If being with Sienna meant thousands, if not millions, of people lusted after my woman, I could deal with that. Fine. Okay. So be it.
Just as long as the world knew she was mine.
Sure, my fixation on that aspect of her fame likely made me a blind caveman, a reactionary Neanderthal, but it was what it was. Among others, I suffered from the human conditions of jealousy and pride. I’ve never claimed to be perfect.
Nor have I claimed to be smart.
If I’d been smart, I would’ve considered how my past—how being with me—might affect her future.
“I’m so fucking stupid,” I grumbled. My forehead falling to my fingers. I stepped away from her, turned, giving her my back.
“I don’t care what anyone thinks.” Her voice was small, and I hated the sound of that, too. Hated that I was responsible for that as well.
“You should,” I said. “You’ve worked hard for what you have. You can’t throw it away just because you fancy a hick from backwoods Appalachia.”
“Jethro.”
I walked back to the driver’s side, each step feeling wrong though I knew they were right.
“Where does this leave us?” she called after me.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly, because I wasn’t ready to give up, but I couldn’t see a way forward. All routes were blocked by decisions I’d made a decade ago.
That was my fault. It was all my fault. And now I was finally paying the price.
“You’ve chopped all the wood.”
I didn’t look over my shoulder. I recognized the speaker. Billy. He was right. I’d chopped all the wood at the woodshed. And now I was swinging a double-bit felling axe at a pine some yards into the forest behind our house. I wasn’t even fifty percent into the trunk, though I’d been at it for over an hour. Nor was I ready to stop. Not by a long shot.
When I didn’t answer he said, “We don’t need more wood, Jet.”
I wrenched the blade from where it bit into the trunk and swung again.
“Jet?”
“Fuck off, Billy.”
Last night, after dropping off Sienna, I’d driven myself to the Dragon Biker Bar, the club headquarters for the Iron Wraiths.
I’d wanted a fight.
I’d wanted to beat the shit out of someone and have the guts beaten out of me.
Raising hell, getting drunk, getting high wouldn’t have felt good, but I had thought it had to feel better than the cavernous abyss of misery.
I didn’t go in. I couldn’t. My past may have lost me a chance with Sienna, but I still had five brothers and a sister. I hadn’t lost them. They’d given me a chance. I couldn’t let them down.
But I could destroy a tree.
Billy didn’t leave. “What did you do to the carriage house?”
I didn’t respond.
“It looks like someone took a sledgehammer to your new framework.”
“Fuck. Off.”
He sighed. I sensed his presence behind me, standing silently, while I took satisfaction in the jarring pain running up my arms every time I buried the axe into the trunk.
Then a second voice spoke. “Jethro, did you chop all the wood?”
Cletus.
I sighed, shaking my head.
Cletus continued, “We don’t need all that wood. What are we going to do with a split pile of wood that big? It’s like you’re inviting termites over for tea.”
“I asked the same thing,” I heard Billy whisper, “and he destroyed the upstairs framework in the carriage house.”
“I can hear you, dummy.” I pulled the blade from the tree and glared over my shoulder, finding my brothers frowning at me. “Can you hear me? I said—”
“Fuck off. Yes. I heard you.” Billy’s tone was flat, aggravated, but he didn’t budge.
Cletus glanced between us, a thoughtful eyebrow raised. “I take it something happened with Ms. Diaz?”
I slid my eyes to Cletus, grinding my teeth, but said nothing. If I spoke, a string of curses would erupt like a volcano. I still hadn’t beaten the shit out of anyone, but the day was young. And Cletus was a good fighter.
As though reading my mind, Cletus stiffened. “You will do no such thing. I haven’t had breakfast yet, and this is my best smoking jacket.”
“Then leave.”
Cletus grunted, his mouth a flat line, then threatened, “If you don’t tell me what happened, then I’ll pay a call to Ms. Diaz and—”
“You won’t,” I ordered sharply, taking a step toward my brothers.
Cletus raised his hands between us as though warding me off. “Then tell me what happened.”
“What’d you do to her?” Billy lifted an eyebrow, his gaze cold and assessing and irritating as hell.