Three months. Three shitty months since Jax disappeared like smoke. Three months since everyone decided what happened without knowing a single thing.
I’m not completely alone in my doubt. Ronny thinks there’s another explanation too, and I know he’s not just humoring me. He proves it. I see his car parked down the street sometimes, and I get in, and we talk. He’s out there searching for Jax—his mom sent him, sure, but his heart’s in it. He actually cares.
“This is gonna be good for you,” Millie says, folding one of my sweaters too neatly and placing it into the suitcase.
I stare at the open bag on my bed. The academy crest, all shiny and gold, stares back.
“What if he—” My voice betrays me before I can finish the sentence.
“How can you still be thinking about him?” she asks.
“Because I know him,” I say, and the defensiveness in my own voice pisses me off. “He didn’t do it.”
Millie stops folding and looks right at me. “He ran.” She yanks the suitcase zipper shut. “Only guilty people run.”
I scrub at my face, furious at the hot tears I can’t stop. “You don’t know him.”
“He left you,” she presses, stepping closer now. “You’re the one who dealt with the cops. The interrogations. The reports. The whispers. Detectives at our door every night like we were the criminals. They put us through hell because of him.”
“I’m alive because of him, Millie,” I say again, and she puffs out a breath like she’s humoring a child. Everyone thinks my version of us climbing out of The Pit is some fairy tale I’ve cooked up. Even Dad thinks I just… I don’t know, went through some trauma that scrambled my brain. That I’m mixing up facts and memories with dreams. Nobody believes me because nobody ever climbed out of the Pit. Somehow the fact that I made it out is the reason nobody believes a word I say.
I close my eyes and I can still hear it. The same questions on a loop.Did he ever mention the Pit? Did he threaten Ivan? Did he seem… unstable?
Lucky for me, Jax’s grandfather has a goddamn magic wand. I don’t know how he made it stop. I don’t want to know. But the questions stopped; the detectives vanished; the academy changed its mind. I heard they almost yanked my acceptance. Almost, then, poof. All forgiven, because of him, because the name St. Clair still means something in this town.
Leaving doesn’t stop me from checking the hospital registry every week. Doesn’t stop me from going by his house. Doesn’t stop me from knocking. Jax’s mom answers looking like she hasn’t slept since he left. We’re two lost people standing on the same doorstep. But his dad… his dad is a whole different story. “I lost my son,” Daniel St. Clair told me once, right there in that doorway. Not because Jax is gone, because he believes the crap everyone’s selling.
My brain throws me right back into that hospital room. The memory is so fresh I can still smell the antiseptic.
“I told you this would happen,” Daniel says.
“And I told you he was always going to take over,” Jaxwell replies.
The door swings open.
Daniel St. Clair looks nothing like his old man. The good genes skipped a generation. His sleeves are pushed up, a stethoscope still around his neck, his face tight with a mess of grief and pure rage.
“You filled his head with stories,” Daniel says to Jaxwell. “Blood. Debt. The Pit. You made it sound like a goddamn birthright.”
“It is an inheritance,” Jaxwell says, completely unfazed.
“Don’t you dare.” Daniel steps toward him, then sees me in the hospital bed and pivots instantly, professional instinct snapping into place.
“Are you dizzy?” he asks, fingers already finding my pulse. “Any nausea? Headache?”
“I’m fine,” I snap. “Do you know where Jax is?”
He doesn’t answer. He shines a penlight into my eyes. “Pupils reactive,” he mutters, as if that’s the only thing that matters.
“I said I’m fine.”
He lowers the light and really looks at me this time.
“You think he ran,” I say.
Daniel’s face tightens. “I think my son made a choice.”
“A choice?” My throat burns. “You think he’d just… throw them in?”
