Page 25 of Jaxon

"Yeah?"

He lifted his face and looked at me. "You know I'd never hit you, right?"

I nodded. "I know, Dad."

That was all he said. Dad and I weren't big on words unless we were mad about something. Then the words always flowed easily, too easily.

Music started up in the backyard, and Colt already had the grill going in high gear. Dad motioned with his head toward the house. I walked up next to him.

"Besides, you know damn well I'd flatten you," I said jokingly.

Dad chuckled and raked his hair back with his fingers. "I have no doubt of that … asshole."

I elbowed him, and he elbowed me back. That was the way we handled shit between us. We'd both been in a crappy mood this morning, and somehow those situations always ended up with both of us needing space from the other. But I knew that I was fucking lucky. All of us were. Our dads had grown up never feeling safe or secure or loved. They had each other, and for a good part of their lives, they had my mom. She looked after them more than they realized, and they were all fiercely protective of her. The four of them made it to adulthood … but barely, at least according to them. They left out a lot of the more sketch-ass parts of their early twenties, but all of them came out of it alive, and they were people we could all look up to.

"Whooee!" Uncle Slade hollered as his horseshoe swung around the stake. Crusoe wore a sour face. He hated to lose as much as Slade loved to win.

Cormac, or Mac as we called him, was standing with his mom, Aunt Britton. She was trying to get a closer look at a cut near his eye. Cormac was the youngest of the bunch, twenty-four today. He was also the wildest. He'd had more trips to the ER than the rest of us put together.

Jules carried a tray of hamburger patties out the back screen door. Her long, golden hair was piled up in a half-bun, half-ponytail at the back of her head. Jules was just three months older than Cormac, but she was about ten years older in maturity.

Cormac tried to push his mom's hand away, but Britton was persistent. She looked past Cormac. "Jules, come over here when you get a chance. See if you think this cut needs stitches."

"No fucking way I'm getting stitched up this close to my eye," Cormac said. Cormac was smaller and slighter than the rest of us, but he was wiry and tough like his dad, Uncle Slade. He occasionally hung out with some of the shadier guys in town, but most of the time, he was with Theo because he loved to mountain bike and ride BMX. He just managed to get hurt a lot more because, as his mom liked to say, caution was not in his vocabulary.

Stella walked in carrying our gift.

"Yes! There's LaLa with my gift. Did you get the ones I asked for?" Cormac finally waved his mom away and Jules walked over to my sister with a big grin.

Stella laughed. "Nope, after you sent me a dozen texts with links to the ones you wanted, I bought an entirely different brand."

Cormac's mouth dropped open in disappointment.

Stella laughed. "Oh my god, you're such an idiot." She handed him the gift.

Slade came up from behind and slapped my shoulder. "What have you been up to, buddy? Hardly see you these days."

"Hey, yeah, not much. Just working for the old man." I glanced around. "Theo's not here yet?"

"He was riding first, and his mom warned him not to show up stinking like mud and sweat, so he's probably heading home in between to shower. Theo said you were hanging out with Nathan Walsh's daughter."

Theo had a big mouth. "Yeah. In my defense, I didn't know who she was and she?—"

Crusoe came up from behind. "And she is hot, hot, hot. By the way, I saw her today."

I snapped my face his direction. "Where?" I asked abruptly.

"Uh-oh, I know that face," Slade said. "You like this chick. With all the women following you around like lovesick groupies, you couldn't find one who wasn't attached to that asshole Walsh?"

"No one like her," I admitted. "Where'd you see her, Cru?"

Colt walked over. "Who wants cheese? And Slade—double or triple?"

"Fucking triple," Slade said. He held out his arms. "Look at me, I'm wasting away with you working my ass off at the building site." Slade owned a fishing boat that people chartered for deep sea fishing adventures. In between, when Slade wasn't on the water, he worked at Colt's construction sites with Griffin and Theo. Cormac worked with his dad on the boat, but in between, he mostly just got into trouble. He still lived at home, which worked well considering his lack of steady income.

"Cheese," we all agreed. Colt had pulled on an apron. Slade had lightning-fast reflexes. He reached out and untied it as Colt walked away. "Colton Stone in a sweet little apron—hell has frozen over." Colt lifted his middle finger at him, shook his ass a few times and walked back to the grill.

"LaLa, is it all right if I put your veggie patty on the grill next to the burgers?" Colt called across the yard.

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