Page 17
Shit.
Mom’s head snaps toward me immediately, her gaze sharp, narrowing in a way that says she caught every word. I glance at Finn briefly, a promise in my eyes that we will be having a conversation about this later. A long one that doesn’t involve too many words.
“Who are you stalking, Conor?” Mom asks, her tone calm but firm in a way that is far more dangerous than if she had raised her voice. “And why?”
“I’m not stalking him,” I say, keeping my tone even, even though I can feel every set of eyes at the table shift toward me. “I’m just watching out for him. He’s in some sort of trouble.”
“Jaxon? The guy from the fights?” Colton asks, his voice way too casual for the way that name lands in the room.
Fuck. Of course, he knows. Ronan tells him everything, and the fact that he’s been to the fights means there’s no walking this back now. Dad’s expression hardens immediately.
“We’ve talked about this, Conor,” he says, his voice calm but firm in that way that means he’s not actually calm at all. “You boys have no business at those fights.”
“I haven’t signed up for a fight in months,” I start, trying to redirect, trying to keep this from spiraling any further than it already has. “I go to—”
“To watch your boyfriend beat the sh—” Declan cuts in, stopping himself just in time as his eyes flick to Ollie, who is currently smearing mashed potatoes across his face with zero concern for anything else. “crap out of the other fighters. You can’t take your eyes off him.”
A few heads turn back to me, interest sharpening.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I snap, more quickly than I should, then force my tone back under control. “He’s not anything to me. Manny is using a proxy to make him fight, and I want to know why. He could have been seriously hurt Friday if I hadn’t stepped in and taken his last fight.”
The second the words leave my mouth, I know I’ve screwed up. There’s a pause, then a shift.
“Thought you said you haven’t been fighting,” Dad says, his gaze locking onto mine.
“I didn’t sign up for it,” I reply immediately, pushing through before this gets twisted further. “This guy, Henry, works for Manny, and he was forcing Jaxon into a fourth match. He was exhausted. He would have been hurt, or worse, if I hadn’t stepped in.”
Finn lets out a low whistle, leaning back in his chair. “A fourth? They only do that when they’re trying to break someone or cash in big. You were right to step in.”
That earns him a look from Dad, but he doesn’t take it back.
“Let’s get back to the actual issue,” Mom says, cutting cleanly through the table before this turns into an argument about the fights. “We can discuss that later.” Her attention settles fully on me again, steady and impossible to avoid. “What’s really going on, Conor?”
I look around the table, letting my gaze move slowly from one face to the next, taking in the familiarity of it, the unspoken understanding that no matter how this conversation goes, no matter what I say or how much they may not like it, they are going to listen.
They’ll judge, they’ll question, and they will offer advice whether I want it or not. But at the end of it, they will have my back. They always do. So I tell them everything.
I go through what I know about Jaxon in detail, laying it out piece by piece: his time in the military, his honorable discharge, the years he spent in foster care before that, the way his life seems to narrow down into nothing but work and isolation, and then the fights— the part that ties him to something darker that he clearly doesn’t want to be a part of.
The words come easier than they should. It’s almost as if I’ve rehearsed this. I’ve gone over it so many times in my own head that I don’t even have to think about it anymore. I’ve read his background so many times that I could recite it without missing a single detail. Memorizing it somehow brought me closer to understanding him. I don’t tell them everything. I leave out the cameras and the extra surveillance.
When I finally stop talking, the room is quieter than before, the usual noise of dinner replaced with something more focused, more deliberate, as if they are all processing what I just said and trying to decide what it means. Mom is the one who breaks the silence.
“Why is he so important to you?”
The question lands heavier than anything else she could have asked, settling deep in my chest in a way that makes it hard to respond. I don’t have an answer. Not a real one. Not one that makes sense or justifies any of this. I can’t even explain it to myself, let alone to them. All I know is that something about him got under my skin and refused to leave, and instead of fading over time the way it should have, it has only gotten stronger, deeper, more consuming with every passing day.
“I don’t know,” I admit finally, my voice quieter now but no less honest, because there is no point in pretending otherwise. I glance down at my plate for a brief second before forcing myself to look back up at them.
“All I know is that I can’t seem to stop thinking about him.”
And that, more than anything else, is what unsettles me the most. Why am I so fixated on him?
Chapter 12
Jaxon
Wednesday comes faster than I’m ready for it. It seems like the days in between never really existed. I’ve barely had time to catch my breath before I’m right back in the driver’s seat, heading toward something I don’t want to face.
