Surreptitious (London) (15 page)

Chapter twenty-three

Taylor

We were lying in my Jackson’s bed after another night of him demonstrating just
how
much stamina he had. We had sex against his bedroom door as soon as he got back from work. We had sex in the shower twenty minutes after. We had sex when we got into bed and then he spoilt me by getting me off with his fingers and his mouth before I declared that I just couldn’t physically take anymore! I was spent!

I’d been thinking a lot over the previous week about the conversation we had when we were first together and I couldn’t help but feel frustrated by the fact that I could be deliriously happy, just the one thing left to deal with. I didn’t know how, I just knew he needed to
tell
me!! Sometimes you just
needed
to be serious, and I was beginning to think that Jax didn’t know the meaning of the damn word.

I
had a feeling that it was time to address the issue, face it head on and just try and be there for him either way. It didn’t exact go as planned, but shit…never would have expected what he said. I lay next to him for a few minutes in silence, then just blurted...

“Jax, baby...you need to tell me what you’re hiding. We’ve had such a great time lately, but anytime we’re getting into a serious discussion, you just shut down on me and I hate it.
Or you distract me with sex! Which okay, I obviously don’t hate! But please tell me what’s wrong.” His body turned to stone against mine and as usual when I brought anything like that up, the temperature of the room plummeted instantly.

Something was different then though. He hesitated. Normally he’d just shut me down and either walk away or distract me with sex. Don’t get me wrong, he usually chose to distract me with sex and obviously I did
not
mind that, but the longer we were together, the more it was eating at me.

He took a huge breath, held it for a few beats and let it out shakily before stating...

“It was me.” He said…and then stopped.
Um?What?...

“
Err…Sorry babe you’ve lost me...what was you?” I asked

“The house fire. Tracy and Dave,
precious old mum and dad
. I started it, I killed them, I wanted to kill them, I fucking
planned
to kill them”
Holy shit. Oh fuck. Oh shit shit...SHIT. It was worse than I thought!! I was in bed with a fucking murderer?!

I lay there with my arm resting across his torso, although
I couldn’t say I was actually resting being as I felt like my entire world was crashing down around me. How could I possibly be in love with a fucking murderer? My whole body ached I was wound up that tight but his arm squeezed me tighter so I couldn’t move away from him. My mind was just blank; my only thought being, literally...

OH SHIT.

I wriggled my arms and tried to push away from him, I needed air, I needed a shot of tequila, I need a smoke (even though I’d never touched the fucking things), I needed Harp and Jase, or just fucking one of them would do. Shit I didn’t know what I fucking needed but I definitely needed to get away from Jax...and fast. He squeezed me even tighter so I couldn’t move at all and leant down to whisper in my ear

“Babe, fuck...just give me like 5 minutes ok, you gotta hear me out.” I stilled, so he continued in a stronger, more determined voice.

“These were not good people babe, these were not even fucking bad people, they were downright the motherfucking scum of the earth. Drugs babe, serious shit, not light stuff, heavy as fucking anything, I’m talking Class A shit babe, they sold it, smoked it, snorted it, fucking injected it and not just for themselves babe, serious as fuck, they did that shit TO MY FUCKING BROTHERS. Think about this, you get Mase now, funny as fuck, polite, definite good guy and man, that kid is far too good looking for his own good yet he don’t use it to get himself any. Fuck, I ain’t got nothin’ on that kid, swear to god if there was ever gonna be anyone who ran the entire world, you know it as well as I do, that kid would be first in the running. Ruben is obviously younger, but he’s clever as fuck, ain’t never seen anything like it, kids got brains and they sure as shit didn’t come from those whacked out fuckers that made us. He’s got ‘em ‘cause he works damn hard and I fucking taught him that.” I really didn’t see what any of this had to do with the fact that he was a god damned murderer but he continued anyway.

