Page 43 of Fervent

I stood in the living room entrance and folded my arms. Other than the light from the stove, darkness shrouded the room. Jax sat in the chair, shoulders hunched and the bottle of booze gripped in his hands, hanging between his knees. He’d blown through way too much of that shit already.

I stomped toward him, my bare feet vibrating the hardwood, and yanked the bottle from his hands. “You’ve hand enough.”

“Prob’ly so.” He lifted an arm, dangled it like a zombie, and jabbed a finger in the air. “So did ya?”

“That’s none of your business.” Instead of dumping the vodka down the drain, I plopped onto the futon and took a swig.

“You used to share shit with me,” he said. “You used to be my friend.”

I took another drink before setting the bottle on the floor with a loud thud. “Explain to me how a ‘friend’ sells you out to his psycho father to be killed?”

“I wasn’t gonna let you die.”

“Well that just makes it all better. Is this the part where we pretend you didn’t let them torture Alex?”

Jax shrugged. “Girl’s got kahunas. I knew she could handle it.”

I squeezed my hands into fists, and it took everything in my power not to launch the few feet between us and throttle his pathetic neck. “She shouldn’t have to handle anything. Aren’t you at least a little sorry for what you did?”

“Yeah I’m fucking sorry.” Jax bolted to his feet and veered sideways. He shot an arm out and steadied himself on the arm of the chair. “I didn’t know she’d been abused. I didn’t know shit because you didn’t tell me any of it.”

“I didn’t remember any of it, until she told me.” We were on a conversation merry-go-round.

“I’m talking about the island, before you lost your memory.” He flopped back into the chair and ran his fingers through his hair. “She changed you, man.” He raised his eyes and deep lines wrinkled his forehead. “You went from a fucking hard ass to a fucking pussy.”

“Why are you mad atme? What am I missing, Jax?”

He let out a cold, bitter laugh. “You’ve gotten up close and personal with my family. Mom’s dead, the old man will be dead if I can help it, my sister is—” His voice cracked. “You’re all I got left.”

Shit. Something about his tone tunneled beneath my anger. He didn’t resemble a man. He looked like a lost little boy—the same boy who’d experienced a childhood of hell down in that tunnel.

“I’m listening. You got something to say, well say it. Tell me how all of this went down.”

“Give me the bottle first.” He reached across the coffee table, his leg knocking into the wood.

I almost fought him about the booze, but fuck, he was a grown man. If he wanted to get shit-faced, who was I to tell him he couldn’t? Especially after all the shit we’d been through. I grasped the bottle by the neck and passed it to him. Besides, I needed to keep him talking.

He wrapped his mouth around the opening and tossed his head back, gulping down a long swig of the burning liquid. Wiping his lips with the back of a hand, he shoved the bottle between his legs and settled into the chair again.

“Me and Cleft got busted for sex trafficking. That’s why I was serving time.”

“Did I know this?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t talk about my fucked up family. Nikki was the first person who pulled it out of me, and that’s just because I got stupid drunk after you got shot.” He blinked rapidly. “She didn’t fucking believe me, so I thought, no harm, no foul.” He dragged another drink from the bottle, liquid sloshing as he tipped it. “Guess she thought twice about it after the island went up in smoke. I got her killed. That’s on me.”

Nikki’s death burned in my gut like an ember, threatening to flare into an inferno if I gave it the chance. I ground my teeth together, refusing to fall to pieces until after Perrone paid for what he’d done.

“That still doesn’t tell me why your father took us, why he was out for my blood. They said I did something in prison. What happened? Just be straight with me. I can handle it.”

“I was planning to take the whole organization down. Cleft’s dad was already on the inside. He figured something was up, so he tried to kill me before I could talk. You stopped him.”

“Wait a second…I beat the crap out of your uncle, so your family goes psycho on me for it? That doesn’t make any sense.”

He buried his head in his hands. “Can we not do this now? You really don’t wanna hear this, trust me.”

“Spit it out, Jax.”

He raised his head. “You’ve had memory problems before. The infirmary docs thought it was from the concussions.”

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