Free Jagger: A Caldwell Brothers Novel by Chelsea Camaron, Mj Fields Page B

he gives me, making sure my name is a bunch of lines and not legible. Then he leaves, and I go back to the open drawers of the dresser.
    Half of me wants to shove everything back in my bag and go home, not that I have a home anymore. I’m not of age, my only parent is dead—most likely from me—and if I go back, I have to tell them I drugged him.
    Jagger said he would be back. The stronger half of me, the part of me that can’t stop thinking of the tattooed hero, wants to sit tight and wait to find out what Jagger knows.
    What if this Johnny person was just messing with him and my father is alive? If I come home now after being gone for so many days, he will certainly kill me.
    Closing the drawers, I go back over to my food. I open the lid and move the items around on the plate, my appetite gone. Too many questions plague me, and anxiety has my stomach doing somersaults inside.
    I curl into myself on the couch and decide my only option for the time being is to wait. Fear of the unknown is still challenging me, but for now, I have had four days without someone hitting me. I shouldn’t trust so easily. Something in Jagger screams to me he’s good. Something pulls me to him in a way I thought could only be found in books.
    Jagger Caldwell will come back, and I will wait for him. I have to believe there will be good for me. Jagger is that good.

Chapter 11
Jagger
    The urge to comfort her sent my lips to her forehead, and that one gesture, one to comfort her, instantly became something more.
    Comfort, protect, claim…
    I hope it comforted her, ’cause it made shit below my waist less than comfortable in 2.2 seconds. Protect comes next, but I couldn’t even look back because I knew that’s not what I would do. Claim was third on my list of things to do, and I can’t do that for three days, but I fully intend to.
    I stop in front of the gym and hop out, using my key to get in. Seeing the light on in Shaw’s office, I walk to it, then push the door open, and Kid and Shaw look up at me.
    “What the hell are you doing here?” Shaw growls at me as I see Kid shove syringes and little vials into a cooler.
    “What the hell is going on?” I ask.
    Kid stands up and nods to Shaw. “You need to do this now.” He looks at me and nods as he walks past and out the door.
    “Sit down, boy,” Shaw grumbles at me, and I do as I am told.
    I sit in the silver metal chair and lean forward. “What’s going on?”
    “First, you tell me what you’re doing here.”
    I look at him, really look. His eyes have a yellow tint to them, and his skin has a gray shade. I have seen that coloring before. I have been so caught up in Tatiana all these months, I haven’t even seen what has been going on right in front of my face. The coughing, the puking, the weight loss, the fatigue. It all slams into me like a sucker punch to the gut. Cancer.
    “You sick?”
    “I said you first,” he grumbles as he grabs a half-burned-out Swisher Sweet and his Zippo. “Spill it, kid,” he says as he lights it up.
    “The girl’s father is dead. I got called down by Johnny to answer some questions. Didn’t want to tell you over the phone, but I need an alibi that doesn’t involve the fight tonight.”
    “You was here, training.” He exhales the sweet-smelling smoke.
    “Good, now your turn.”
    “Dying.” He looks me in the eyes. “Nothing can be done. Wasn’t gonna tell ya until—”
    “You’re what?”
    “Got the cancer, kid.” He sucks in another drag. “Nothing can be done.”
    Fuck! Not this shit again.
    “How ’bout you quit smoking?”
    “How ’bout you shut the hell up and let me go in peace?”
    His eyes are getting heavy, so I know whatever Kid gave him is kicking in.
    “You better go,” he says as he crushes the cigar out in the ashtray. “We’ll talk later.”
    “This is more important,” I mumble.
    “Look, I never had kids, but I got you, and I swore an oath to a friend that I’d look after Kid. You and him is all I