Page 18 of Finding His Redemption

But Echo didn’t know his past. She only knew this moment, this offering. She stretched forward, muscles tense, ready to bolt, and took the final piece from beside his knee. This time, though, she didn’t immediately retreat. She stayed, just for a heartbeat, close enough that he could see the fine scars across her muzzle, the way one ear had been notched by what looked like teeth marks.

Then she was gone, back to her corner, but her body wasn’t quite as tightly coiled. Her eyes were still wary, but there was also a faint curiosity.

Jax exhaled, surprised to find his muscles had been tensed as if for battle. He rose slowly to his feet, deliberately telegraphing the movement so he didn’t startle her.

“I’ll be back,” he told her.

He thought he saw her tail move, just slightly, but it could have been his imagination.

Outside, Boone leaned against the fence, hat tipped low against the morning sun. He straightened as Jax approached.

“Well?”

Jax shrugged. “She ate.”

“More than anyone else has gotten her to do.” Boone nodded, satisfied. “She’s yours now. Everyone at the Ridge gets assigned a dog to work with. Or sometimes a horse. It’s part of the program. Helps with the healing.”

“I don’t need healing,” Jax said automatically.

Boone just looked at him, eyes flat and knowing. “You sure about that?”

Jax looked away, jaw tight. “What am I supposed to do with her? I trained puppies in prison.” Puppies that were specifically selected for the program, free from baggage. He didn’t know the first thing about rehabilitating a dog that had been through what Echo had.

“You’ll figure out what she needs,” Boone said, his tone matter-of-fact. “Walker’s got a whole library of books on dog rehabilitation. Lila can give you pointers. But mostly, you’ll just spend time with her. Let her learn to trust you.”

What she needs.

As if Jax had any clue about that when he couldn’t even figure out what he needed.

“What if I can’t help her?”

Boone studied him for a long moment. “Then you’ll both stay broken.” He clapped a hand on Jax’s shoulder. “But I don’t think that’s what either of you wants.”

chapter

five

Nessie wipeddown the counter for the third time in fifteen minutes, scrubbing at a coffee stain that had long since seeped into the worn laminate. But her mind wasn’t on the old countertop beneath her cloth. It was stuck on the roadside, replaying the flash of hopelessness in Jaxon Thorne’s eyes yesterday when she’d asked him where he was going. Those eyes had been haunting her all morning.

The morning rush had dwindled to a few regulars. Earl Withers sat in his usual booth by the window, hat tipped low as he nursed a black coffee and stared out at nothing. Ruthie Campbell clinked her spoon against a chipped porcelain mug as she waited for her daily gossip session with Margery Pendry. At the counter, Marvin Dorsey was halfway through a story about a rodeo accident and a missing toe, while Levi Wiley hunched over his laptop, typing furiously on a novel he’d probably never finish. The place hummed with soft conversation and the clatter of dishes, and Nessie usually loved these quiet moments with her customers, but she couldn’t keep her mind on work. She just kept circling back to Jax and those haunted eyes.

She’d seen plenty of men from Valor Ridge drift through town over the years. Most were polite and kept their headsdown, just ghosts haunting the edges of everyday life, trying not to be noticed. None of them had ever pinged on her radar like Jaxon Thorne.

So what was it about him that had her so rattled?

Maybe it was the way he’d looked at her like he was seeing sunlight for the first time in years.

Or the way he’d so patiently endured Oliver’s non-stop questions.

Or maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe it was the quiet desperation she’d recognized in him when he’d said he was headed away from here.

She knew that desperation. Had lived with it for months before she’d finally packed everything she owned into garbage bags and driven through the night with a sleeping four-year-old in the backseat, praying Alek wouldn’t wake up and find them before they could escape.

The rhythmic tapping of her fingernails against the countertop grew louder until she realized what she was doing and forced her hand flat. Stillness was safety. Drawing attention was dangerous.

“Easy,” she whispered to herself. “You’re getting worked up over nothing.”

But the knot in her stomach said otherwise.

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