Page 30 of Burned & Bound

“Tell him I slipped while carrying… what?” I glanced back at the empty containers in the bed of my truck. “Call it twelve gallons of gasoline while smoking a lit cigarette.”

“Jesus fuck, Jackson.”

“Oops.”

CHAPTER 19

west

The house was onfire.

Harrison’s house was on fire.

The smoke and orange glow were the first things I saw from the stables. It was real damn hard to miss. I just stood there dumbfounded and wondering just how drunk I fucking was to hallucinatethat.

But then the sirens came, blaring and cutting through the night. Several fire trucks bounced along the road as they navigated their way through the ranch.

I ran after them.

I had to see it for myself.

By the time I got there, the firefighters had set up but no one was doing a damn thing. They stood ready but no one moved, and the fire just kept on raging.

I stared at my childhood home as flames wrecked it. My chest constricted painfully. I hadn’t laid eyes on this place since the night I left.Since Harrison damn near killed me.

There was so much shit built inside those walls—secrets I’d kept to myself. My mother’s suicide. No one else knew I’d been in the room with her the night she killed herself. Harrison’s drinking. No one knew just how often I picked my old man off the floor night after night. The hits I’d told myself I could take. No one knew just how bad his temper really got. The whole place was a fucking hellhole wrapped up in one bad memory after another.

And every one of them was burning right before my eyes.

I swallowed hard against the hefty rise of emotions inside me. I wouldn’t break down. I wouldn’t panic.

“What happened?” I asked, unable to look away from the fire as I approached the fire chief.

“Controlled burn,” the fire chief snapped, and I frowned. When I glanced at him, he said, “Don’t ask me. Ask him.”

I followed his gaze to see Jackson. My heart kicked up harder in my chest, anxiety clawing at me. He was completely undeterred by everything with his arms crossed and a dying cigarette balanced between his lips. The expression on his face was one of odd satisfaction.

Had he done this?

But why? Was he that fucking pissed off at me that he burned the whole thing down?

“Jackson!” the fire chief yelled, anger lacing his voice. “We need to shut this thing down before it spreads to the whole goddamn ranch!”

“No one fucking moves a goddamn muscle until that house is as dead as Harrison fucking McNamara,” Jackson ordered. “My ranch, my rules. I want the whole damn thing gone.”

“Then hire a demolition crew!”

“It had to go,” he replied. His gaze locked onto mine. The usual contempt and anger were gone—replaced with a kind of sadness. “Tonight.”

It hit me right then and there.Jackson hadn’t known.He hadn’t known any of it. Not the shit with Harrison. And probably not anything else either.

I didn’t know what to do with that piece of information.

And so I stood there, dumbfounded. Conflicted. Crawling out of my skin.

Why?Why the fuck was he doing this?

Itmade no sense.

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