Page 118 of Jax
I nodded.
“This is grounding,” I said gently. “Not restraint. You’ll be clothed, aware, in control. I’ll narrate every move. You can stop at any time. You’re free to shift. I just want to help your brain find your body again.”
She didn’t nod, didn’t speak. But after a pause, she took a breath that wasn’t shaped like panic. That was enough.
I climbed onto the bed behind her, ropes draped over my arm. My knees sank into the mattress, slow, even, measured. Like pulling tension from the air and giving it shape.
“I’m going to start with your arms,” I said. “Crossed over your chest. Like an embrace, only made of jute. You’ll be able to move, but the contact creates sensory pressure. That helps the vagus nerve send safety signals to your brain. We call it proprioceptive input.”
She let out a faint breath of something like laughter. “Of course we do.”
“Brains like yours, ones that have been through intense trauma, especially new trauma, respond better to feedback loops than comfort,” I said as I guided her arms into place. “I could tell you that you’re safe. But that’s not the language your body speaks. This is.”
I passed the first loop over her forearms, gently crossing them above her ribs, the strands snug but forgiving. Then I wrapped the line across her back and under her biceps, framing her shoulders. Her breath hitched as the contact settled.
“This isn’t about stillness,” I said. “It’s about knowing you exist. Knowing your shape. Trauma makes people forget where they stop and the world starts.”
She didn’t reply, but her spine eased a degree closer to rest. To trust.
The rope moved between us like a language, each knot a sentence, each pass a breath. I drew it across her collarbones, anchoring broad bands around her chest and ribs. Not for pressure. For clarity.
“You’re doing well,” I murmured. “Your pulse has slowed. Your cortisol’s resetting. That’s your brain learning it doesn’t have to run.”
Her fingers twitched beneath the rope.
Then, quieter, “You’re not failing her by surviving.”
Her head dropped forward, hair falling to veil her face. She didn’t cry. She just breathed. And that was everything.
I brought the rope down in mirrored patterns, looping under her sternum, around her waist in figure-eights. Her body adjusted to meet it, small shifts, quiet acquiescence. Her back brushed my chest. Her head hovered near my shoulder.
“This is a pattern,” I said, letting the words land. “Not a trap. There’s no punishment here. Only design. And design,” I added, lowering my voice, “is just the architecture of choice.”
She didn’t answer at first. The silence wasn’t heavy, just full, like her body was recalibrating around the shape of truth.
Then, barely a breath, “I feel… like I’m in my body again.”
I smiled, soft and certain. “That’s because you are.”
I let my hands rest at her hips, not claiming, just anchoring. Like a frame around a painting, not to contain it, but to elevate it.
“Your fear isn’t irrational,” I said gently. “But it is unsustainable. If we’re going to out-think the people who took her, we have to outlast their chaos. That starts here. With regulation. With clarity. With knowing what’s real.”
“Jax?” she asked, voice rough and frayed.
“Yes?”
“I’m scared she’s not alive.”
My jaw flexed. I closed my eyes. “Fear doesn’t need to be disproven to be survived,” I said. “It just needs to be witnessed, and then out-planned, methodically, until it can’t win.”
Her breathing stayed shallow, but the panic had dulled to something quieter, like an alarm still blinking after the danger had passed. Not calm. Not resolution. But motion. And that was enough.
“I don’t need you calm,” I said as I tucked the knot beside her hip, low and deliberate. “I just need you regulated. That’s not the same. Calm is silence. Regulation is a signal. You’re still scared. But now your body knows it can feel that without drowning.”
She made a sound then, rough, warm, not quite a sob, but something cracked open. Like a dam yielding on purpose. When her eyes opened, they dropped to the pattern across her chest; the softness holding her arms. Her lips parted on an exhale, and her head tilted, not from confusion. From reverence.
“This is the first time I’ve felt… here,” she whispered, voice rasped with truth. “Not trying to disappear. Not trying to be somewhere else.”
