Page 22 of Jax
She stepped inside behind me, her jaw tight, breath sharp and shallow. Not from fear. Not anymore. That fire I saw out by the trees hadn’t gone out. It had just changed temperature. Settled into something lower. Meaner. Like coals banked beneath her skin.
We stepped into the front corridor, where shadows stretched long across the floor. Her stride lengthened like distance might fix things, but she didn’t look back. Refused to give me the satisfaction. Smart.
Still, I tracked the slope of her spine, the flush rising up her neck, the tension carved into her shoulders. I shouldn’t have noticed. Shouldn’t have cared. But my hands remembered the shape of her waist. The sound she made when she missed my ribs with that elbow. The fight she didn’t actually want to win.
I clenched my jaw and kept walking, trying to shake it off. She wasn’t supposed to matter. But I could still feel her breath on my skin.
I let the silence stretch, louder than anything I could have said, unsure whether I was trying to quiet her or myself.
She stopped in the foyer, arms stiff, chin high. Defiant in a way that didn’t read like rebellion. It read like survival.
And damn if that didn’t land harder than I wanted it to.
I turned to face her. Slow. Deliberate. My boots silent on hardwood I could cross blindfolded. She didn’t back down. She didn’t lower her gaze. That part of her, the part that refused to flinch, that’s what caught me.
That’s what always fucking caught me.
“I don’t care what kind of danger you think you’re running from,” I said, voice low, calm. Combat-calm. The kind you use when people start bleeding and panic’s a luxury you can’t afford.
She didn’t move. Just held my stare like it owed her something.
“Whatever it is, I promise you that you are safer here in this house than anywhere you could run too, out there. But if youdorun again, Stella?”
I stepped in closer. Close enough that I could smell cedar, sweat, and the soft undertone of her skin that hadn’t left me since the porch.
“You’re not going to like what happens next.” It wasn’t a threat. It was data. A forecast drawn from observable variables—her fight response, fatigue levels, the dilation of her pupils when I touched her, the tremor in her breath. Not fear. Adrenaline. She was running on instinct. But instinct lies. The body tells truths the mind won’t name. Like how hers didn’t pull away. It reacted. My grip hadn’t just contained her; it had ignited something. And some long-buried part of me, sealed under layers of protocol and restraint, recognized that spark. Liked it. Wanted to study it. Wanted it in my hands.
She didn’t speak. Just held my stare like a bluff she wasn’t sure she could carry. And I didn’t touch her again. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I’d already done the math. Proximity plus volatility doesn’t equal calm. If I reached for her, I wouldn’t stop at control. And I don’t forget who I am.
So I turned. Not because I’d won, but because staying meant becoming the version of myself I'd spent years burying. The one who forgets where the line lives between need and damage. Between wanting and ruining.
And I knew exactly what I was capable of if I stopped choosing the difference.
6
Jax
My jaw still ached,not from the brief altercation, but from the moment her body had slammed into mine and I hadn’t let go. And from the second I wrapped my arm around her waist and forgot to release her. There was a breath—half of one—when everything blurred. The perimeter. The plan. The goddamn job. Gone. All I knew was the sound she made when I pinned her. That raw, breathless growl, part fury, part defiance. The way she’d twisted in my grip like she didn’t care who she broke open, even if it was me. Wild. Cornered. Dangerous. And not once did she ask for permission.
That’s what fucked me up the most. She wasn’t mine. But every nerve in my body disagreed.
I headed for the weapons room without thinking, driven by a pressure I didn’t want to name. The bag was right where I left it, half-unzipped on the shelf. One pocket bulged with a familiar coil of rope—well-worn, clean, balanced in my palm like memory. I hadn’t planned to use it. Not really. But I’d known the second I pulled her off that fence that something in me would need release. Energy like that doesn’t fade. It bleeds out somewhere.
“Don’t tell me you’re leaving.”
Niko’s honed voice caught me off guard, and I froze for a moment. He wasn’t accusing me. Not yet. He was just standing behind me, giving the silence a chance to tell on me first.
I didn’t turn. Just adjusted the strap across my shoulder and kept walking, the weight of the bag pressing straight into the tension already burning in my ribs. Of course he followed. His steps were soft but unshakable, the kind that weren’t trying to block your path. They were trying to get you to reconsider it.
“You gonna tell me what the hell that was?”
I stopped because I knew I wouldn’t get past this issue without confronting it. I turned slowly, pulse thick behind my teeth. “What do you think it was?”
My voice came out too level. Too contained for the mess I felt in my chest.
Niko folded his arms. “Don’t play dumb, Jax. Youlether run.”
“She never made it past the inner perimeter,” I snapped back, too quickly.
