The Last Second Chance by Lucy Score

27

It was good to be home. Especially when home came with a woman who officially loved him, an adoring dog, and a brewery that—mercifully—hadn’t burned down while they were gone. The closing on his L.A. house had gone without a hitch, and Joey had agreed to wait for a fresh draft of the script to read, buying him a little extra time.

In the meantime, Joey and the girls had enjoyed following the mentions of Joey’s dress on social media after the event. And Brigid was feeling the after effects of the free viral advertising with publicists literally knocking on her door.

Life was looking good enough to Jax that he paid a visit to Wilson Abramovich, Blue Moon’s jeweler and the only discrete member of the Beautification Committee. After swearing the man to secrecy and squirreling away the velvet jewelry box in his dresser at Carter’s, Jax turned his attention to finding the right moment to start pressing Joey on the future he’d waited his whole life for.

Jax spent every night with Joey, and she quietly made space for him in drawers, in the closet, and shelves in the bathroom. He found he could write better in her house, tucked away in the spare room, than anywhere else. For Valentine’s Day, he’d kept it low-key and bought her every movie he’d ever written. She made him his favorite dinner for Valentine’s Day, pot roast and mashed potatoes, and together they watched movies into the late night.

In this exact moment, life was perfect.

Even when they were arguing, as they were now over pasture groups, it felt good. It felt right. It felt like home.

“You can’t put Cyrano out there with Tucker and Romeo. It’s a meltdown waiting to happen,” Joey said, moving away from Cyrano and poking Jax in the shoulder.

Jax took advantage of her proximity and dipped his fingers into the neck of her thermal shirt and tugged her into him.

“I’m not making out with you, Ace. I’m arguing with you.”

Jax was undeterred. He boxed her in against Lolly’s stall and let his mouth take what it wanted. She pretended to put up a fuss, but in seconds, Joey was opening for him, surrendering. It got him straight in the chest every time she gave up her desire for control and gave in to her desire for him.

He wouldn’t do her wrong this time. He promised himself he’d spend the rest of his life making all her dreams come true.

She threaded her fingers through his hair, swiping the gray wool cap off his head.

“Get your hands off her!”

Jax turned, putting himself between Joey and the threat. Forrest Greer, larger than life, stormed down the stable aisle toward them, a freight train without brakes.

“Uh, hi, Dad.” Joey said, guiltily jumping away from Jax. “I thought you weren’t coming until next weekend.”

Jax hauled Joey back into his side.

Joey’s mother, April, hurried in behind her husband.

“Uh, Mom?” Joey’s voice was a squeak.

April stood at the end of the aisle, nervously twisting her hands. “It didn’t go as well as I hoped, sweetie.”

Forrest slapped a crumpled newspaper against the wall in front of Joey. It was The Monthly Moon. And there above the fold was a picture of Joey and Jax in their movie premiere finery.

“So you’re back with this one, are you?” Forrest demanded, his tone fanning the flames that sprang to life inside Jax. This wasn’t going to happen again. He wouldn’t let it.

Jax tucked Joey behind his back and stood toe-to-toe with the man who had changed the course of his future with one threat.

“I’m going to ask you to lower your voice,” Jax said calmly.

“I’ll speak when and how I want, especially when it comes to my daughter.”

“Your daughter is an adult, and what makes you think that showing up at her work and causing a scene is the best way to approach her?”

Forrest went a deeper shade of red.

“I told you to stay away from her.”

“And I did. For eight years. I’m back. I’ve earned my way back.”

“You’ve earned nothing.”

Cyrano’s nerves got the best of him, and he tried to rear up in the crossties.

“Enough!” Joey’s voice cut through the fog of battle that had settled between them. “I want all three of you to walk out that front door right now.”

“I’m your father. You can’t throw us out,” Forrest began.

“You’re scaring my horses. Go outside, don’t say a damn word, and wait for me to put Cyrano back in his stall,” Joey said, her jaw set like granite. “All of you. Now!”

Jax led the way, stalking out the front door while April dragged Forrest with her and murmured her apologies. Anger kept him warm against the bracing breeze.

Jax waited until Forrest and April walked past him and took his position just outside the door. No one was getting to Joey without going through him first, not even her own father.

“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing with my daughter?” Forrest spat out, pacing three steps out and back. Forrest Greer was built like a brawler. Anger snapped off him like electricity through downed wires.

“I plan to marry her.” Jax’s announcement was emphasized by a puff of breath that nearly made the words visible.

“The hell you will,” he growled. “You’re not good enough for her. You never were. I meant it then, and it still stands now.”

