Page 16

chapter

ten

The nightmare always ended the same way—with blood on his hands that wouldn’t wash off.

Jax jolted awake, sheets twisted around his legs like restraints, his skin slick with cold sweat, heart hammering against his ribs like it was trying to punch its way out of his chest. The mission—always the same mission—replayed in vivid technicolor behind his eyelids.

The stench of cordite and copper filled his nostrils, though he knew it was just a phantom smell, a souvenir from the worst day of his life.

“Fuck.” He dragged a trembling hand down his face. Sweat made his t-shirt cling to his skin.

His quarters in the bunkhouse were pitch black, except for the red glow of the alarm clock: 2:17 AM. Too late. Too early. The wrong time for everything, especially this.

But he was already reaching for the landline on his nightstand, dialing Shane’s number from memory.

The phone rang four times, each tone stretching longer than the last. Jax almost hung up, almost spared them both the awkwardness that inevitably followed these midnight calls.

But the ghosts were loud tonight, and the silence of his room was even louder.

Shane picked up on the fourth ring, sounding wide awake. “Trevisano.”

Just hearing his former team leader’s voice made Jax’s shoulders tighten. Five years of therapy, and still his body’s first response was to prepare for a fight.

“It’s me,” Jax said, the words scraping his throat like gravel.

Silence stretched between them, nearly twenty years of history compressed into three seconds of dead air.

“Nightmare?” Shane finally asked.

“Yeah.”

“The compound?”

Jax swallowed hard. “Yeah.”

A pause. “You okay?”

No. Not even close. But Jax couldn’t say that. Not to Shane, who’d already sacrificed too much trying to save him from himself.

“I’m managing,” he said instead.

“You taking your meds?” Shane asked.

“Yeah.” Jax rubbed at the space between his eyebrows, trying to ease the tension. “Every day. Like clockwork.”

“Good,” Shane said softly. “That’s good, man.”

A soft cry echoed through the phone—high, thin, unmistakably infant. Jax’s chest constricted, jealousy and regret tangling together like razor wire around his lungs.

“That her?” The question slipped out before he could stop it.

Shane’s silence stretched long enough that Jax could hear his own pulse in his ears. When Shane finally spoke, his voice had gone careful, guarded. “Yeah. That’s Willow.”

Willow. The name hit Jax like a sucker punch. Real now, not just an abstract concept. A person Shane got to hold, to protect, to love without destroying. A person who wouldn’t have existed if Jax had succeeded in killing her mother.

“She sounds...” He trailed off, not sure how to finish. Beautiful? Perfect? Like everything I’ll never deserve to have?

“Jax.” Not guarded now. A warning. “Don’t.”

A woman murmured something in the background.

“How’s Alexis?” He shouldn’t have mentioned her, but the words tumbled out anyway, each one feeling like broken glass on his tongue.

“Jesus Christ.” Shane exhaled, sharp and frustrated. “Listen, you can call if you need to. We can talk through shit. But my wife and daughter are off limits to you.”

Yeah, he deserved that ice-cold tone. Had earned it with interest.

“I know. I shouldn’t have called. I’m sorry.”

He hung up before Shane could respond, and the silence that followed was somehow worse than the nightmare that had woken him.

Jax stared at the phone’s dark screen, his reflection distorted in the black glass.

Five years clean, five years of therapy, five years of pretending he was getting better.

And still, the first thing he did when the demons got loud was reach for the people he’d hurt most. He didn’t know why.

Was it because Shane had lived through that night in the desert?

Or because he liked torturing himself? Probably a bit of both.

And he didn’t know why Shane always answered. If the roles were reversed, he wouldn’t be so forgiving.

Sleep wasn’t coming back tonight. It never did after the nightmare.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, bare feet hitting the cold linoleum floor. The shock of it helped clear his head some, anchored him to the present instead of that blood-soaked mission nearly fifteen years gone.

In prison, when the nightmares got bad, he’d had the puppies. They’d curl up against him on the narrow cot, warm bodies pressed against his ribs, their steady breathing eventually syncing with his until his heart rate dropped back to something resembling normal.

The dogs never asked questions. Never flinched when he woke up screaming. Never looked at him like he was broken beyond repair.

He dressed, pulling on his boots without bothering to lace them, then grabbed his pillow and blanket and slipped out of the bunkhouse, careful not to wake the other residents.

