Page 24 of Deviant

Something was on his mind. Jax was too candid to keep quiet for long, so with a flip of the switch on the stove burner, I decided to wait him out.

“Why the detour?” he said, and I didn’t have to ask him what he meant by that. Considering we were only weeks away from finishing work on the island, he probably wanted to know why were bunking down in a safe house instead of at my brother’s vineyard.

“Alex is still dealing with everything that went down last year. She’s scared I’m going to leave her.”

Shaking his hair out of his eyes, he raised a brow. “And you think bringing her back here is going to magically fix everything?”

“Fuck no.” There was no magic fix for what Alex was going through. I knew it because I’d been there…was still there. “But it’s a start. I’m taking it one day at a time.”

“That’s all you can do.”

“Jax, who’s the girl?”

He paused before slicing an onion in half. “I found her in Mexico.”

“When did you go back?”

“A couple of weeks ago.”

“You got a new lead?”

“Yeah.”

Chop.

Chop.

Chop.

“And?” I prompted.

He laid down the knife. “My sister is dead.”

His statement came down on me hard, like the hammer of a gavel. Everything he’d done had been for his sister. The whole reason he’d allowed his son-of-a-bitch father to throw Alex and me into that tunnel was so he could buy enough time to find info on her whereabouts. I felt bad for him, but I couldn’t deny the bitterness that dug under my skin, refusing to be displaced. We’d all gone through so much hell, and all for a fucking ghost.

“You sure she’s…gone?”

“Dental records confirmed it.”

“I’m sorry, Jax.” And I was, despite the quiet anger taking hold of me.

Anger at Jax.

Anger at the De Lucas.

Anger at Fate.

I was ready to flip Fate the finger.

“Me too,” Jax said. “More than I can say.”

And just like that, we understood each other. The past couldn’t ever be changed. We’d lived it, survived it, bled for it. And we were still standing.

“Is she a victim of sex trafficking?” I nodded toward the bedrooms.

“Yeah.” Anguish corroded his tone. “I couldn’t fucking leave her there, so I broke her out. Almost got wasted over it.” There was no mistaking the horror and pain in his voice—a dark, gruff sound that strangled his vocal cords.

He’d seen things in his lifetime, possibly more than I had.

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