“No argument here. No one is good enough for her,” Jax agreed. He kept his hands at his sides in case push came to shove. “But I make her happy. If she chooses me, you have to find a way to deal with it.”

“You almost killed her. You think I’m going to stand by and let it happen again?”

“It was an accident. You know I would never hurt her on purpose.”

April wrung her hands. “Forrest, you need to let this go.”

“I made you leave once. I can make you do it again.”

“What the hell did you do?” Joey’s voice snapped out. She was standing in the doorway of the stable.

“I made sure he never had the opportunity to hurt you again!”

Forrest may not have sensed the fact that he was pouring gasoline on a bonfire, but Jax sure did. He took a step toward Joey, but she held up her hand, stopping him in his tracks. He didn’t want her to hear it this way. Wished she didn’t have to hear it at all.

“You were laying there in a hospital bed that he put you in.” Forrest pointed accusingly at Jax. “You wouldn’t have left him. You would have forgiven him like a lovesick teenager. I couldn’t lose you. He had to go.”

“Is there a problem here?” Carter and Beckett strolled around the side of the stables coming from the direction of the brewery. His brothers looked wary… and ready for a fight. They came to a stop on either side of him, closing ranks.

“This is a family matter,” Forrest told them.

“Joey is family,” the Pierce brothers said as one.

“What did you do?” Joey asked again, her voice deceptively calm.

“I did what any good father would do. I told him if he didn’t leave town that night, I would file a lawsuit. I’d take their farm.” Forrest nodded as if daring anyone to argue with him.

“And what about Joey?” Jax prompted. It was time to get it all out in the open. Ripping off the bandage and prodding at a wound that had never properly healed.

Forrest didn’t look so sure of his stance now. “I’d send you away and forbid you from attending Centenary.”

Jax saw Joey take the words like a well-placed blow. She curled in on herself for a second before her spine snapped her back. “You had no right. You threatened to sue the Pierces, take everything they’ve worked for, unless they gave up one of their sons because a deer ran out in front of a car that I was riding in? What in the ever-living hell is wrong with you?” The calm was gone, and in its place was the storm.

“It wasn’t an accident. It was his fault.” Forrest was pointing his meaty finger again at Jax, and Jax was half tempted to break it.

“I can’t believe you. You knew that I loved him, and you chased him away. You threatened his family—a family that has been nothing but kind and generous to me from day one. You knew what Centenary meant to me, and you threatened that. How could you do that?” Joey’s hands were in her hair.

“You always were more loyal to that family than your own,” Forrest spat out. “Even now.”

Oh shit.Jax almost felt sorry for Forrest. The man was waving a red flag in front of a charging bull. No one questioned Joey Greer’s loyalty and lived to tell the tale.

“You do not get to choose who I share my life with. You do not get to threaten a family because I got hurt. You do not get to make threats about me toward someone who loved me. You do not get to make decisions for me and expect me to go along with them.”

“You were better off without him! I did you a favor that you weren’t strong enough to do yourself.”

April slapped her hand on Forrest’s arm. “Forrest!” she said sharply.

“I am not weak. I am not stupid. And I am not disloyal,” Joey said, her voice shaking with rage. “What I am is your daughter, and that does not give you the right to do what you did. It was my life then, and it’s my life now. And right now, you are unwelcome in it.”

“You don’t mean that,” Forrest said, waving her words away. “You were better off without him. He already had one foot out the door. John knew it wasn’t worth trying to convince him to stay.”

“John knew?” Joey whirled on Jax now. “Your dad was involved?”

Jax felt his brothers stiffen beside him. “He was part of the conversation,” he said quietly. And just like that, the three men Joey had loved the most fell from grace. Jax could see the betrayal she felt written plainly on her face.

“You’re just upset,” Forrest said. “Once you calm down, you’ll see why he had to go.”

“Oh, I’m upset all right. I’m freaking furious. You don’t call the shots in my life anymore. And you,” she said, turning to face Jax. “You left without a word. You could have come to me, could have told me what was happening. I could have fixed it. But you didn’t. You just left. You used it as your excuse, and you got out. Turned your back on all of us and just left.” Joey’s voice broke and with it, Jax’s heart.

But she reeled it in, took a steadying breath.

“You two took it upon yourselves to make decisions for me, and I tell you now, that will never happen again. As far as I’m concerned, you both can go to hell. Now get away from my stables and don’t come back.”

Jax made a move toward her, and Joey shut him down with an ice-cold look. Carter lay a hand on his shoulder.

