I should’ve gone back to Shepherd. I should’ve called Teresa and asked if I could crash at her place. I should’ve gotten the hell out of Dodge.

Should’ve. Could’ve. Would’ve.

Truth was, though, even if I had known from the beginning that it was seriously this bad, I wasn’t sure I would’ve left knowing what Mom was messed up in. I probably would’ve tried to find her the first day here if I’d realized it was this bad. Find her, steal money, and send her on a one-way ticket to anywhere but here.

Jax twisted, thrusting a hand through his hair. “Knowing it was going to happen and seeing it go down are two different fucking things, Nick.”

“I know,” he replied quietly, way quietly.

I folded my arms around my stomach, shivering again. For the most part, I thought I was handling this pretty well. I wanted to clap myself on the back, but when I spoke, I heard the tremor in my own voice. “What am I going to do? I have no idea where Mom is and he said if I tried to leave, they knew where to find me. I’m going to end up as a real messed-up—”

Jax was suddenly right in front of me, cupping both sides of my face. His thumb touched my scar, but the look on his face was scarier than anything I’d ever seen in my whole twenty-one years of life, and I’d seen a lot of scary stuff.

“You’re not going to be a message. You aren’t going to be shit to any of them. You feel me? No one is touching you,” he said, and he said it right in front of Nick. He touched me right in front of Nick, touched my scar. “We’re going to take care of this and none of this shit is going to rub off on you. Okay?”

I believed him.

Wow. I really believed him.

“Okay,” I whispered.

Jax dipped his head, brushing his lips across my forehead, and he did that right in front of Nick, too. And that pulled at something in my chest, really tugged at it. Then he turned to Nick, and as he did it, he slipped an arm around my shoulders, dragging me against him. I hesitated for a second, but then I went. I leaned into him, because at this moment, I thought I really needed to lean into someone.

“We need to call the police,” Nick said. I opened my mouth, but he went on. “We’re going to have to wait and not do it here.”

“We need to do it where it’s not public,” Jax confirmed, his hand curving around my waist. “I’ll call Reece, let him know what’s going on. You got the bar for the night?”

Nick lifted his chin in universal boy-speak. “I’ve had it before you did.”

There was a beat of silence and then Jax said, “True.”

Fifteen

Clyde was beyond pissed, in a fit, when Jax filled him in on what had happened. I hadn’t wanted to tell him, but then again, he shouldn’t be left in the dark, either.