“You mean when he drove his car into the church while drunk? Then he proceeded to walk into the service and cuss everyone out? There’s a reason people call him Mad Mike.”

Jackson twitched. “Don’t call him that.”

“That’s what everyone calls him.”

“I fucking know that’s what everyone calls him,” he growled, making me take a step backward. He locked eyes with me, and unlike his father’s stare, I swore I saw a pained expression. As if he was fighting against his true urges. I took in a sharp breath. Always zoom in… “Just because everyone calls him that doesn’t mean you have to, too.”

“Sorry.” I saw how the nickname affected him, how it hurt him, and right away, I regretted saying it to him. I wondered how often he heard that name as he walked through town, and I wondered how often his heart skipped because of it.

“I know he’s an asshole, but everyone always brings up that one incident about him, and it’s labeled him forever. He was having a rough morning that day.”

“From what I hear, it was more than rough. He took a sledgehammer to the pews.” The same way Jackson took a sledgehammer to the car outside.

“It was a really rough morning,” Jackson replied.

“Jackson, come on,” I argued, annoyed by how he was defending that grown monster for his actions.

He tossed his hands up in defeat. “Yeah, okay, I get it. My dad’s a fucking asshole. If anyone knows that best, it’s me. Back then, he made a mistake—a big one—but the way the town turned on him was uncalled for. Hell, they tried to shut down his shop! They tried to burn it down. They tried to run us out of town. They protested on our lawn and called us things that you wouldn’t think would come out of the mouths of ‘saved’ people.”

“But what he did—”

“Was wrong, yeah, I get it. But he’s broken, and instead of showing up with that compassion bullshit this town is always pretending to have, they showed up with malice. They broke him even more and made him harder, colder. They painted us as these awful beasts and then got mad because we became the damn nightmares they created. I was just a kid. I watched these people, this town, attack my father and me because of a mistake.”

“I’m so sorry that happened, Jackson, I really am, but I don’t see why you and your father are so against my family. We weren’t the ones storming your place.” We hadn’t done a thing to the two. We took no part in the malice they received.

“Come on, you can’t be that stupid,” he said, seeming somewhat disappointed in my lack of understanding. “We all know who runs this town. Your family are the royals of Chester.”

“So…? They still weren’t the ones attacking you.”

He clasped his hands behind his neck and cocked an eyebrow. “Listen, princess, if your father or mother would’ve stood up in the church and said, ‘Stop,’ it would’ve all come to an end. They could’ve shown compassion for my father, who obviously wasn’t doing well, but they stayed quiet. They never spoke up for him. Or me.”

My stomach ached. “Why don’t you guys just leave? Why stay in a town that makes you feel so unwelcomed?”

He glanced back toward the shop where his father was still wandering around wasted, arguing with Alex and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “We got our reasons, and we ain’t gotta explain shit to no one,” he muttered. “Especially to a Harris.”

“Are you always this hard?”

He shut his eyes, and his bottom lip twitched a bit. “Yes.”

“If I hated this town as much as you two did, I’d move on.”

“To what? This is the only damn home we got.” He shifted his feet around. I saw the debate in him as he battled with himself about whether to open up to me or stay shut down. “I went to her, ya know—your mother,” he told me, his voice cold as stone.

“What?”

“I was sixteen when I went to your house. I remember it like it was yesterday. I knocked on the door and spoke to your mother, asking her for help. It was right after some assholes jumped me and beat the shit out of me as I was going to get groceries.”

“What did my mom say?”

“My dad made his choices; therefore, the townspeople are allowed to make theirs, too. She said she didn’t owe us a thing.”

No…that’s impossible.

“You’re lying. I know my mother can be hard sometimes, but she’s not evil. She wouldn’t say that. She’d never turn her back on someone like that,” I swore to him. “Especially not on a kid.”

“Whatever you say, princess. You keep believing in that precious queen of yours,” he barked. “I shouldn’t have expected you to understand shit, based on the people who raised you.”