Page 39 of The Last Second Chance
“Of course he does,” Gia smiled. “Anyone can see that.”
“I don’t want him to love me. I want things to be simple, uncomplicated. I can’t seduce my business partner. I can’t keep things casual with a man who thinks he loves me and wants to have some kind of future with me.”
“Sure you can,” Summer grinned. “It’s called being honest. Jax is a big boy. And if there’s a family resemblance down there, he’s a very big boy.”
Gia snickered.
“Sorry, pregnancy hormones. Where was I before the penis sidetrack?”
“Honesty,” Gia supplied.
“Right. If you’re honest with him about what you do want—like his hot body and impressive genitalia—and don’t want a long term relationship with said hot body, then it’s up to him to deal with that.”
“Huh,” Joey said. “Are we just going to pretend that it’s not weird having Summer giving advice about honesty in relationships?”
“Har har. Very funny. I’ll have you know I’m a reformed dishonest relationship haver.”
“Joey, what Summer here is trying to say between penis jokes is that you could have everything,” Gia told her.
“Hmm.”
10
Jax kicked backon the rickety desk chair and yanked his shirt over his nose.
“Christ, Meatball. What did you eat?”
The chubby beagle under his feet didn’t bother pretending to be embarrassed about filling Jax’s bedroom with a noxious cloud of dog farts.
“Your brother is disgusting,” Jax told Valentina, who stretched her massive black and white great Dane body across the double bed before flopping back onto her side. The dogs enjoyed keeping him company whenever Carter and Summer were out.
Jax glanced at the clock on his computer screen. It was after seven and the January sun had set ages ago. He’d purposely kept his distance from Joey for the last two days. With the new horses and the partner news, she’d need time to process.
Otherwise she might be likely to take a swing at him.
So he was using his time wisely and trudging through a draft of the screenplay that he wondered if he’d ever finish.
He made a point never to get worked up about a project. Never bothered worrying about failure. Jax had been through enough option periods on spec scripts to know projects fell through more often than not. In his young career he’d been lucky enough to have a couple of notable projects make it to the big screen…and a dozen more rejected ones sitting in an archive file on his computer.
Most of his work was done on assignment by production companies, which meant his teenage obsession with shoot ‘em up blockbusters was finally paying off. However, every once in a while, he snuck through a spec script. His very first green light had been on spec, and while it hadn’t exploded at the box office, it had caught the eye of the right executives at the right time. He’d built his career carefully, choosing projects that he knew intuitively were the right ones. He’d even begun branching out into producing recently, something he planned to explore again with this project.
This script, another spec, was personal. He had some nerves tied up in this one. Not for the industry’s reaction, or the critics. He could give a damn about them. But this time the critics that mattered would be his family, his town. Joey.
Jax liked the process of writing screenplays. Liked the long, tedious hours of creation, the satisfaction of finishing a project crafted from your best effort, and then the practice of letting go once. Somehow, it reminded him of helping his father on the farm. The endless toiling. The gratifying last look through dirt and sweat at a freshly planted field. And the hope that the rains would come, the crops would grow, and the cycle would continue for another season, another generation.
He’d learned so much from John Pierce. Absorbed more than he had been aware of, until his father was no longer walking the fields. Writers write what they know, however every time Jax had tried to take an unbiased look at his father, he came up empty on the man’s flaws.
In Jax’s experience, everyone was deeply flawed. But his father had been a man above men. Quiet and calm, he dealt with the chaos of three boys with the patience of a saint. Finding words to be too complex to use to change minds and attitudes, he preferred to lead by example.
And by example, he’d shown his sons how to live. Treading lightly on the earth, moving easily with the natural rhythms of the world. Honoring where you came from while always sharing what you were lucky enough to have.
John Pierce was a hero to Jax. And his brothers had risen to the challenge, as well. Carter went to war to defend the land he so loved. And when he came home, wounded and fractured, he let the land and the people help him rise again. Beckett learned and led. He had his father’s patience and used it as mayor of Blue Moon. It was always family first with Beckett and that family was never limited by blood.
As the youngest, Jax had always known the subtle pressure of a family tradition of goodness. His teachers remembered the older brothers’ accomplishments and expected similar results from him. Pierce men were men to be counted on, protective partners, loyal friends, and trustworthy leaders. It wasn’t until he was a teenager that he started to realize the enormity of the responsibility of being a Pierce.
At first it had irritated, then scraped, and by the time he was a senior facing his future it had dug deep. That feeling of less than, of never quite measuring up. While Carter deployed with the National Guard and Beckett set his sights on law school, Jax delivered pizzas in his third-hand Camaro and helped his dad on the farm.
If he stayed in Blue Moon he would always be measured by his father, his brothers. There was no room to stand on his own two feet and be only himself.
