“Deer!” he blurts, hands up. “Just deer. And… and rabbits.” His face twists as he hangs his head. “I know it’s not the same thing, but—”
“Deer?” I eye him. His brother literally kills for a living. I wouldn’t put it past the kid to have fallen into the same life.
“Yeah. I mean, I’m not like a hunter or anything. Or—I mean, I don’t want to be. But my dad, he makes us go on these trips, and the rabbits… They aren’t even hurting anything, and we don’t even eat them, but he makes me shoot them. And their little eyes. I don’t… I don’t like it. But, like I said, I know it’s not the same thing. I just…” He trails off.
I let myself relax at the fact that he looks like he’s about to start crying over a rabbit. There’s no way he’s killed anyone. At least the sibling apple rolled far away from the tree here.
“Your dad makes you?” I grimace. “Have you tried telling him you don’t like it?”
He snorts. “That would only make it worse.”
I raise a brow.
“My dad’s not… he’s not really someone you say no to.”
“Huh.” I flop back against the pillows and stare at the ceiling for a second, my mind doing the math. “Must be where Jax gets it from.”
I bet Jax likes to hunt, probably enjoys the kill. God, I really hope I’m not making a mistake staying here on his dime. And I really hope his idea of ‘handling’ things doesn’t involve any more deaths. Not that… not that Nellie was really his fault.
As much as I want it to be.
“No.” Caleb’s tone shifts. The word comes out quiet and cold in a way that doesn’t match his face, and it makes the hairs on my arms lift. “Jax isn’t anything like James.”
I slowly open my eyes to find him staring blankly.
“Jax would never do what James does.” The words are detached and cold, and he blinks, like he realizes he just said that out loud. He scratches the back of his neck. “Sorry. That was… intense. I just meant… Jax isn’t like our dad.”
I sit up carefully, curiosity and unease mixing in my stomach. “How so?”
He shrugs in a way that his shoulders seem to hunch inward. “Jax doesn’t expect me to be something I’m not. He looks out for me. It’s been easier since he’s come back.”
“Jax?” I ask in disbelief. “Making something easier?”
“I think you have a bad image of him.”
I raise both brows. I don’t think I need to say that killing people would give anyone a bad image.
“I mean, yeah…” He reads my face. “I get where you’re coming from, but it’s not always black and white. Like it isn’t black and white with what Nix did.”
“That was self-defense.”
“And Jax doing what he does is self-defense too… in a way. If he doesn’t do what James wants…”
“Yourdadmakes Jax…?” My mind spins. I knew Mr. Landon was a lawyer. Everyone knew that in high school, but I didn’t know he was some sort of… dirty lawyer? “But Jax could just tell your dad to get fucked. Jaxchooses—”
“You don’t say no to James,” he cuts me off with a sigh and toes the floor with the tip of his shoe, “like I said. But if it’s worth anything, I think if it wasn’t for James, Jax would be a really good lawyer. You know, that’s what he went to Columbia for. He still reads legal stuff, stays up to date on new laws. I think that if he had a choice, he would much rather be in a courtroom.” Caleb glances up at me.
I don’t know what to do with that. My brain tries to picture Jax in a courtroom, not as the accused, but wearing a suit and calmly picking apart a witness with those razor-sharp eyes. I can see it, but I also can’t. I knew that’s what he went to college for, but I thought he chose a different life.
“Seriously?” I ask, trying not to sound too skeptical.
Caleb nods. “Yeah. He says if you want to survive in a world like ours, you have to know the rules better than the people who wrote them.” His voice gets a little quieter. “He told me once thatit’s not about breaking the law. It’s about knowing how to twist it until it snaps around someone else’s neck instead of yours.”
Now that sounds a lot more like the Jax I know.
Chapter Thirty-One
Kira