“Baby girl, no word of a lie, when I came back and found those bastards had fucked up
my fucking brothers
, worse than the shit they tried, and fucking failed, to do to me I swear I lost my god damned mind. Near beat the shit out of Dave the second I walked into that fucking hell-hole they called ‘home’. Honestly, fuck, those kids were skinny...and I mean
seriously fucking skinny,
looked like they hadn’t eaten in
years.
fourteen and fifteen year old boys, looking more like they’re just walking skeletons. Not like teenage lads who should be out kicking a ball and doing shit that actually shouldn’t be but always are...doing with their mates. Instead they’re being
forced
to make fucking drug runs for good for nothing assholes who didn’t think anything of giving them a god damn kick-in if they got screwed over by their ‘customers’. How they ever expected anything more from fucking teenage boys who barely had enough strength to hold their own fucking heads up I’ll never understand...but then these were seriously whacked-out fuckers so I don’t understand any of the shit they did. Only decent thing those bastards ever did was make sure I had brothers. Good brothers. Kids who knew, no matter what they were forced to do, they knew it was wrong, they knew they needed to get right and when I gave them the opportunity they fucking jumped at it.”

He paused, looked down at me and wiped his thumb across the underside of one eye to stem the flow of tears, but it really was just a wasted effort being as I couldn’t stop thinking about poor Mase and Ruben. Who the fuck would do that to kids, and why the
fuck
didn’t anyone help them earlier?!

“You might not like it, understand it, or even be able to live with it. But I had no choice
babe…there are systems, people, stuck up fuckers working for other stuck up fuckers who are meant to protect those kids and they fucking didn’t. I wasn’t wasting time fighting through red-tape and deadlines and any other of that crap. They needed to be gone, it was my job to do it, and so I did it. I don’t regret it, best decision I ever made, Mase and Ruben were good kids because I was there to teach them, then I left but as soon as I came back I fucking taught them how to be good, strong, reliable men too and they would not have turned out that way if those scumbags were left ‘looking after them’ for a god damn single second longer than they were.”

When he finished speaking I stared into his eyes trying to comprehend all the information he’d just given me in one go when trying to extract any details from him is normally like trying to draw blood from a freaking s
tone! I couldn’t remember at that moment when I last took a breath and my lungs were burning but I still just stared. I didn’t move, didn’t blink and
still
didn’t take a breath.

Eventually he sighed heavily, rolled to one side and sat up, draping his legs over the side of the bed. I watched the muscles in his back ripple as he moved but it
his actions didn’t penetrate. Nothing did. How could I live with a murderer?

I got that his childhood was fucked up, I got that he had to save his brothers, I even got that he beat the shit out of his dad...
Dave.
Urgh. But he was still wrong. He should have gone to the police, he should have phoned social services, he should have done something...
anything...
to get those kids out of that house...
legally!!

Millions of thoughts were racing through my head but most of all; I kept thinking...could I really live without him now? He was the reason I came back to myself. He was the reason I was really...
truly
happy, and he was the reason that I was an even better person overall. Even compared to before my parents died, I preferred the ‘new me’.

Shit.
No...I decided. No I couldn’t live without him. He’s was my rock. But before I told him anything, I asked quietly...

“How did you get away with it Jax?”
I whispered and then I watched as his shoulders rose and fell with each deep breath he took. Then he rolled them backwards and answered...

“I did it smart. It wasn’t a split second decision. I told Mase to take Ruben, and go and stay at a friend’s house. Some kid who lived down the street. His parents were scumbags too, but the lazy kind, not the fucked-up kind. Then I drove near to the house, parked a few streets away, just in case ya know? I ran through back gardens and alleyways, crouched behind bushes and when I made it to their house, I walked in through the back door and they were long since passed out. I lit Dave’s pipe, chucked it on the sofa and made sure that fucker was blazin’ before I turned and walked straight back out the door. I never looked back. Not. Once.”

“Accidental death, that’s what the police said. Stupid motherfucker left his pipe burning before he went to sleep.” He shook his head and barked out a harsh laugh, then said...”dangerous shit that is. People should be more careful.”

