Chapter 3: The Salvage Yard
The morning air carried the sharp, metallic scent of rust and cooling engine oil as I pushed my bicycle through the gap in the chain-link fence. The salvage yard sat on the flat, desolate outskirts of town, surrounded by endless miles of dry scrub brush and jagged mountain ridges in the distance. Piles of crushed sedans, stacked like discarded tin cans, cast long, jagged shadows across the gravel lot. In the center stood a corrugated metal shed with three open repair bays, dark and oil-stained from decades of hard labor.
Bay 3 was empty of vehicles, but a single heavy-duty workbench was lit by a harsh, yellow drop-light hanging from a frayed cord. Jax stood over it, stripped down to a gray cotton t-shirt that showed the sprawling black ink across his shoulders and arms. He was filing down a jagged piece of steel with slow, rhythmic strokes, the rasp of metal against metal the only sound echoing across the yard.
He didn't look up when my bicycle tires crunched on the loose gravel, but his movements slowed instantly. He knew who it was.
I stopped ten feet away, my hands tucked into my jacket pockets, my big hazel eyes fixed on his broad back. I didn't say anything. I just let the silence stretch between us, matching his stillness with my own patient wait.
After a long moment, Jax set the metal file down on the wooden workbench with a dull thud. He wiped his hands on a greasy rag tucked into his belt loop, took a slow, deep breath, and finally turned around. His face was unreadable in the harsh overhead light, lined with the deep grooves of a man who slept too little and thought too much.
"Your mother shouldn't have sent you out here," Jax said, his voice deep, gravelly, and carrying the heavy weight of a smoker's lungs. It wasn't angry; it was tired. It sounded like a man speaking from the bottom of a deep well.
"She didn't send me," I answered, stepping a little closer past a pile of rusted mufflers. "I found the address myself. Marge gave me the matchbook, but I knew where to look."
Jax let out a short, humorless breath through his nose, a sound halfway between a sigh and a chuckle. He looked down at my scuffed sneakers, then up at my face, studying the structure of my cheekbones and the pale skin that burned instead of tanning in the desert sun. He had spent eight years convincing himself that the past was a closed book, something left behind in another lifetime before the club, before the tattoos, before the endless miles of open highway. And now, here it was, standing right in front of him in a cheap thrift-store jacket.
"You've got her eyes," Jax muttered, almost to himself, his fingers twitching slightly at his side as if reaching for a cigarette he didn't want to light in front of a kid.
"And I have your face," I replied softly, echoing the words my mother had whispered to me in the dark when I asked why other kids had fathers who picked them up from school.
Jax stepped away from the workbench, his heavy work boots crunching on the gravel as he closed the distance between us until he was standing right over me. He towered above my eight-year-old frame, but he kept his posture restrained, avoiding any sudden movements that might make me flinch. He crouched down slowly so our eyes were level, the harsh light catching the gray in his dark beard.
May you like
"I wasn't ready, kid," Jax said, his voice dropping to a low, rough rumble that carried no excuses, only raw fact. "I wasn't the kind of man who could raise anything softer than hell. I thought staying away was the only clean thing I ever did."
I reached into my pocket, my fingers finding the small folded paper I had brought along just in case. I pulled it out and held it out toward him on the flat of my palm, not saying a word, waiting for him to take the next step. Jax stared at the paper for a long, heavy beat, his jaw tightening. Slowly, with rough, trembling fingers, he reached out and took it from my hand.
