Chapter 9: Unearthing the Past
The next morning, the crisp autumn air smelled of woodsmoke and freshly baked bread from the bakery up front. Jax arrived just as the sun was clearing the horizon, carrying a brown paper bag filled with doughnuts and a thermos of black coffee. We sat around the small wooden table in the guest house, the morning light casting long shadows across the floorboards as we finally began to piece together the shattered narrative of our youth.
“My old man was a drunk who used his fists for punctuation,” Jax said, staring down into his coffee mug as he traced the rim with a grease-stained thumb. “When you told me you were pregnant, Clara, I looked in the mirror one morning and saw his face staring back at me. I was twenty years old, broke, working sixty hours a week for minimum wage, and terrified out of my mind that I was going to ruin both of you. So I packed a duffel bag, stole fifty bucks from my brother’s stash, and caught a freight train heading west.”
“You could have talked to me,” I said, my voice softening despite myself. “We were a team, Jax. We could have figured it out.”
“I didn't know how to be a team,” he replied, shaking his head slowly. “I only knew how to survive. I figured without me around dragging you down, you and the baby might find someone who actually knew how to be a man. Took me ten years of drifting through dusty towns and sleeping on garage floors to realize that running away didn't make me less like my old man—it made me worse.”
Leo looked up from his doughnut, his hazel eyes wide and curious. “Did you ever think about coming back?”
“Every single day, kid,” Jax answered, his voice cracking slightly as he looked down at our son. “Every time I heard a kid laughing on a sidewalk, or saw a family sharing a meal in a diner, I thought about what I left behind. But I didn't think I had the right to show up at your door with empty hands and a ruined past.”
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“Well, your hands aren't empty anymore,” I said, reaching across the table to touch his forearm. The skin beneath the tattoos was warm and solid. “You fixed our car, you found us a decent place to sleep for the night, and you're sitting here talking instead of running. That’s a start, Jax. That’s more than you gave us twelve years ago.”
Jax covered my hand with his large, calloused palm, his grip firm and steady. For the first time in over a decade, the suffocating weight of the past felt like something we could finally lift together, one heavy piece at a time.
