Chapter 279 Jaxon's wrath

Chapter 279 Jaxon's wrath
Ryder's POV

Jaxon arrived in twenty-two minutes.

I knew because I watched the clock on the wall above the bar for every one of those twenty-two minutes and I was still watching it when I heard the car in the lot and then the door.

Tommy had moved to the far end of the bar when I told him Jaxon was on his way. He didn't move out of the room. But he shifted far enough to give us space, but was close enough that I knew he was there. That was Tommy being my brother despite being angry with me.

Jaxon came through the door.

He was wearing his cut. He had not been wearing it the last time I saw him. He had put it on to come here, which told me what this visit was to him. He walked through the door without looking around the room and came directly to me, already decided before he got out of the car.

He stopped in front of me.

I stood up. Not because standing would help. Because it felt wrong to be sitting when he arrived.

He looked at me. At the left side of my face where Tommy's fist had connected and a bruise was forming that would be dark by tomorrow. He registered it and moved past it.

"Is it true?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

Jaxon looked at me.

"She called me," he said. "An hour ago. She was crying." He paused on that word. Jaxon Romano had spent most of his adult life making sure Sage did not cry, and here he was looking at the person who had put her on the kitchen floor. "Sage was crying on the floor and she called me because you had asked her if the baby was Diego's."

"Yes," I said.

"On the morning after you proposed to her," Jaxon said.

"Yes."

"After she told you about the pregnancy. After she explained why she had been afraid to tell you. After she swallowed her dignity and put a ring on your finger and you put one on hers."

"Yes," I said.

He looked at me steadily. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

I had been asking myself the same question since I walked out the door. I still did not have an answer.

"I cannot tell you," I said. "I do not have a good answer. I had a thought I could not stop and it came out as a question it should never have been."

"A thought you could not stop," Jaxon said.

"Yes."

"About Diego."

"About the timing," I said. "It's been just six weeks and Arizona and—"

"Stop," Jaxon said.

I stopped.

"Do not explain it to me," Jaxon said. "I do not want the explanation. The explanation does not change what happened. What happened is that my sister told you she was carrying your child and you responded by questioning her faithfulness." He looked at me clearly and without flinching. "That is what happened."

"Yes," I said.

"I want to ask you something," Jaxon said. "Think before you answer."

"Okay."

"In all the time you have known Sage, has she ever given you a single reason to doubt her?"

"No," I said.

"Has she ever been dishonest with you?"

"No."

"Has she ever, in your knowledge, been unfaithful to anyone?"

"No," I said.

"Then why," Jaxon said, his voice dropping into the register he used when every word was meant to stick, "did you look at this woman who you have known for her entire life, who has never once given you a reason, and decide that a six-week timeline was enough to override everything you knew about her?"

I had no answer.

"Because it is not about the six weeks," Jaxon said. "You know that and I know that. The six weeks is what your brain attached itself to. But underneath it is something else. Some part of you that does not fully believe you deserve what she is giving you. Some part of you that has been waiting for something to go wrong, because this has been going right for long enough that you stopped trusting it. And when your brain found an excuse it could use, it used it."

I looked at him.

That hit somewhere true. Not because I wanted it to. Because Jaxon Romano had known me for over twenty years and he was not guessing.

"I did not do it on purpose," I said.

"I know that," Jaxon replied. "Intention is the minimum. You do not get credit for it. What you need to do now is understand why your brain went there so that it cannot go there again. Because if you go back to Sage and you have not done that work, it will happen again. Different version, same result."

"Jaxon—"

"I am not finished," he said, his voice dropping another degree. "You are my brother. You have been my brother since you were taken in by my father. I would give you anything I have and I have given you most of it. This club. Several months of the president position. My trust at every stage." He held my gaze. "And today you hurt the person I would do anything to protect. The person I nearly died for. I need you to understand that when I say I am done being your brother until you fix this, I mean it fully."

He stepped back. He did not look away from me while he did it.

"Sage called me crying," he said again. "My sister. Pregnant. Crying inconsolably. Because of you."

I said nothing. There was nothing I could say that would change what I had done, and Jaxon knew it, and we both knew he knew it.

"I am done being your brother," Jaxon said, "until you fix this."

He walked out after that in the direction of his office.

I sat on the stool and looked at the bar and did not move for a long time.