She wrenched open the stable door and stormed inside.

April shot Forrest and Jax a stern look and skirted around Beckett to follow Joey inside. But Jax beat her to the door. “April, I just need a minute with her.”

April crossed her slim arms over her chest. Her dark hair and eyes had been handed down to both daughters. But where Joey was a warrior, April was a peacemaker.

“Fine. But I’m going to be on the other side of this door, and if I hear anything I don’t like, I’m coming after you with a pitchfork.”

“Understood and well-deserved,” Jax said.

He charged through the door, momentum carrying him to where she leaned against the window of her office. Joey swiped an arm over her face.

“Baby.”

“Don’t say anything to me. I can’t even look at you.”

Jax went against his better judgment and wrapped her up in his arms, forcing her head against his shoulder. Her shoulders shook with silent sobs, and Jax felt like the lowest human being on the planet.

“I’m so sorry, Jojo. I’m so, so sorry.”

She pushed away from him, shoved him back a step. “You made me think there was something wrong with me. That you left me because I wasn’t enough. I didn’t deserve to spend my life thinking that, feeling that. You owed me more than disappearing in the middle of the night when I needed you most.”

“I’m so sorry, Joey,” he said again. “I was scared. I thought my dad could lose everything because of me. I thought your dad would ruin your dreams. I screwed up, and you and my family were paying the price.”

“He wouldn’t have done it. I would have talked to him, and he wouldn’t have done anything. No lawsuit, no sending me away. But you didn’t even give me the chance. You decided everyone was better off without you, and you abandoned us all.”

“Joey, it was the worst fucking night of my life. You almost died, and I thought I’d destroyed everything my family had spent years building.”

“It was the worst night of my life too. When the men that I believed in, men that I loved, decided I was too weak to make my own decisions. I’ve never been weak. But I may have been stupid.”

“You’re not stupid.”

“I let you back in without knowing the truth. It never occurred to me that my father pulled any strings to get you out of my life. And I never had a clue that your dad knew and kept your secrets. So maybe I’m stupid.”

“You’ve never been stupid a day in your life.”

“I need you to do something for me,” Joey said, crossing her arms.

“Anything. Name it, Jojo.”

“I need you to leave me alone.”

He was already shaking his head. “No. Absolutely not.”

“I can’t face you or him right now,” she said, jerking her chin toward the door that separated them from her father.

He grabbed her arms. “Joey, I love you. You are my life. I’m not walking away again. Not even if you ask me to.”

“I need time.”

“Jojo, I can’t do that.”

“You have to,” she said, shrugging out of his grasp. “This time, I’m the one walking away.”

She didn’t go far, but when she shut the office door behind her, he felt her shutting the doors of her heart.

He reached for the doorknob.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” April unzipped her baby blue parka.

“She needs to listen to me.”

“Jax, sweetheart. She’s not going to hear anything you say right now.”

“I love her, April. I’m not leaving her again.”

“I know you’re not. But you’re not going to get through to her right now. Any convincing you try to do is going to come across as you trying to make decisions for her again.”

Jax kicked at the wall, frustration and fear curdling in his blood.

“I’m not going to lose her again.”

“Let me talk to her.”

“If she needs to fight it out, I will. I’ll fight for her. Hell, I’ll fight her for her.” Panic licked at him. What if she couldn’t forgive him?

“Just give her a little space right now, okay? We’ll work this out. And then I’m going to murder my husband.”

“My money’s on you,” Jax said.

“And mine’s on you.”

* * *

“I supposeyou were in on this too?” Joey snapped at her mother even as she poured April a cup of coffee.

April accepted the mug and leaned against the desk. “Your father never said a word to me. And for that he will pay.”

Her long denim-clad legs tucked into waterproof boots in a cheery purple. She wore her hair to her shoulders and rarely bothered with makeup. She’d spent her adulthood raising her daughters and working part-time as a bookkeeper for a car dealership. At home, April ruled with a martyr’s manipulation. Joey had no doubt her mother could make her dad’s life miserable.

“How could he have done that? Why does he hate Jax so much?”

“Joey, your father thought he’d lost you that night. Can you imagine what that was like for him? For me? When we knew you were going to be okay, his only thought was to protect you from anything like that ever happening again.”

“So you smothered the crap out of me, and he threatened to take Pierce Acres away from John.”

“I’m not saying he did the right thing. In fact, I’m saying he did the stupidest thing he could have. But he did it because he didn’t want to lose you.”

“Well, guess what? He lost me anyway.” Joey stared morosely into her coffee.

