Page 55 of Phantom’s Mate

“You.” Jax’s voice was a hoarse whisper. “You’re dead.”

“Yes, I am.”

Jax started, and Nick realized that he could also hear him speaking, even though most people couldn’t. Maybe through the connection between them? Or maybe because Jax was close to becoming a spirit himself.

“Fuck.” Jax coughed. “Does that mean I’m dead too?”

“Not yet. It could still happen.” There was no way he was reassuring Jax.

“Please don’t tell me you’re the panther god’s emissary.”

“Nope. I’m here on my own behalf.”

Jax gave a faint huff of laughter. “Well then, I’m totally fucked.”

Nick didn’t answer that one way or the other. He wasn’t sure himself.

Jax said quietly, eyes closed, “I always wished I could tell you… I didn’t want to lead that hit squad. None of us wanted to take you out. But Raines had that artifact…”

“He Compelled you to do it?” Nick didn’t know whether to believe him, or if Jax was just trying to bargain with him.

Jax said wearily, “Does it matter? You’re still dead, and I still belong in hell. Same as you. Might as well take me now.”

“So that’s it?” Nick said. “You’re giving up? Leaving your wife and cub?”

He could see the pain in Jax’s face. “Man, she… I always knew I didn’t deserve her. And that I probably wouldn’t get the chance to get old.”

“Yeah well, maybe I’m here to judge you. Maybe there’s a second chance for you, if you can convince me that you really have it in you to be a halfway decent guy. If you can raise your son not to be a psycho. If you can make something out of that crew.”

Jax said, “Seriously? My end-of-life hallucination is you fucking lecturing me?”

“Apparently.”

“Why? You weren’t exactly on the straight and narrow yourself. What gives you the right?”

“Maybe nothing.” He didn’t have the right, he realized. He might not have committed the atrocities that Austin’s panthers had, but he’d killed people during his missions. Most of them for the right reasons. Some of them for probably the wrong reasons.

But he was the one who’d been punished. The anger welled up in him again.

He said, “But I’m the one who found you. And you already got chances I never got. Life. A good woman. A family.”

“Yeah,” Jax said. “You can see how that worked out for them. I just hope they got away.”

Despite his best efforts to hate Jax, Nick could relate to that. He felt the same about Britt. That even if his own afterlife went all to shit, he could at least get her to a better place.

Maybe for people like him and Jax, that was just the sacrifice they had to make—or the price they had to pay for the things they’d done wrong.

Giving up their own happily-ever-after so someone they loved could have the one they deserved.

The image of Britt rose in his mind. A good person who’d gotten a raw deal. Someone who made him feel like a better person—or at least made him wish he’d been one. Like Jax did.

Ah, fuck it. He used his mind to take the pieces of Jax’s shirt that Britt had torn and make a pressure bandage for the wound on Jax’s arm.

Jax grunted in pain. “Fuck me, you suck at this.”

“I’m a ghost, not a doctor.” He clumsily finished tying off the bandage.

“So what now?” Jax asked, panting. “You going to hold my fucking hand until I either heal or cross over?”