The Montana night air bit through his t-shirt, but the cold felt good against his sweat-dampened skin.

Real. Present. Not the suffocating heat of that compound in Afghanistan.

The barn sat maybe fifty yards from the main house, a weathered structure that Walker had converted into kennels for the rescue dogs. Jax’s boots crunched on gravel as he made his way across the yard, guided by the pale glow of a security light mounted on the barn’s corner.

The blue merle shepherd was awake, her mismatched eyes catching the moonlight that filtered through the barn’s high windows. She was back in her corner, body coiled tight as a spring, watching his approach.

“Hey, girl,” he said softly and opened the kennel door, stepping inside. “Can’t sleep either?”

Echo’s ears twitched forward for a split second before flattening back against her skull.

He stretched out on his side, pillow tucked under his head, blanket pulled up to his shoulder. The concrete was brutal against his hip, but he’d slept on worse.

“Just need some company tonight,” he murmured.

Echo’s head tilted slightly, studying him with those impossible eyes. In the dim light, her scars were barely visible. The notched ear, the slight favor of her left hind leg, the scabby muzzle and jutting hipbones, the places where her coat grew in patches.

What she’d endured in her short life, Jax could only guess. The miracle wasn’t that she’d survived—it was that she hadn’t completely shut down, hadn’t given up on the possibility that the world might still hold something good for her.

“I get it,” Jax whispered. “Trust doesn’t come easy. You don’t have to come near me. Just knowing you’re there is enough.”

He kept his body still, his breathing even. Echo watched him, her chest rising and falling in rapid bursts. The barn creaked around them, the wind picking up outside. Somewhere in the distance, an owl called into the night.

Jax let his eyes drift closed, not sleeping, just resting.

Minutes stretched into an hour. His hip ached, his shoulder screamed, and the concrete leached the warmth from his body, but he didn’t move. Patience had been the first lesson of his military career, and the most valuable one in his recovery.

A soft shuffling sound made him open his eyes.

Echo had crept forward, still hugging the wall of her kennel, but closer than she’d ever come voluntarily. She lay with her belly pressed to the ground, head resting on her front paws, watching him.

“Hey there,” he breathed, careful not to move.

Her tail didn’t wag. He didn’t expect it to. But she didn’t retreat either, just maintained her vigil from this new, closer position.

It wasn’t much. But it was something. A fraction of an inch in the right direction.

For tonight, that would have to be enough.

Dawn found him still there, stiff and cold, a crick in his neck that would take days to work out. But Echo had stayed, watching over him through the night.

“Thorne!” Walker’s voice echoed off the concrete walls of the kennel, startling Echo back to her corner. The ranch owner stood silhouetted in the doorway, his massive frame blocking most of the early morning light. “The hell are you doing?”

Jax pushed himself to a sitting position, wincing as his joints protested. “Couldn’t sleep.”

Walker strode down the aisle between the kennels. The other dogs whined and barked in greeting, but Echo remained silent, a shadow in her corner.

“So you decided to torture yourself on my concrete floor? We’ve got perfectly good beds in the bunkhouse.” He stopped a few feet away, arms crossed over his chest, eyes narrowed as he studied the dog. “She let you get close.”

It wasn’t a question, but Jax nodded anyway. “For a little while.”

“Hmm.” Walker’s expression gave nothing away. He turned away. “You have a visitor.”

Jax’s stomach dropped. After yesterday’s visit from Sheriff Goodwin, a visitor at dawn couldn’t mean anything good. He pushed himself to his feet, joints protesting, and brushed dust from his jeans.

“Who?”

“Nessie Harmon.” Walker’s weathered face remained neutral, but there was concern in his eyes. “She’s waiting by the main house. Says she needs to talk to you.”

The woman who’d told the sheriff about seeing him on the road. The one whose testimony had put him squarely in Goodwin’s crosshairs. The woman he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about.

Jax’s jaw tightened, anger and betrayal warring in his chest. “What’s she want?”

“Didn’t say. But she brought muffins for the crew.” Walker studied him for a long moment. “You want me to tell her you’re not available?”

The offer was tempting. Hide behind Walker’s authority, avoid the confrontation entirely. But that was the coward’s way out, and Jax had spent enough years running from hard conversations.

“No. I’ll talk to her.”