I chance a look at Mitch and see him staring in horror, an expression that is so vulnerable, I feel like I’m seeing my actual brother for the first time in years.
“Jax, tell me you haven’t.”
“I haven’t,” I insist, moving to stand. It takes great effort, and my ribs hurt like a bitch, my head spinning with every inch of gravity I gain. “I never have and never will.”
“So pay him off.”
I give him a look. “Like I haven’t already? He’s lying to get me back into his clutches.”
It isn’t like drug dealers—absent, shitty fathers or not—provide receipts to their clients.
Mitch sighs and shakes his head, and I know exactly what he is thinking.I told you.
Back when we were on the rodeo circuit, I’d had a really bad accident where the pain had been unbearable. But I didn’t—couldn’t—come home to recover. I couldn’t be in this town with all its memories tainting me. I just wanted out.
It was also around the same time that our father had come sniffing around, seeing the jackpots that Mitch was winning, which was far more than I ever earned competing at that point, and wanting a piece of it.
Mitch has a better head on his shoulders and told our father to get bent.
I, however, had been in pain.
Pain enough that I’d given in to the prospect of making that pain fade with some extra help.
It was the last time I’d seen Mitch outside of a random family event.
He’d told me not to get involved, to ignore our father and never trust him. But I’d always wanted to be able to trust him. I’d always hoped that someday he’d come around, and we’d have a dad again.
It was naïve, and as a young twenty-two-year-old with no hope or prospects, I’d given into it.
Seven years.
Seven years of coming and going, of taking every ounce of affection and weed the dude would give me. I buried myself in pot and beer and girls and rodeo and didn’t care about bettering myself whatsoever.
Hell, I’d just been a month clean when I came home for Logan’s wedding.
I’d seen my family there, clean and dressed and smiling and happy. It was another slap of a wake-up call that I knew I had to change. I’d seen the way my niece had grown and felt like a fucking failure.
I’d already told myself I was done, but that event solidified everything for me, making me get my act together.
Until I’d pissed the old man off.
“He used the fact that I quit to tell everyone I haven’t paid up, and he sends his fucking goons after me,” I say, feeling like a right piece of shit. “I paid. Over and over, I paid until I have almost nothing saved now, and finally, I told him I was done and over it.”
“But he found you.”
“Not hard to do when I announce the fucking rodeos I do on the internet,” I admit, wishing I could go back in time and find that thirty grand I’d paid him. I could really fucking use it.
“So you stopped rodeo, you came home, stopped posting online.”
I shrug. “He must have just figured it out. It’s not that hard, not like he didn’t know where we were born.”
“Or where Mom lives.”
I feel myself pale. “He won’t go after Mom.”
“You don’t know that.”
“He loves Mom still.” I shudder, thinking about the fact that he talked about her all the time to me when I was getting high off of his crappy supply. “Or so he says.”