My body jerked in reaction to his sarcastic, ill-timed, comment but I still didn’t respond. How could I? The man I loved with everything I had, was still a fucking murderer. Nothing I could do would change that and I felt sick to the stomach. I broke out in a sheen of sweat and the more I thought about it, the more my body was reacting for me. I was trembling violently and I couldn’t control myself, at
all.

I said he was dangerous, I felt it, I
lived
it...but I never thought it would be that bad. As I was attempting to recover, he went further...

“Ya know, when I left and all that shit happened to me, I didn’t complain, I fought like a dog to survive, and when I found Jonah, or well...Jonah found me, I knew, it was fuckin’ fate. Never believed in that shit before, but he was the best damn thing ever to happen to me...until you. He gave me a home, he gave me money, he gave
me support, food, clean clothes... everything I’d never had. And when he died, he left everything to me, his farm, his savings, and that guy...fuck man, he slaved everyday that I knew him, worked the jobs of about twenty men on that farm. Morning ‘til night, every fucking day. Then he dies, natural causes, old age, nothing wrong with him, just his time. He didn’t have any family, no friends, nothing, so he left it all to me. The crazy bastard, Jesus, so fuckin’ crazy, owned a £730,000 farm which would have been enough to set me up good yeah? But no, I come to find out, he’s got nearly three million in savings, bonds, accounts. Fuck, money in every place you can imagine. Old guy, living by himself, solitary, world filled with land, animals and one old rusty tractor, when he could have bloody lived an easy life. More than an easy life, a life of luxury, a life in which he didn’t have to get up at the ass-crack of dawn and break his back until nightfall. He never said. Never told me he had money, or where he had it from.”

I thought he was finished speaking but he spoke again in a more even voice.

“Babe seriously. This guy, one of the best, if not
the
best guy ever. Other than my brothers, and now you, he was the only person I’ve
ever
loved. You know what he said to me when I came round from my fever? I snapped at him, thinking that everyone I’d ever known in my life had fucked me over somehow, always on the take. So I asked him what the fuck he wanted from me and he said...’you sit down boy, before you fall down. Don’t know what’s happened to you. Don’t want to know, can’t look back, always gotta look forward. You need a place to stay? You stay here. I’ll put you up, I’ll put food in your belly and you can earn it. You can work with me, I ain’t what I used to be, could use a spare pair of hands.’...threw it out there as if it was nothin’ to him when a random, beaten, bruised, skinny teenage boy turns up on his property.” I was listening intently, wanting to believe that there was hope.

“Few years after, I’d l
earnt that he meant what he said ya know? Food like I ain’t never tasted, warm bed, clean sheets...and fuck yeah he made me work for it, he was a slave driver! But I would have done more, if he needed it. He was one of the good ones, believed in God, kept a picture of his wife right next to his bed, even though she’d been dead fifteen years, heart attack. So this one night, we’re sittin’ in front of the TV at like, midnight or somethin’...when he stands up, tells me he’s hitting the hay...but before he goes, he stands over me, put his hand on my shoulder, squeezed lightly and said ‘I figured you’d gone through your hell son, all those years ago, but I’ll tell ya, god sent me a gift the day you turned up here. Proud of you kid, hard-worker, made to be that way, just like me. You’ve had your hell, but can’t look back, gotta look forward. You make the most out of what god’s handed you now, because it’s about time you got your piece of heaven. Got all the love in the world for you son. Wish God would’a thought of it earlier, sending you to me, but he has his reasons, n’ I got a feelin’ that’s to do with those brothers of yours. You gotta go back for them one day kid.’ Then he shuffled off to bed. Woke up the next morning, he ain’t at the table, he ain’t in the fields...died. That night, in his sleep…thinkin’ on it now, he knew before he slept that night, knew he weren’t gonna wake up that mornin’ and wanted to use his words for me.”