Page 116 of Jax
Jax exhaled slowly and turned, his gaze heavy with something sharp and unspoken. “You think you’re the only one who’d burn the world down for love?” he asked. “You think I haven’t already lit the match?” He stepped forward, every movement deliberate but free of anger. “But if we move without intel, we could loseyou. And if we lose you, we lose her. Because you’re the one piece on this board they can’t predict. They don’t know that you’ve become a double agent. And that is power.”
I shook my head, tears falling unchecked. “That’s not enough. She’s not a game piece.”
“No,” he said. “She’s your reason. And you’re mine, now. Which is why I won’t let you run into a fire without knowing how to survive it.”
That broke me. Not the words, but how he said them; steady, quiet, unmoved. Like he’d already envisioned every possible ending, and hated them all. I looked up at him, shaking with fury and grief. “So what do we do, Jax? Just wait? Let the world keep turning while she disappears?”
“No,” he said, reaching for my cheek, his thumb brushing under my eye with a tenderness that didn’t belong in a world like this. “We trace the leak. We follow the trail. We'll make them regret ever touching her. And then, we bring her home.”
It wasn’t fear that made my breath catch. It was the ragged return of something I hadn’t felt since the moment that faceless voice echoed through the holding room. Hope. Not soft. Not whole. But alive.
He leaned in until our foreheads touched. “We’ll get her back, Stella,” he whispered. “But not if we lose you in the process.”
That was the hardest part. Survival required stillness. Love required waiting. And needing someone meant not throwing yourself into the fire just to prove you’re willing to burn.
I didn’t sleep.I lay in the dark, watching the ceiling, waiting for answers it couldn’t offer. Violet lingered behind my eyes, bright and blistering. Her sarcasm. Her softness. Her joy. She was the kind of girl who made armor out of whatever she had, even if it was just a sundress and a sharp tongue. And someone had her. Someone who didn’t deserve a single breath she’d ever taken.
I pressed my hand against my chest, trying to quiet the ache, but it moved like static through bone. A grief that stalked beneath my skin. When I couldn’t take the stillness anymore, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood, bare feet braced against the cold floor just to remember I was still here.
In the kitchen, I found a pen and a stack of paper by the fruit bowl. Jax’s, clearly. Neat. Lined. Perfect. That man could’ve been falling apart, and his handwriting would still look like it belonged in a textbook.
I sat, heart drumming a steady rhythm ofdo something,do something, and started to write. Not thoughts. Not feelings. Just fragments.
The smell of bleach and metal.
The constant hum of something mechanical.
Overhead flight paths, maybe an airport nearby.
The floor was concrete. Cold.
Voices with clipped vowels. No accents.
One called me “sweetheart” like it was a slur.
One said, “She’ll break. They always do.”
And someone laughed.
The pen snapped before I even realized how tightly I’d been gripping it. Ink smeared across my fingers, staining the skin with something too honest to scrub away. I folded the page, slipped it into the front pocket of my hoodie, and stood. It wasn’t much, but it was motion, and motion was better than stillness.
The hallway stretched ahead, not peaceful but suspended, like a breath held too long. I stopped outside his door, heart stuttering under the weight of what I was about to ask. Not forgiveness. Not instruction. Just the right to be seen without flinching.
One knock, soft as a breath.
He opened it almost instantly. Shirtless. Hair mussed. Gaze sharp with something that wasn’t sleep. Maybe he’d rested in fragments, the way he lived, half alert, half elsewhere, always watching.
“I understand that I can’t just run off without a plan. But if I don’t have a purpose, if I don’t have something to do to keep me focused, I think I’m going to lose my mind.” I said. The words didn’t feel bold, but they didn’t shake. That alone felt like a beginning.
Jax didn’t just hear them. He studied them. Measured the silence, the shape, the weight. Waited like always, seeing if I meant more than I knew.
When he answered, it was quiet, certain. “I hear you, and I get it. We can find a purpose for you, but you have to follow my lead. That’s the only way we can do this together.”
Together. The word moved through me like heat finding its home.
I stepped inside. He didn’t question it. Just closed the door like muscle memory, like it wasn’t intrusion but shift. I didn’t sit or speak. I stood still, hoodie sleeves twisted in my fists, nerves lighting under my skin. He watched me the way only Jax could, patient, steady, the kind of gaze that stripped you without laying a hand.
Then he moved to the table, pulled out a chair, and motioned me to sit. “So, let’s talk about how we can work together on this. What I need right now is information. Anything you can remember, even if you think it’s unimportant, let’s get it all on the table.”
