamara fade,” she admitted. “For his sake and yours.”

“Mine?” I repeated, my voice rising. “Harrison had me thinking West left because he didn’t want to be around me anymore. Like I suddenly wasn’t fucking good enough to be in his life. And you never said a fucking word otherwise. I spent seventeen fucking years hating him for it.And you let me.Harrison wasn’t going to fucking leave the ranch. Who the fuck do you think you’re kidding? You just wanted to bury the fucking secret. Harrison may have been a fucking monster, but you aren’t much better.”

“Jackson—”

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