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Jax made a noise, a cross between a cry and a curse, then leaned over the letter. Hell, this was a metric ton of fuck to lay on someone in one go.
“Jax, stop reading,” I murmured.
He shook his head, swallowed the emotion, and carried on reading. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but please don’t tell anyone you have Charlie, not even the cops.”
A prickle of unease skittered down my spine. “Why? Is there more?”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat again, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. “Uhm… okay… It says—I haven’t abandoned Charlie, but he’s safer with you. I wish I could tell you more, but if you have the same freaky twin connection that I do, the one that tells you how I’m feeling, then you’ll know how hard things have been for me this last week…” He glanced up at me, rubbing his chest. “Was that the headache I couldn’t shake? Or this pain in my chest?”
This was the first I’d heard about pain in his chest. “I don’t know. Finish the letter, Jax.”
“… uhm… okay… how hard things have been for me this last week, and I need to know my son is safe. I’m hiding from you, but there’s a reason for that, and I know you’re a good man, and it would mean everything to me if you could please take care of him until I can come for him.” Jax rubbed at his chest again—was this him feeling Zach’s emotions as the letter suggested, or was he having his own crisis? “He’s coming here for him. When?” Jax stared at the letter as if it would give him all the answers, but I got the feeling that Zach or whoever wrote this was being deliberately vague, which got my back up. Maybe I should call 911, whatever the letter said. No one abandons a baby and gets away with it.
Right?
“Is there more?” I asked and jiggled Charlie as he began to cry.
Jax cleared his throat, his voice wavering, and read more. “I need you to make my perfect son part of your life, but you can’t tell anyone what I’ve done. I don’t want to sound dramatic, but you can’t tell anyone apart from your closest family, as long as you trust the ones who are cops. God, I have to have faith they won’t fuck this up, because I’ll lose Charlie, and it will put him and me in danger.” Jax paused, and all I could think was that this was super dramatic, and the unease became a shudder of fear. “Until that day we finally get to meet. Love you always. Zach.”
Jax glanced up at me, tears streaming down his face, shock and grief, and a multitude of other emotions that Jax typically kept inside were escaping from his heart.
“Jax?”
He blinked away the tears, wiping at his face. “Zach is… the baby is… I’m his uncle?” At least, he was at the semi-coherent-trying-to-make-sentences stage, which was a step up from nothing at all.
I needed to do something. “So, we’re not calling the cops, then.”
“The letter says we shouldn’t tell anyone.” His eyes went wide with fear, but I knew him well enough to see indecision there as well.
“The letter said you could tell your other family, by which he means the Byrne family, right? How about your brothers? Leo and Reid are both cops, and you can trust them. I mean I can call them. Or what about your parents?” His expression was unfocused, and his mouth opened to speak, but no words happened. “Okay, I’m calling someone, anyone.” I fumbled for my phone, cradling Charlie, and wondering what the hell I was going to say, and who I was going to say it to. Leo probably—he was level headed and would know what to do.
“Don’t.” Jax held up a hand, although from this distance, with me pacing the hallway, he couldn’t reach me. “Zach’s alive,” he wondered out loud, then sighed. “I need time to process this sh—stuff. Please just give me a moment.”
After a pause, I pushed my phone back into my jeans, willing to give Jax a little more time because baby Charlie seemed healthy and happy aside from the odd whining cry, and if the letter was to be believed, this wasn’t a kidnapping.
Should we believe the letter?
“Let me take Charlie,” he said.
It surprised me that, somehow, he’d moved from the stairs, and I hadn’t seen it, and he was right in front of me, his arms extended.
“You’re sure?”
“I’ve held a baby before, Arlo,” he groused. “I’ve had two of my own, you know.”
He took his nephew as carefully as if he were made of glass. Only, as soon as he had him cradled close, his hold was firmer, and baby Charlie stopped crying and tried to reach for a length of Jax’s long red hair as it spilled over his shoulder after escaping the ever-present tie.
It hit me hard—God, Jax looked good with a baby, a smile playing on his kissable pink lips, laughter lines bracketing his eyes. My heart hurt, my head was a mess, and why did all of this happentoday?
Instead of staring at everything I couldn’t have, I pulled the paperwork mentioned in the letter from the child seat and laid it on the hallway table, then decided I needed to be doing something proactive. “I’m going to get the bags from outside,” I said to no one, given Jax had wandered off into his kitchen, murmuring sweet nothings to baby Charlie. I headed out to the porch for the diaper bags. A glimpse of movement in the hedges next to the garage caught my eye, and I peered into the bright sunshine as someone stepped toward me.
I reacted instantly, dropping both bags, and bending my legs. God knows what I was going to do with those bent legs, but it was instinct. The letter had scared me into seeing bad guys everywhere.
“Who are you?” I demanded. It couldn’t be the elusive Zach, unless he and Jax were like Arnie and DeVito in the old eighties’ movieTwins. This guy on Jax’s property was no more than five-eight, his hair dark, his brown eyes hooded, and his expression cautious.
We locked eyes. He tilted his head in question, then inclined his head toward the house. “Is he agreeing to look after the kid?” he asked.
“Who… what… Yeah, of course?—”
