Page 2 of The Last Second Chance
“Promise?”
“I promise you.” He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “But maybe we could take a road trip this summer? Just the two of us. No parents, no brothers, no school.”
Placated, Joey relaxed in her seat. Her horse fund could probably spare a few hundred dollars for a road trip with Jax. She’d be eighteen, an adult. She would find a way to smooth things over with her dad, who’d hate the idea. Anything would be worth spending her nights wrapped in Jax’s arms, waking up to that sexy-as-hell face.
“Let’s do it,” she said.
“Seriously?” He was back to her lighthearted Jax again.
“Yeah. Let’s figure it out. Maybe we could leave right after graduation.”
“I love you, Joey.” He laid a hand on his chest over his heart.
“I know.” She smirked at the dark outside her window and he gripped her leg again.
A flash of brown on the side of the road caught her eye. It was moving fast, too fast for her to get Jax’s name out of her throat.
The headlights caught the glow of the deer’s eyes as it burst through the trees onto the road. Jax braked hard, cutting the wheel to the right. And for a split second, as the deer bounded safely across the road, Joey thought they were out of danger. But the gravel sent them fishtailing.
She had less than a second to feel the sick, icy fear in her gut as the colossal oak loomed before them. Jax’s name exploded from her in a scream of dread. His arm slammed against her chest pinning her to the seat just before the sickening crunch of metal and glass.
And then her world went dark.
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Pain woke her. And with it dread.
“Jax?” In her head it was a scream, but somewhere between her head and her lips it came out as a strangled rasp.
“He’s not here, honey. Remember?” Her mother’s voice and the scent of her Vanilla Fields came to her, floating on the fog of fluorescent lights and grief.
She went under again trying to remember why Jax wasn’t with her.
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Joey was dischargedon her birthday with seventeen stitches running from wrist to elbow and fifty units of a stranger’s blood coursing through her veins. Her chest and stomach were a mottled purple from the seatbelt that had saved her life.
But there was no celebration.
Jackson Pierce was gone.
She’d heard her mother and Jax’s mom, Phoebe, talking in hushed whispers at the foot of the bed when they thought she was asleep.
He’d vanished from the farm in the middle of the night, leaving behind a note and most of his possessions.
He was heading west, the note said.
Joey’s father said in no uncertain terms that he preferred to think the boy who put his precious daughter in the hospital was dead.
So did Joey.
1
Jackson Pierce watchedhis brother Beckett straighten his tux-clad shoulders and take a deep breath. The man was nervous as hell and not doing a good job of hiding it.
The popsicle stick-width stage of the Take Two Movie Theater was getting crowded, but then again, so was the theater itself. Beckett and Gia’s wedding turned out to be the premiere no one in Blue Moon Bend wanted to miss, and the theater was the only venue big enough to hold all of them.
Jax’s oldest brother, Carter, elbowed him in the kidney with newlywed pride when his wife, Summer, floated down the aisle. Even edging close to six months pregnant with twins, she was a glowing vision in the short, rose gold dress.