“It doesn’t need to be this way,” April prodded. “You and Jax seem so happy together. Why can’t you go back to that?”

“Because.”

“He’s worked so hard to win back your trust.”

“There’s one thing that he should have done from the beginning: Not leave. He should have stormed into my room and told me what Dad said to him. Barring that, when he came home, he should have fucking told me why he left. But he didn’t. He tried to distract me with presents and sex instead of telling me the truth.”

“You’re right. They both should have been honest with you long before now.”

That shut Joey up. She sank down in the chair behind the desk. “So what do I do?”

“Do you want to be with Jax?”

“I honestly don’t know. It was one betrayal that I had to live through twice. Maybe that means something.”

“Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. So what does your gut tell you?”

“My gut’s confused,” Joey admitted. It was. She felt twisted up and hung out to dry. For the second time in less than a decade, her life had been turned upside down by the same man.

“What does your head say?”

“Kick their asses and leave them both hanging for a while.”

Her mother smiled at her and sipped her coffee. “I think that’s a fair decision.”

* * *

The minute Forrestand April drove off, his brothers dragged Jax up to the brewery and cornered him outside the keg room.

“That’s why you left? Because your girlfriend’s dad scared you off with a lawsuit?” Carter said from his perch on an empty keg, his finger and thumb pinching the bridge of his nose.

Jax nodded.

“Jesus. I thought you just felt guilty over the accident and couldn’t face Joey again,” Beckett said, adding his two cents.

Jax paced a tight line from door to cooler. “How can the same damn thing fuck everything up twice?” He shoved his hands through his hair.

“When you’re not honest about shit, shit comes back to bite you in the ass,” Carter preached.

“Thank you, Mr. Philosophical.”

“We could have fixed this.” Beckett shook his head.

“That seems to be everyone’s opinion.”

“Why didn’t you come to us?” Carter demanded.

“You weren’t home,” Jax shot back. “You were in the Army. Beckett was busy with his internship. And Dad was involved.”

Carter and Beckett shared a look.

“I don’t understand why Dad would have just let you leave,” Beckett said.

“The three of us were in the hall. Forrest had dragged me out of Joey’s room. He told us that he was going to give us a choice. Either I left town immediately or he was going to sue us for everything we had. The farm, the house, everything. And that he’d send Joey away, refuse to pay for Centenary so she’d have to go somewhere else away from me.”

“And Dad was fine with giving you up to potentially avoid a bogus lawsuit brought by a guy who wasn’t thinking straight?” Beckett the lawyer was itching for a fight.

Jax shook his head and resumed pacing. “It wasn’t like that. Dad took some convincing, but Forrest was dead serious. I’d almost killed his daughter, and the only way he could think to protect her was to get me out of the picture.”

“So you left,” Carter said quietly.

“So I left. I was scared shitless. I was eighteen and just watched the most important person in my life almost die in front of me. And it was my fault. How was I supposed to live with that? And if Dad had lost the farm because of me? Family loyalty shouldn’t be expected to go that far.”

“A, it wasn’t your fault, dumbass. And B, how did no one ever tell Joey?” Beckett wanted to know.

Jax shook his head. “It was part of the deal with her dad that I not contact her again. She thought I was just an ass who got scared and left town.”

“Well, if she can forgive you for that, hopefully she’ll be willing to cut you a break for the real reason.” Carter sighed. “I also hope you’re done with the whole ‘I almost killed her’ bullshit.”

“I’m getting there,” Jax answered. He was. Slowly. It had been an accident, one with dire consequences. But an accident all the same.

“Good. I’m glad you’re getting less stupid in your old age,” Beckett said.

Jax could always count on his brothers for a well-timed put down to cheer him up.

“I don’t have a good feeling about this. She’s not going to get over this, and it won’t be just me that she cuts out this time. It’ll be her father too,” Jax told them.

His brothers nodded.

Jax stopped pacing and leaned against the wall. “I got her a ring.”

“Shit,” Carter sympathized.

He looked around him. His brothers’ faces were dark and broody as they shared his pain. Their connection had deepened since he’d come home. Equals. Partners. He wasn’t just the youngest Pierce anymore. He’d built something here. This very brewery existed because he came home for a new beginning. In the last few months, he’d laid the groundwork for a new life, the life he’d always wanted. This was not going to be all for nothing. He’d fix this.

“So what are you going to do? You’re sure as hell not going to quit now,” Beckett said, trying to rally the troops.

“I’m gonna fix this,” Jax said, lacing his fingers behind his head.

“How?”

“I have no fucking idea.”