Chapter 8: Gravel Pit Truths
The gravel pit sat half a mile behind the town line, a massive, scarred dip in the earth where the highway department used to pull limestone before the trucks moved further west. The morning sun was finally burning through the low-hanging pines, casting long, sharp shadows across the white rock and rusted machinery. Jax’s motorcycle—a heavy, black machine with chrome pipes that gleamed even under a layer of dust—was parked right at the edge of the drop-off. Jax himself sat on an overturned wooden crate a few feet away, holding a wrench in one hand and a crumpled paper coffee cup in the other.
He didn't look up when my sneakers crunched on the loose stones behind him. He already knew I was there.
“Your aunt’s got a lot of nerve sending you out here alone,” Jax said, his voice rough and low, carrying easily over the wind.
“She didn't send me,” I said, stopping a few feet away from him. I made sure to keep my hands out of my pockets, remembering how my dad always said you don't look people in the eye if you're hiding something. “Martha told me where you went.”
Jax let out a dry, humorless sound that might have been a laugh if it had any warmth in it. He tossed the empty coffee cup into the bed of a rusted-out pickup truck parked nearby, then set the wrench down with a dull clank on a flat rock. Slowly, he turned his head to look at me. Up close, the lines around his eyes seemed deeper than they had yesterday under the harsh fluorescent lights of the diner, and the silver streaks in his dark beard caught the pale morning light.
“You’re a persistent kid, aren't you?” he asked, shaking his head.
“You never answered my question yesterday,” I said, stepping closer. “At the counter. You covered the photo because you were scared.”
Jax’s jaw tightened. A muscle jumped in his cheek, the only sign that my words had hit a nerve. He stood up slowly, stretching his long frame, and walked over to the edge of the limestone drop-off, looking out toward the distant line of hills where the highway disappeared into the haze.
“I wasn't scared, Leo,” Jax said, his voice dropping an octave, sounding heavier now. “I was angry. Mostly at myself.”
“Why?” I asked, refusing to back down.
He turned back to look at me, and for a second, the tough-guy leather vest and the tattooed arms didn't look like armor anymore; they just looked like things a man wore to keep the world from getting too close.
“Because when your mother told me she was pregnant,” Jax said, the words coming out slow and hard like stones dropping into a well, “I didn't step up. I packed a duffel bag, threw a leg over my bike, and rode straight down that highway before the sun came up. I told myself I was doing her a favor. I told myself a guy who spent half his youth in county holding cells and grease-monkey shops had nothing to offer a family. I was a coward, Leo. Plain and simple.”
I stood there in the wind, listening to the gravel shift under my sneakers. The silence between us stretched out, long and heavy, filled only by the distant caw of a crow and the hum of a semi-truck out on the interstate.
“Mom never said you were a coward,” I whispered. “She just said you left before I was born.”
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Jax looked down at me, his hazel eyes—the exact same color as mine—softening just at the edges. He reached out slowly, hesitating for a split second before placing a heavy, calloused hand on my shoulder. His grip was firm, warm, and entirely steady.
“She was too good a person to say what I really was,” Jax said quietly. “Come on. Let’s head back before your aunt thinks I put you to work in the pit.”
