Chapter 10
While Leo slept, Jax stepped back out onto the wooden porch, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his vest pocket and lighting one with a heavy brass zippo. The sun was beginning to dip below the western horizon, painting the desert sky in dramatic strokes of bruised purple, fiery orange, and deep crimson.
The beauty of the sunset was lost on Jax. His mind was racing, turning over the events of the afternoon with grim precision. Vance and the Iron Skulls weren't the kind of men to let a humiliation like the one at the diner go unanswered. They lived by a twisted code of respect and retaliation. Sooner or later, they would find out where he lived, or they would stake out the roads leading into Copper Creek until he had no choice but to come out.
Jax exhaled a thin stream of gray smoke into the cooling evening air. For fifteen years, he had lived without fear because he had nothing left to lose. If someone wanted to start a fight with him on the highway, he welcomed it. But now, the equation had changed entirely. In the cabin behind him slept a piece of his soul, a vulnerable child who depended on him for survival. The realization brought a cold, hard knot of terror to his stomach—not terror for himself, but the crushing, suffocating fear of failing someone who loved him unconditionally.
He heard a soft creak behind him and turned sharply. Leo was standing in the doorway, clutching the old faded photograph in his small hand. The boy’s eyes looked large and luminous in the dim light of dusk.
“Can’t sleep?” Jax asked softly, tossing his cigarette into the dirt and crushing it out with the toe of his boot.
“I had a bad dream,” Leo whispered, walking out onto the porch and standing close to Jax’s side. “I dreamed we were back on the bus, and you weren't there.”
Without hesitation, Jax knelt down, wrapping his massive arms around the boy and pulling him tightly against his chest. He buried his face in Leo’s soft, messy hair, breathing in the scent of dust and youthful innocence.
“I’m right here, Leo,” Jax murmured, his voice thick with emotion that he no longer tried to suppress. “I’m not going anywhere. Do you hear me? I spent fifteen years running from my past, but I’m done running. Whatever comes up this road, I’m right here.”
Leo hugged him back fiercely, his small arms locked around Jax’s neck. “Promise?”
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“I promise,” Jax said, the words serving as both an oath to his son and a declaration of war against whatever threats loomed on the horizon.
They stood there together on the porch as the last rays of sunlight faded from the desert sky, the stars beginning to puncture the black expanse above them like tiny pinpricks of white fire. But the peace of the desert night was illusory. Down on the valley floor, miles away, the distant, throaty roar of heavy motorcycle engines echoed through the canyon, signaling that the storm was gathering, and it was heading their way.
