Page 47 of Jackson

I squeezed my eyes shut. I could fill in the blanks there to know what had happened. What a damn shame. If he was even half the man that Jackson was, then the world had lost a light when he passed. I ached for Jackson and his loss. It was never fair to lose a loved one far sooner than you expected to.

That was the kind of shit you couldn’t prepare for and the blow was always massive.

Thankfully, Jackson began to speak again. “I don’t talk to my father anymore. He doesn’t deserve to know what’s going on in my life after the bullshit he pulled. I doubt he misses me, anyway. He was always disappointed in me.”

That had me shaking my head.

Sitting up, I lifted myself just enough to press my lips against Jackson’s. It was hard to see in the dim lighting of the cabin, but I felt him smile, though, and tilted his head to the side, catching my lips fully with his.

“He didn’t deserve you,” I said when he pulled away, repeating his own words back to him.

“Oh, my sweet, Ayen.” He sighed. “Tell me your ex’s last name. Was it Gonzalez?”

Oh lord.

“No.”

“Tell me.”

“Absolutely not.”

He brushed the backs of his fingers along my jawline. “Why?”

“Because I’m not letting you go to jail, too.”

His smile was practically shit-eating as he said, “What, you don’t want to be bunk mates?”

I rolled my eyes and buried my face into his chest before he could see me smiling. I didn’t need to be encouraging him into going out and finding my ex-husband and smothering him with a damn pillow while he stared blankly at the ceiling.

Would it be the hottest thing anyone had ever done for me?

Sure, absolutely. But I wasn’t going to let this saint-of-a-man wind up behind bars because of me. I wasn’tthatgood of a lay.

“Ayen.”

I shook my head. “There’s no point. He’s in a vegetative state.”

He huffed out a surprised laugh. “What?”

“That’s why I was sentenced. The court felt that I’d purposefully aimed poorly. So, instead of me getting off with self defense, I’d gotten charged with attempted second degree.”

“What kind of bullshit is that? Where would they have preferred you to aim?”

“The prosecutor argued that I had plenty of time to hit him in the chest. But I’d aimed for the head instead, resulting in the bullet getting lodged and rendering him pretty much brain dead. The evidence for my defense of him stalking me for four months beforehand was thrown out due to a technicality. So to the jury, it looked like he’d come over to sign the divorce papers and I’d shot him instead.”

“Jesus,” he choked out.

Weirdly enough, it actually felt good to get all of this off my chest.

In prison, I couldn’t exactly talk about what had happened leading up to my crime. Not because I wasn’t allowed to or anything, but just because most inmates really didn’t give a fuck. There was always someone worse off than you, so trying to gain any kind of sympathy was met with a fist to the face and someone stealing all your commissary.

“Yeah, so.” I shrugged. “I got five years.”

“You shouldn’t have gotten any,” he argued.

“Not according to the court.”

“I swear to god.” Jackson’s hand grabbed at my pant leg and lifted my leg to swing over his hips. He then moved down to grabat my ass, lifting me up until I was practically lying completely on top of him. “Who was your lawyer?”

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