“What?”

Heat crept across my face. “Enlisting in the marines and fighting. It’s brave and honorable and amazing.” Three things I wasn’t, and three things I honestly couldn’t say about a lot of people I knew, including the Hot Guy Brigade. Well, with the exception of Brandon. He’d been overseas, too.

Jax didn’t respond to that, and silence stretched out between us, and I squeezed my fingers together. “How long . . . have you been out?” I asked.

“Hmm, it’ll be two years next spring.” His voice sounded closer.

I quickly did a bang-up math job in my head, finally finding an answer to one of my questions. “So you’re . . . twenty-four?”

“Yep, and you’re really twenty-one, even though you look like seventeen.”

My lips twitched. “I don’t look seventeen.”

“Whatever,” he murmured. “When’s your birthday?”

“It’s in April—the fifteenth.”

“No shit?” A deep laugh came from him, causing the twitch in my lips to spread. “My birthday is April the seventeenth.”

I grinned. “April’s a cool month.”

“That it is.”

As I grew accustomed to his closeness, my body relaxed. “How did you end up here?”

“You met Anders, right? At the bar?”

“Anders?” I frowned.

“You probably know him as Reece.”

Oh. “The young cop guy?”

“He’s actually a deputy in Philadelphia County. Met him when I was enlisted. He got out a year before me, but we kept in touch,” he explained. “He knew I hated being back home. Offered a place for me to crash. Took him up on the offer and headed up here. At first, I was kind of all over the place.”

Nibbling on my lip, I stared into the dark. “How so?”

“Just all over,” he responded without really answering. “Went to Mona’s one night, ended up with a job, finally got my own place, and here I am, lying in bed with Mona’s pretty daughter. Life is fucking strange like that.”

I sucked in a soft breath. Pretty daughter? “You’re . . . you say nice things.” It was a stupid thing to say, but now I was tired and my brain wasn’t functioning properly.

“I speak the truth.”

A moment passed. “Do you still have problems with sleeping?”

There was no response to that, and as more silence drifted out, I dropped it and whispered a concern. “Do you think someone will come looking for those drugs?”

He drew in a deep breath. “I don’t know, Calla.”

I didn’t believe him. Probably had to do with the doubt he expressed earlier about Greasy Guy being the owner of the crap ton of heroin, and honestly, the guy didn’t look like he had the means to have that amount of drugs. “Mom . . . she’s in a lot of trouble, isn’t she?”

“Yeah, she is.”

My heart turned over heavily.

“It’s not the kind of trouble you need to get involved in,” Jax added quietly, firmly. “And this is the kind of trouble you’re not going to be able to fix this time.”