Page 47 of Confessions of Pain

Behind me, Wayne was spewing curse words and threatening to kill me in numerous different ways. Wayne was a fat, lazy idiot. The true threat stood in front of me. “Why are you here, Daulton?”

He grinned. “Shouldn’t you say, sir?” he suggested.

No, we weren’t in a scene. I didn’t need to call him anything. “Why are you here, sir?” I asked anyway, hoping to appease him until I could figure a way out of the mess I was in. Daulton wasn’t at my house on a social call.

He shrugged. “Well, since you asked so nicely, pet, I’m here to help Wayne kill you.”

I wasn’t surprised by the words; not really. I should have known. Wayne kept a close eye on every move I made. Of course, he would have known about Daulton. Of course, Daulton would have been easily bought. Of course. Of course. Of course.

I felt something sharp prick the side of my neck and in an instant, the room started spinning. The fucking cowards had drugged me. They were both twice my size and they’d still felt the need to drug me. Cowards.

My last thought before the darkness took me was of Gabriel—of all we had missed…of all we would miss in the future. My time had run out.

Gabriel

Jax and I had gone straight to Kelsey’s house, but he wasn’t there, nor did it look like he’d been there at all that morning. The shower was dry and the clothes he’d been wearing the night before were nowhere to be found. Other than Snowball acting terrified of us, nothing seemed amiss. After that, we’d gone back to the renovated church where I was staying to see if maybe he’d cooled his heels and returned to confront me.

No sign of Kelsey there, either.

“We’re wasting time that we don’t have,” Jax snarled. “Either you come with me to the hiking trail now or I go without you. I’m telling you, Maverick, that’s where Kelsey is.” He was angrily pacing the length of the living room. “I told you he wasn’t the same boy you left behind. If Kelsey feels like you betrayed him, he won’t be able to handle it. He…he cares too much for you. His mind will twist every detail of last night into something ugly, regardless of what it really was. Come with me, Gabe. Kelsey will need your help.”

The unspoken words were ‘if it’s not too late,’ but I chose to ignore them. Something wasn’t right. There was no mistaking that Jax probably knew Kelsey better than I did at least now, after we’d been separated for ten years, but my heart still knew Kelsey’s soul. He wouldn’t do that to me…to us. He wouldn’t.

I turned to Titus. “Tell me again how he acted when he overheard you this morning.”

Titus was sporting a black eye and his pride was severely bruised, but his main concern was Kelsey’s safety.

“He was angry. Furious. He called both you and Jax every name in the book…and I’m not talking about the good book, either. He snarled around the kitchen, knocking chairs over, muttering about how he was going to kick your ass and when he was finished with yours, he was moving on to Jax. Evie’s ass may have been mentioned. After he slung the coffee pot across the fridge and punched me in the face, I thought maybe I needed to call for backup. By the time Ethan and I got back down the stairs, he was gone. We drove up and down the streets, but it was like he’d just vanished into thin air.” His eyes cut around to look at Jax. “He didn’t act suicidal…more like homicidal.”

Jax frowned and continued his pacing.

“Is that normal, Jax? Is that behavior the depressed, suicidal Kelsey that you’re describing?” I asked. I was so fucking torn and unsure of what I needed to do. Should I listen to Jax or follow my own heart?

“No,” Jax muttered. “It’s nothing like the usual Kelsey downslide. He gets quiet and doesn’t say anything to anybody. He’s withdrawn.” His frown deepened. “It isn’t like he goes off and has a pity party or something but he’s…empty. It’s like there’s no emotion to him at all.”

“That was not the Kelsey I was faced with this morning. That boy had enough emotion swimming in his veins that he won’t get rid of the adrenalin for weeks,” Titus said.

I was following my heart. “Kelsey isn’t going to kill himself. He wouldn’t do that, not after last night.”

Jax laughed bitterly. “Perfect. You think one good fuck is going to turn him around? That’s insane, Maverick! The kid needs help. He hates himself. His idea of a hot date is letting Daulton beat his ass and then fuck him so brutally that he can’t leave his bed for a couple of days. One doesn’t move fromthatto lovey-dovey.”

“Bring up Daulton’s name just one more time, Jax, and so help me Jeezus, I’ll kill you and bury you in fifty different places!”

Ethan quickly stood up and put his body between me and Jax. “This isn’t helping anything, men. Let’s try to think. What would Kelsey do? Where would he go?”

“To the tree,” Jax answered quickly. “He’d go to the tree where he and Maverick used to meet. Every time he’s tried to kill himself, it’s been there. That’s where we need to be…like fifteen minutes ago!”

Jeremiah, who’d been over in the corner talking on his cell phone, shouted for us to shut up. He shoved his cell in his pocket and said, “Okay, I’ve called every employee at Morganston Textiles to see if anybody’s seen or talked to Kelsey this morning. I just got a call back. Somebody named Mitch saw him walking, picked him up, and took him home. This guy says he watched Kelsey go into his house.”

“Who is this Mitch guy and can we trust him?” Ethan asked quickly. Since Jax was the only local, he turned his full attention to him when he asked the question.

“Mitch works at the plant. He’s a good guy. If he says he took Kelsey home, then he took Kelsey home.” His frown deepened with each word that passed his lips. He looked over at me and asked, “Did we miss something?”

Jax’s cell started ringing and he yanked it out of his pocket, nearly ripping his jeans in the process. “Give me some good news, Evie,” he demanded.

I was standing next to him in a second, trying my best to hear whatever Evie was saying. When he noticed, I half-expected him to shove me away, but he put the phone on speaker instead.

“You’re on speaker, Evie,” Jax said. “Tell everybody what you just told me.”

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