Page 49 of Jackson

I’d gotten hardly any sleep myself at all last night. Instead, I spent most of the night lying awake thinking about Ayen’s ex, his disaster of a trial, the way he’d been treated before he’d ever been arrested, all of it. I couldn’t stand the injustice that my baby bird had faced in his only two decades on this god-forsaken planet.

Where had the people who were supposed to be fighting for him gone?

His parents were out of the picture, but what about his ex’s parents?

Where the fuck were they in all of it?

Every new piece of information that he told me had solidified my hatred for the man who’d done this—who’d started it all. Ayen had pulled the trigger, but that man had been the one to place the gun in his hand, even if he hadn’t done so physically.

And the fact that the courts completely dismissed that was beyond me.

By the time I got back to my cabin, Roxy was already up and whining for food. After quickly feeding her, I popped into the shower to wash away the residual anger that I still felt. I wasn’t even sure if that would ever go away—not when at the end of this program, I’d be forced to let Ayen go back to the one place he absolutely did not belong.

How he’d managed this far to still stay so soft and sweet was beyond me, but I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to protect him in the future from further misery.

Once clean and dressed again, I grabbed my phone and scrolled through my contacts, hitting the ‘call’ option once I reached the one I’d been looking for. I pressed the receiver to my ear while I headed back into the kitchen, my body restless and needing something to do.

“‘lo?” A groggy voice on the other end answered me.

“Nina? It’s Jax.”

She groaned loud enough to be insulting. “What the fuck, why are you calling me at… six-fucking-thirty. Are you serious, Jackson?”

“I need a favor.”

“Fuck you,” she grumbled.

“It’s serious, Nina. I wouldn’t be calling you like this out of the blue if it wasn’t.”

There was a long sigh on the other end, followed by some rustling around as she most likely was sitting herself up and getting out of bed. While I waited, I grabbed the box of instant pancake mix and set it down on the counter.

Roxy trotted over to me, curiously poking her nose at my thigh while I grabbed a mixing bowl from the cupboard.

“Okay,” Nina finally said, sounding much more alert. “What is it?”

“Can I meet with you? It’s probably better if we talk in person.”

“Geezus, Jax. You wake me up at six in the fucking morning… to ask me to meet with you later? This couldn’t have been a text because…?”

Despite her surly attitude, I knew Nina would go to the ends of the Earth to help me. It was just in her nature, too. She was a bleeding heart like me; the constant desire to help the unhelpable was like a sickness that could only be cured through situations like this.

I’d known Nina for close to my entire life and not once had I ever seen hernotrip the shirt off her own back to give it to someone else that needed it more.

“I had to make sure you actually looked at it instead of ignoring it like the other ten messages I’ve sent you.”

There was a pause on the other end before she mumbled, “Touché.”

Pouring some mix into the bowl, I measured out the wet ingredients with one hand before tossing my measuring cup into the sink next to me. “It’s about an inmate in my rehabbing program. I want to help him and I think you can help me with that.”

“Oh, Jackson.” She sighed. “If they’re already sentenced, there’s not much I can do.”

“I think his can easily be overturned if we got the paperwork to the right judge.”

At least, that was what I was hoping for. I had no fucking clue how the justice system worked outside of what a normal person walking down the street knew. I’d worked with inmates for a long time, sure, but them talking about their charges or what went into them receiving them in the first place was never discussed.

Me getting privy info from the COs had been a miracle and one that I knew would never happen again.

Everything that I learned after this was either going to be through Ayen, or hopefully, Nina.

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