Chapter 2
The silence that stretched between the scarred biker and the small boy was heavier than any load Jax had ever hauled across state lines. Slowly, agonizingly, Jax turned his massive head. His dark eyes scanned the boy’s face, tracing the sharp line of the jaw, the faint dusting of freckles across the bridge of a small nose, and those wide, luminous hazel eyes. They were eyes he had looked into once, in a dim hospital room smelling of antiseptic and cheap linoleum, fifteen years ago, before the world had shattered completely.
Jax’s throat felt as though it were lined with broken glass. He tried to speak, but no sound came out. He cleared his throat, a deep, gravelly rumble that caused a burly biker two stools down to glance over with a suspicious scowl.
“Kid,” Jax finally muttered, his voice sounding like grinding stones. “You got the wrong guy. This is a private place. You shouldn’t be wandering in here alone. Where’s your mom?”
The boy didn't flinch. Instead, he carefully placed the faded photograph on the sticky counter, sliding it across the formica surface until it rested right beside Jax’s coffee mug.
Jax looked down. The photograph was yellowed and curling, showing a much younger Jax sitting on the fender of a rusted pickup truck. He was wearing a plain white t-shirt, his hair shorter, unburdened by gray. In his arms, cradled with a clumsy, terrified tenderness, was an infant wrapped in a blue blanket. It was a picture Jax knew by heart, a picture he had left behind in a cracked leather wallet on a kitchen table in Montana on a rainy Tuesday morning when everything fell apart.
“She’s gone,” the boy said softly, his voice steady despite the overwhelming emotion hanging in the air. “She passed away three weeks ago. Before she went, she gave me this. She said if I ever needed to find the only person in the world who cared enough to look back, I should find the man with the ink on his arms and the grease on his vest in Copper Creek.”
Across the counter, the waitress, a kind-looking woman named Martha who had worked the diner floor for twenty years, froze mid-wipe with her damp rag. Her sharp eyes darted between the boy and the towering biker. She had known Jax for five years; he came through every summer, tipped well, spoke very little, and kept to himself. She had never seen this vulnerable, hunted look in his eyes before. Instinctively, Martha stepped closer, her hand resting near the register, shifting from professional warmth to protective suspicion.
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“Everything all right here, Jax?” Martha asked, her voice carrying a sharp edge that warned any onlookers not to cause trouble.
Jax didn't answer Martha. His gaze remained locked on the small, folded piece of paper the boy had now placed on top of the photograph. It was a birth certificate, yellowed and fragile, bearing a name Jax hadn't spoken aloud in over a decade. Leo. His son.
