Chapter 25

Jackson

What the hell was wrong with me?

What the ever-loving-hell was wrong with me?

What was I afraid of?

Why didn’t I say something? Why didn’t I tell her who I was?

She’d know now. She’d see the chain and pendant and remember everything. It would all click. The filthy traveler she’d just kicked out of her car was Jackson Jones, the man she’d given a son to.

But what would she think? What would she feel?

One thing was certain. I was still in love with her. That hadn’t changed.

There was an electricity between us that was off the chart. My body yearned for her. It hadn’t forgotten what my heart and soul had decided long ago. That I was in love with Faith Shepherd.

She didn’t recognize me, or at least I didn’t think she did. Twelve years. I wasn’t the man she’d loved.

She hadn’t seen my face, but I’d seen hers, and it was every bit as beautiful as I remembered.

She woke up something inside me, a part of me I was afraid had died. I’d been through so many horrible things. I’d done such terrible deeds. That changed me. I’d been afraid that when I saw her, I might not feel what I’d thought I’d feel. I was afraid my heart wouldn’t remember how to respond, that I’d have lost my capacity to love. But that hadn’t happened.

My heart pounded in my chest like a galloping horse. It was burning with a passion that threatened to consume me. There was nothing wrong with my heart. It hadn’t lost a single ounce of its strength. If anything, my love for her had grown. She’d been loyal to me all those years.

But I hadn’t revealed myself. I couldn’t. Something stopped me. For the past twelve years, the only thing that kept me going was the thought of coming back to Faith. Now that I was back, she terrified me.

What if she’d changed. She was still sexy. She was really fucking sexy. But she wasn’t the girl who’d turned up desperate at a roadside motel, willing to do anything for help.

She was a real woman now, grown, respectable. She drove a Mercedes Benz. What if she didn’t want me? I was sure she didn’t have a man. Nothing would convince me otherwise. I’d felt it. I’d felt it like birds feel a storm brewing.

But that didn’t mean she’d be ready to shack up with me. She was a mother now. Even if the kid was my son, it would still take some convincing for her to allow a trained killer into the house. What if she wanted a different kind of life than the one I could offer? What if she wanted all the things that I wasn’t? Why wouldn’t she want a respectable, responsible man? Someone who’d pay the bills on time, drive a station wagon, wear a shirt and tie?

Wasn’t that the kind of life women wanted these days? Didn’t they want men who knew the difference between a tax bracket and a write off? Who drove hybrid cars? Who recycled their garbage?

There’s nothing wrong with all those things. But they’re not me. I’m the polar opposite of all that shit.

I was a criminal, a grade-A asshole. I had more blood on my hands than a serial killer. I couldn’t lie about it, not to Faith. Even if I tried, she’d see right through me. She knew the man I was. The man I would always be.

She’d been shocked the first time she saw my scars. I’d never explained to her how I got them, but they’d frightened her. I could tell. What would she think now? I had gun shot scars, knife scars, shrapnel scars from a motorcycle accident. I even had scars from the attack dogs Wolf Staten kept around his villa.

I was tattered and torn. What if Faith wanted a man who was new and clean? Didn’t she deserve that?

I was crooked, and a tree that grows crooked can never grow straight. That’s what my father always told me.

What good did I do? What happiness did I bring her and my child?

I’d killed Los Lobos. That was it. Maybe she didn’t even care about that.

If I was to disappear from the face of the earth right at that instant, what difference would it make to her? Would she miss me? If that last Lobo had gotten the draw on me. If he’d killed me before I killed him, would Faith have been better off? Would she and my kid be better off without me?

I watched the taillights of her car recede into the darkness. Was that the last time I’d see her? Would she refuse to see me again? She’d made a life here, and she didn’t need me coming back to upset the balance she’d created. She was trying to achieve something with her life.

Fuck it. The truth was, I couldn’t change who I was. For all the talk about being the man you want to be, the fact is, you’re born who you are. You can’t change that. You can’t change the past. Faith and I had our chance. It was over. Whatever I’d done, whatever I’d been to her in the past, that was gone now, and I couldn’t take back twelve years of absence.

Why try to be something I couldn’t be? I knew what I was good at. I was good at killing criminals. That’s who I was. That’s what I knew.

It was almost ten by the time I reached the old mansion and I forced myself to stop agonizing over Faith. Whatever was going to happen would wait until morning. A light was on over the porch. I stopped for a moment to look at the place. The vine-covered slopes of the valley rolled gently down to the house. The white barn was still where I’d left it. Vehicles were clustered in the arcade. A giant redwood shaded everything.

They say you can never truly go home, because even when you do, you’re not the man you were when you left. It’s not true. The truth is, you are who you are. You’re always the same man.

And it felt good to be back. I didn’t know how long I’d stay, I didn’t know what Grant and the rest of the Brotherhood would say when they saw me. They hadn’t heard from me in so long.

At that moment, all I knew was that the full moon was looking down on me, the crickets were chirping, and the fireflies fluttered up from the lawn like minuscule fireworks. I let the feeling of the place wash over me.

After twelve years of longing, I’d finally seen Faith. And she was better off without me.