Burn for You (Slow Burn Book 1)(87)

Sick and helpless, I went to him, sat on the edge of the bed, and took his hand. It was clammy and trembling. With his eyes closed, he told me the rest in a broken whisper.

“She never loved me. We didn’t meet in the library by accident. They’d planned the whole thing. I was just a . . . meal ticket. A patsy. Who could love me, the murderer, the freak, the awful lover? She fucked me for two years, and it was torture, she said. It was hell. She wished I was dead.”

I squeezed his hand and vowed that the first thing I was going to do when I got back to New Orleans was have Eeny put a voodoo curse on this nightmare named Cricket Montgomery.

Jackson’s head lolled sideways. His eyelids drifted open. His eyes were unfocused. He was very drunk.

He whispered, “I left. I didn’t say anything to anyone. I went to my room and packed a bag, and left Kentucky, right then. I couldn’t bear to see their faces. I drove until I found myself in New Orleans. I checked into a hotel and hid there for a week, trying to drink myself to death. I didn’t have a gun and didn’t want to leave a bloody corpse for anyone else to clean up after anyway, so I thought alcohol poisoning was the way to go.

“It was Rayford who found me. Credit cards leave a trail. After Linc died he was the only one who would talk to me. Anyway, Cricket and her ‘friend’ told everyone they were just talking in the tack room when I came in and went crazy with jealousy. Didn’t matter, I had a death wish to take care of, who cared what story they made up? But that old bastard Rayford wouldn’t leave me alone.”

A faint smile crossed Jackson’s face. “Stubborn son of a bitch.”

“Oh Jax,” I said, my heart breaking. I turned his hand over and traced my fingertip over the semicolon tattoo on his wrist. My eyes filled with water.

Jackson said, “The day after the wedding that never was, my mother had a stroke. I didn’t know about it until later, but obviously it was my fault. The humiliation was too much for her. The disappointment.” He heaved a great sigh. “Who could blame her? With a son like hers, it’s a miracle she didn’t die from shame.”

He trailed off into silence. His breathing deepened, evened, and I realized he was close to passing out. But he had one final piece of horror to deliver first.

His voice slurred and faint, he said, “A week after I got to New Orleans, Christian had his legs blown off by a roadside bomb in a hellhole halfway around the world. He was my real brother. The brother who accepted me for who I was. He was the only one who ever did, aside from Rayford. He was my only real friend.” A sweet smile drifted over his face. “And you.”

I was crying openly now, but silently, tears running down my face, my free hand in a fist in my mouth to stifle the sobs.

Jackson murmured, “Christian had no family, so he came to live with me. He was in so much pain all the time, as much physical pain as I was in emotional pain. He started to drink. He’d go down to a bar on Bourbon Street and drink during the day, and I’d go with him . . . nothing better to do, either of us. He met this girl. I knew . . . what she was, of course . . . I knew what she did. But at least it was honest. They both understood. Not like me . . .”

His voice was getting more and more faint, the pauses between his words growing longer. He licked his lips and turned his head with a sigh, and his face looked heartbreakingly vulnerable without its usual armor of scowls.

“She got pregnant. Had a paternity test. It was Christian’s. He died before Cody was born. Never got to meet his son. Trina signed over her parental rights to me and disappeared. I get a call every once in a while . . . bail money, rent money . . . everyone wanting money . . . all I was ever good for . . .”

Jackson fell asleep with his hand in mine. A lone tear leaked from his eye, tracking a zigzag path down his temple.

I leaned over him, hugged him as tightly as I could, and sobbed.

I cried for a long time, my ear pressed to his chest, listening to his slow and steady heartbeat. Finally when I had nothing left, I sat up, wiped my eyes, slipped off his shoes, and settled a blanket over him. I went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. I called Mama and told her how much I loved her, how lucky I was to have her, how she and Daddy were the greatest parents in the world.

Then I marched my booty downstairs to have a nice, long talk with Clemmy and Brig.





THIRTY-ONE

JACKSON

I knew I was dreaming because the warm, soft, unmistakable curve under my left palm was a woman’s hip.

Dream woman had an incredibly sexy hip.

She also smelled delicious and was warm as a little furnace against my chest.

All of that helped to distract from the odd fact that I had a headache and my mouth tasted like bourbon. This was a really vivid dream. At least I was lying down comfortably, my head resting on a nice, fluffy pillow, my legs curled up behind dream woman’s legs.