Page 170 of Jax
He lay back and took me with him. We stretched across the bed, bodies tucked in perfect symmetry. I didn’t resist. I melted into it. My legs tangled with his. My hand found his chest. His fingers moved through my hair again with the same quiet rhythm.
Silence spun through the room like silk—soft, strong, and real. Every breath between us wove something deeper, something lasting. It wasn’t the end. It was a breath held between moments. A hush before light returns. That sliver of time when everything is still and nothing needs fixing.
Neither of us spoke. The quiet was already saying everything: belonging, promise, peace. And when sleep finally came, it didn’t feel like letting go. It felt like falling into something warmer than rest. Not escape. Not retreat. Just surrender.
Still, before I drifted, I traced his chest with slow fingers, needing the tether. Needing him solid and there and mine.
I whispered his name like a truth I could sleep inside.
His hand paused in my hair.
“Yeah, wicked girl?”
I hesitated, not from doubt, but because some things, once spoken, are sacred. Binding. Permanent.
“Thank you,” I breathed. “For seeing me, and never looking away. For never making me feel like I had to hide.” He pressed a kiss to the top of my head, then another to the curve of my temple. His voice was quiet, raw. “Thank you for letting me. You gave me something I didn’t know I was missing.”
Tears pricked sharp and sudden, not because I was broken, but because for once I wasn’t invisible. He saw all of me, and it was almost too much to hold. I shifted to face him, our noses almost touching. I ran my fingers along the line of his jaw, memorizing the texture of stubble, the heat of his skin, the certainty in his eyes.
“What do we do now?” I asked, the words barely louder than breath.
He smiled, not a grin, not smugness. Just soft. Just real.
“Now? We live. We love. We figure it out, one day at a time. No more masks. No more running.”
I nodded, pressing my forehead to his, letting our breaths merge.
“I want that. With you. Just like this.”
“Then sleep,” he murmured. “Because tomorrow, we build it. Whatever it is, we’ll build it together.”
So I let go, not just of grief, but of the lie I’d carried for too long. That I had to hold everything by myself. I exhaled armor I’d mistaken for skin, unclenched fists I didn’t know were clenched, and in that space between breaths, I gave him what I’d never given to anyone else—my stillness. Not because I needed saving, but because I finally believed he wouldn’t look away from what he saw.
He didn’t hold me like I was fragile. He held me like I was sacred. Not with control, not with caution, but with reverence, like my wreckage wasn’t something to fix, but something to memorize. My cracks weren’t flaws. They were constellations. Not a problem to solve, but a story worth reading again. He didn’t ask for compliance. He asked for nothing. He just stayed, his presence permission enough. And in the hush of that moment, something opened. Not the kind of peace that waits for healing, but the kind that comes when someone sees your ruin and still reaches for your hand.
The storm passed without thunder. The ache in my chest eased, the static in my head softened, and though the weight of memory lingered, it no longer threatened to split me. He didn’t speak or shift. He just stayed. Steady. Present.
Sleep didn’t descend all at once. It crept in slowly, wrapping around me like a returning tide. And somewhere in the quiet between one breath and the next, a truth settled low in my chest. Not soft. Not whispered. Certain.
He didn’t save me.
He honored me.
He stood inside the wreckage, not with answers or plans, but with the structure to help me rebuild. He didn’t sweep the damage away, or reshape me into something easier to hold. He stood firm as the scaffolding I’d built to survive fell piece by piece. He didn’t catch me to stop the fall; he stayed so I wouldn’t have to land alone.
And there, in that stillness, I understood a kind of love no one ever taught me to expect. The kind that doesn’t arrive in triumph, but kneels beside your ruin with dirt under its nails and says, I’ll wait here. And when you rise, it will be in the image you choose, not the one the world demanded you become.
Held in the certainty of him, with his breath warm against my back, his hands curved gently around me, I realized I wasn’t broken or in need of saving. I was simply seen. Not edited, not managed, not diminished into something easier to hold. Just known. And in that quiet truth, I understood that it was enough. I had never needed a hero, only someone willing to stay long enough to witness all of me without turning away.
I had that now. Not as a shield or a solution, but as a mirror—clear and steady—reflecting the woman I had fought to become. He didn’t carry my grief, but he held the space where I could lay it down. He didn’t fill my silence, but waited quietly within it. He didn’t drag me from the fire. He stood beside me while I walked through the heat on my terms. When I came out on the other side, he was there. Not because he led me. Because he believed I would make it.
This wasn’t a love I minimized, softened, or rewrote to fit someone else’s comfort.
It was the kind I lived, with breath and body and bare, burning truth.
With him. For me.
It was messy. God, it was going to be messy. There would be sharp words and jagged edges, nights when panic scrapedme raw, mornings when he’d drown himself in equations to make sense of the chaos I carried. But he wouldn’t leave. And I wouldn’t run. Where my fire met his steel, something new had been forged—stronger, stranger, and infinitely more ours.
