Southern Storms (Compass 1)

“What can I do? How can I help you?”

“You can’t. You don’t get it. You don’t know what he did…” He took a deep breath and moved to the bookshelf, where he rested his hand, the liquor wavering back and forth in the glass. His back was turned to me, but I could hear it in his voice—the brokenness.

“Tell me,” I urged.

“Derek left after my mom passed away, after he saw the man my father had truly always been. He was smart to get away, and I could’ve left with him, too. I could’ve left. Derek told me to come with him, but I stayed because I figured I owed my father something. He never told me anything that made me feel as if I was good enough. He never gave me a reason to stay. I remember every fucking time he laid his hands on me. I remember every repulsive comment he made to me, and I can’t for the life of me remember the last time he told me he loved me. Ever. Then he dies. He dies, Kennedy. Dead. And he has the nerve to leave that behind for me.” He gestured toward the desk.

My eyes traveled to that location before I walked over and lifted up the packet of paperwork. It was a copy of his father’s will.

Jax snickered. “Flip to page three, paragraph four,” he ordered. When I did as he said and read what was written there, my stomach dropped, and I felt a wave of sickness wash over me.

My gaze found Jax’s, and he nodded. I reread the paragraph, hoping it was wrong, a typo, some kind of mistake. It wasn’t.

“He left Derek the plumbing company, and the property. He left him this…” he said, nodding his head, chewing on the corner of his mouth. “This is all I’ve ever had. My father and this place were all I ever fucking had, and he gave it to my brother, who ran away.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. I wasn’t sure how to process the information. All I knew was Jax had been dealt a shitty hand in life, and just when it’d looked like the possibility of it turning around was alive, life happened again, dealing him another round of disappointments.

“He had to have left you something… He had to have…” My words stumbled and somersaulted off my tongue. “This doesn’t make sense,” I said, still in disbelief.

“Cole Kilter never made sense.”

“He left you nothing?”

He shook his head and gestured toward the will again. “There’s a shoe box on the floor. That’s what he gave me.”

I glanced down and picked up the box. Inside were letters—our letters, the ones I’d never received from Jax and the ones I’d sent his way that he never got. On top of them was a piece of paper that read, You took my happiness, so I took yours.

When I looked up, Jax was staring at me. I didn’t have a clue what to say or what to feel, so I couldn’t even imagine what thoughts were running through his mind.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” He paced the office, his voice rising. “Even from his grave, he gets to hurt me.”

“Jax…”

He shook his head back and forth. “All this time I thought there would be some point to all of this, some reason behind all the bullshit, but there wasn’t.”

How was I supposed to fix this? How could I make a man who’d spent his whole existence fighting for others see that he, too, was worth fighting for when so many things in his life had told a different story?

“It’s all a joke,” he muttered. Stepping back, he stared at the damage, and I saw the tiny tremble in his bottom lip. He dropped the glass to the ground, and as it shattered, so did he. He fell to his knees and his shoulders slumped forward. He didn’t cry, but I knew it was his breaking point. My hand covered my mouth to hide my own cries for the broken soul before me. When he couldn’t cry, I fell apart for him.

His hands landed on the broken glass, which sliced into his skin. I moved to him and didn’t say a word. I didn’t beg him to stand. I didn’t tell him to try to be strong. I sat beside him during his storm, and I stayed when he begged me to leave him alone.

34

Kennedy

“How’s he holding up?” Derek asked after I forced Jax to lay down for some rest. Derek and Stacey were staying at the bed and breakfast in town. Stacey headed back to rest a bit, but he didn’t want to leave without knowing that his brother was okay.

I walked over to him and sat down on the couch with him. “He’s struggling, of course. I can’t blame him. What your father—”