Chapter 5
Jax watched the tear fall, his own expression tightening as if he had felt the impact physically. He withdrew his hand, resting it back on his knee. The silence in the diner stretched thin, broken only by the rhythmic dripping of a leaky pipe somewhere in the kitchen alcove.
"He wasn't a good man, Clara," Jax said, his voice stripped of the performance, returning to its natural gravel. "I won't sit here and feed you lies about him being a misunderstood hero. He was weak. He took the easy road every time a hard choice presented itself. But he loved you in the only broken way he knew how."
"That doesn't pay the electric bill," Clara whispered, her voice cracking as she wiped her cheek with the back of her sleeve.
"No, it doesn't," Jax agreed immediately. "That's why I'm here. Not just to play ghost stories across a diner counter."
Clara looked up from the logbook, her blue eyes narrowing with sudden suspicion. The momentary vulnerability vanished, replaced by the hard-earned survival instinct of a woman who had learned early on that favors always came with a price tag.
"What does that mean?" she asked, her voice dropping into a defensive register. "What are you selling, Jax?"
"Nothing," he said, holding up both palms in a placating gesture. "I'm not selling a damn thing. But I’m cashing in a debt. Your grandfather helped me get out of a federal penitentiary back in seventy-eight. Your dad covered my back when things went sideways in Klamath Falls. Now, my lease on this earth is running out, and I've got a title to a piece of land up in the Cascades. No mortgage. No back taxes. Just timber, a cabin, and quiet."
Clara stared at him, dumbfounded. "You're giving me property?"
"I'm giving you an exit strategy," Jax corrected. "You don't have to take it. You can stay here and fight the county assessors until they padlock the front door and throw you out on the highway. Or you can pack your apron into a cardboard box, take that logbook, and go see what the mountains look like when you aren't running from a police cruiser."
The neon sign above the diner door flickered, buzzing loudly before stabilizing into a steady red glow. Clara looked around the small room—the grease-stained walls, the cracked vinyl stools, the faded poster of a 1957 Chevrolet hanging by one corner. It was all she had ever known, yet it felt less like a home and more like a waiting room for a life that had never quite started.
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"Why would you do that for me?" she asked, her voice barely a breath. "You barely know me."
"I know your blood," Jax said, standing up from the stool. The leather jacket creaked as he stretched his broad shoulders. "And I'm tired of seeing it bleed out over a laminate counter."
