Page 69 of The Don

“Home?” I raise my eyes.

“The one I ran from, or the place I live?”

Baron shrugs. “Home is just a word.”

He stares at me with an interested expression.

“Where is home to you, Jonny?”

“The Rubicon with my brothers.”

I don’t falter and Baron nods.

“I understand a lot about that. Friendships are the glue that keeps our shit together, but what about a woman? I heard you loved once.”

The fact Baron even uttered that sentence pisses me off. Ryder is a fucking bastard for interfering, and I scowl at the man who pulls all our strings.

“Love isn’t something I’m interested in, Baron.”

“Why not?”

“It’s overrated.”

“Says a man who doesn’t recognize its power.”

Baron laughs softly. “Sometimes, Jonny, love needs a helping hand. Take me, for instance.”

I lean forward, interested to discover the details of the poor woman who Baron calls his wife.

“My own wife hated me at the beginning. She even ran away, but I knew she was mine. So…” he grins and I swear the temperature dips inside the helicopter.

“I played the game and won. It was inevitable and, like I said back there, I positioned the chess pieces in my favor. My own queen found her king and has never regretted a minute of it.”

I lean back, the bitterness inside me hard to deal with and Baron’s voice softens a little.

“From what I understand, your own woman ran away from you. Why did you never search for her? You have the capabilities, more than most men. Why not her?”

“I didn’t love her.” I stare at him with my own dark expression.

“Perhaps I believed my own press and realized I was bad for her. Set her free to live a normal life. Isn’t that more of an act of love than forcing her to stay?”

Baron’s eyes narrow and then he smirks. “Lauren wasn’t forced to do anything and if you ever meet my wife, you would see that first hand. You see, Jonny…”

He leans back in his seat and grins. “Love has a habit of stabilizing the most volatile person. It’s something we all should protect with our lives because it makes our own worth living.”

“Then I’m very happy for you.”

I stare out of the window to distract my attention because the fuck I’m letting the image ofherback into my mind.

“So, I’ll ask you again, Jonny, where is home?”

Baron stares at me with a contemplative look and I growl. “I told you. The Rubicon. That is the only place I want to be.”

He nods and in his husky drawl he informs the pilot and as the bird veers right, I try to push the image of home into the far reaches of my mind.

Baron is right, I did have a home once. I even fell in love, but one day she left with no explanation. I searched for her, of course I did, but when her best friend told me she had run from me, I stopped looking. She was afraid of me, apparently, and didn’t want me in her life. It’s taken me a long time to accept that and the hell I’m searching for someone who rejected me so brutally. Who took a knife to my heart and cut it out and moved on with her life, desperate not to have me in it.

We were childhood sweethearts. Us against the small town we lived in. I was the bad boy, the leather jacket wearing renegade, who stuck two fingers up at the establishment. My own parents prayed for my soul and tried everything to bring me in line.

---