It was almost eleven. Jax should be home soon, and as I eased up my grip on the phone, I considered texting or calling him. Instead, I dropped the phone on the coffee table.

I was so damn unobservant and stupid.

All of it made sense now and I should’ve known that Mom hadn’t had anything to do with the bar anymore. The condition it was in, the way it was running smoothly, and all the legit paperwork in that office screamed that someone else was in control. And Clyde had told me that I didn’t need to worry about the bar. Obviously not.

Mom had sold it to Jax and he had never told me. Neither had Clyde, but I wasn’t sleeping with Clyde, I wasn’t in love with Clyde; therefore Jax’s lack of sharing on that minor little detail seemed way more important.

I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t even understand why he didn’t tell me, especially after the first time I was in the office going through papers thinking I had every right to do so when apparently I had no right whatsoever.

Scrubbing my hands down my face, I stared at the deed to my mother’s house—now my house, my ticket out of the debt Mom had forced me into. That fixed the major problem looming over my head, the one I never forgot but tried not to dwell on because it would drive me crazy, but now . . . now there was this.

Jax had lied to me.

I didn’t know what to feel about any of this and I was feeling too much, because Mom was here and she had left for good, and Jax had kept something so big from me. My trust was rocked. It was shattered, barely held together.

If he lied about this, if he kept this from me, what else had he lied about or kept from me? I didn’t think that was an unreasonable question. From past experience I knew that when people kept things from others, there was more hidden in their depths.

Hell, I was a prime example.

My gaze flickered to my phone as I lowered my hands, then I leaned forward, snatched it off the table, and did something that I’d never done in the past.

I kind of felt bad for calling Teresa, because it was way late and I was sure I might have interrupted some one-on-one time with Jase based on his wrinkled clothing and the current tangled state of her hair.

But like a true friend, she answered the call. Not only that, but she and Jase had driven back over to Jax’s house and picked me up, taking me back to the suite they were sharing with Cam and Avery.

It was past midnight, the suite door was open, and I was sitting there with them. Curled up in one those uncomfortable as hell floral armchairs, I told them what had just gone down.

Avery looked floored.