Page 42 of Reckless and Rooted
“Yeah, Felicity is fine.” I hear and recognize my brother’s voice. “No thanks to you, asshole.”
It’s the most I’ve heard out of my brother’s mouth in years, and I wish he’d shut up so the pounding in my head would stop. I can’t seem to get the image of Felicity, watching in horror as I got the shit beat out of me, out of my head.
“Where is she?” I ask, groaning when light tries to pry my eyes open. Those fuckers had to hit me in the head.
“I sent her home, genius.”
I ignore the slam from him, knowing that he is just giving me the dose of reality I deserve. After all, this is exactly what he thought would happen, exactly what he warned me of.
“So, it was him,” Mitch says after a minute, and finally I feel like my head isn’t going to cave in when I open my eyes.
My gaze connects with his, and it’s all he needs to give a nod and sigh.
I am ashamed of the way he looks at me, especially knowing that he is the one who told me to cut it out, and I didn’t.
“When you came home…” Mitch starts, waiting for me to fill in the blanks, and slowly, wincing with every breath, I push myself into a sitting position.
I look at my surroundings, seeing the inside of what appears to be a log cabin. There is a fireplace to the side that sits unlit and a table in the middle of the room where Mitch leans. I am sitting on a dark-brown leather couch that surprisingly matches the area.
“Where are we?” I ask, looking for pictures or anything to help identify the place.
“Jax,” Mitch snaps, his calm and controlled deep voice getting my attention.
I let out a heavy breath, reaching up to gingerly touch my cheekbone that is clearly bruised. “When I came home,” I wince, shaking my head. “I didn’t come home because of a rodeo accident.”
Mitch curses, shaking his head. “I knew it.”
“I’d gotten out, Mitch. I wasn’t fucking around anymore,” I reply, needing him to believe me even though I knew he wouldn’t.
“I told you not to get mixed up with him. He’s bad news, Jax.” Mitch’s glare sets my teeth on edge, and I feel my back straighten with a defensiveness our old man didn’t deserve.
“He’s our dad, Mitch.”
“No, Jax, he’s not.” Mitch starts to pace, his heavy booted feet landing with loud thumps on the wooden floor. I look out the window, but all I can see is darkness with no lights to indicate where we are at. “That asshole left Mom when Stetson was two, Jax. He doesn’t get to claim to be our father.”
I bite my tongue, knowing this argument is useless, and frankly, I know I shouldn’t be defending him. He is a piece of shit and got me into a bad way of life. All I want is to wash my hands of him.
“Now he knows you’re with Felicity,” Mitch says, running a hand over the beard he usually sported.
I pale at the realization, not even considering the fact that those assholes who beat the shit out of me not only could have hurt her, but they might have recognized her. “He doesn’t know. Those guys didn’t know who she was.”
“Yeah, but if they’re here, then it won’t take long for them to figure it out.”
I sit in silence for a moment, wishing I could go back a few days when I thought all of this was behind me. I was pursuing the woman of my dreams, my jobs were fine, and I could afford life. I was moving on.
Now, my past is coming to bite me—and anyone else associated with me—in the ass.
“What do they want? Are you still using?”
I give him a look. “Don’t say it like that. It’s just weed. It’s legal here.”
“Lots of dangerous things are legal, Jax.”
Not wanting to get into it with my big brother, because I knew he was right, but I didn’t want to admit it. “It was just weed. But the last time I saw them, I didn’t have the funds, and even if I did…”
Mitch fills the silence with his own assumption. “He doesn’t want to let you go.”
I look at my hands, one hand bruised slightly from where I tried to throw a few punches back at them. “He wants me to work for him, to push the harder stuff.”
