Page 61 of Jax

“I’m only saying, it would be easier to kill him.” Cole makes an exasperated sound as he sits on a couch opposite the one Leenie and Finn are currently sitting on. The room looks different so I’m not taken all the way back to how I used to spend time in here. Plus, the people are so different. These guys are actually joking and kidding around. There was none of that when I was one of K’s girls. It was straightforward business all the time. “Plus, my sister wouldn’t have been dragged into all this if you’d just let me go in there, save Sadie, and blow his shit up.”

Jax sits on the couch next to Finn and helps me down with him. “Seeing Sadie and what that fucker did, I kind of wish we had done that.”

“Liking you a little better now,” Cole admits.

Jax shrugs as if he couldn’t care less. He never was one to care if he was liked. He was oddly cool like that. Nothing ever fazed him. Except me.

“I’m fine,” Leenie tells her brother while her gaze skips to me and the ice pack still resting against my swollen face. “Plus, it was actually fun. You should’ve seen that Psycho guy’s face when I got the punch in on the girl. He was stunned. You could tell he thought my fight was going to be an easy one.”

For a moment, Cole beams a prideful smile but he tucks it away again almost immediately. “As much as that sounds entertaining, you could’ve been home safe while I dealt with everything instead of going into the lair of a known rapist and con artist.”

“Technically, you don’t own the Flats jurisdiction,” Jax states.

“Technically,” Cole reiterates, mirroring Jax’s tone. “I own whatever the fuck I decide I want.”

Leenie huffs. “Dick measuring contest aside, this idea is much better and no one dies in it either.”

Cole looks personally affronted as if he has no idea why it’s bad for someone to die. I was always good with gang logic to a certain degree. Bad people should come to bad ends. I’m all on the side of fucking killing Psycho. He doesn’t deserve to breathe for all the hurt he’s caused people over the years. “I hope this idea is a good one because right now, I’m all on board the Cole train of killing him.”

Cole glances between me and Jax. “Why are you with him again?”

Jax growls in response like the burly teddy bear he is but I smile. “Because he’s a much better person than I am.”

Cole rubs his temples. “All this talk about morality is giving me a headache.”

“Please. Don’t act so tough,” Leenie chides. “Didn’t you just finish helping out your gang buddy’s sister? Who’s the softie here?”

“Yeah but I got to kill people,” he deadpans. “She didn’t care that I killed people.”

This whole thing makes me smile. In any other living room, this conversation would be wildly inappropriate but for the tower in the Heights, it’s absolutely, one hundred percent, normal.

Leenie’s phone rings, and she stares down at the screen and squeals. “He’s here.”

My stomach bottoms out but Jax places a reassuring hand on my leg. “A friend,” he whispers.

I calm instantly. I don’t know what I thought. That Psycho was just going to show up in the known gang territory of the Heights. He’s way too smart for that. Leenie’s affiliation with the gang leader must still be a secret to him. The leader of the Dragons has been a mystery, and I didn’t even know he had a sister. They keep that shit on lock.

Leenie gets to her feet and bounces on her toes. The anticipation while she watches the door even gives me butterflies. “What’s going on?” I whisper to Jax.

“We asked for a favor,” he explains.

“Yeah, a favor you didn’t have to ask for,” Cole grumbles yet he, too, stares at the door with concentration. As if he knows exactly how long it takes for someone to ride an elevator up, he gets to his feet and walks toward the door just as there’s a knock on it. He has enough time to open it before Leenie pushes past him and throws her arms around a red-headed man.

He’s dressed in head-to-toe black with some scruff on his face. He looks hardened until a smile crosses his face. “Leenie,” he says, squeezing her. “It’s been too long.”

“I have so many things to say to you,” she says. It sounds like it’s supposed to be chiding but it comes out with warmth and excitement.

“Alright already,” Cole grumbles. “Let him breathe.”

Leenie finally steps back, and I can get an accurate image of the guy. He has red hair and a face full of freckles that look as if they were brought out by a healthy dose of sun recently. He’s built, large like Cole’s own security guys, and he looks as tough as them too.

“Mag,” Cole says in greeting, and the two of them bro hug.

When Mag steps back, he looks around the space. I recognize the same reaction to this place in him that I had. It’s as if he has to shake off ghosts. When he gets closer, he looks more and more familiar. If he was ever in this place, then I definitely would’ve seen him before. “Ex-Crew?” I ask.

He whips his gaze toward me, eyes inspecting me from head to toe, spending an awful lot of time on my bruised face. Finn gets off the couch and moves forward. “That’s Sadie. Good to see you, man.”

They shake hands, and Mag gives him a smile in greeting. “You too.”

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