Page 130 of Jax
I raised an eyebrow. “You still finding that stuff in your boots?”
“Boots, beard, bed,” he muttered. “You ever woken up with glitter in your molars, Jax?”
“Can’t say I have. But suddenly, I feel very lucky.”
Bellamy leaned across him to steal a sip of his coffee. He didn’t stop her. Didn’t even try. Just gave me a look that said: you see what I’m dealing with? And yeah, I did. And honestly? I respected it.
We were half a breath into laughing when it came: a knock. Sharp. Precise. Three short. A pause. Three short. Another pause. One long.
The air in the room dropped ten degrees.
Every man in the house froze on instinct. The kind of full-body stillness that only happens when your nervous system recognizes something threatening in the shape of a sound. Stella stopped beside me, her fingers curling into the hem of my shirt like the fabric might anchor her. Her mouth parted. Her breath caught. She didn’t speak.
“That’s Quinn,” I said, already moving.
The humor drained out of the morning like light through a crack, slow and irreversible. Banter was gone. In its place, a boundary drawn in sand, and whatever waited past it wasn’t friendly.
The knock echoed again. Three short. One long. Quiet, but coded, and that made it worse. “That’sdefinitelyQuinn,” I repeated, rising from the couch. The door opened before I couldfeel whatever I was supposed to. That came later. I’d always logged first, sights, sounds, variables. Emotion could wait.
Quinn stood on the porch holding a beaten-up clipboard, looking like he hadn’t slept in days or cared since yesterday. It was his eyes that did it. Bloodshot. Calculating. They swept the room with brutal accuracy, catching every shift in weight, every breath, every glance, like he was solving for threat before anyone spoke.
“We need to talk,” he said. Flat. Even. For Quinn, it was practically shouting.
“Coffee first,” Maddy muttered, breezing past with her sleeves shoved up like armor. “Then trauma.”
Something flickered at the edge of Quinn’s mouth. Not quite a smile, but close. I counted it anyway.
The room shifted as Quinn entered, and like a broken circuit humming back to life, the team fell into place. Niko moved to the window, arms crossed, back so rigid it made mine ache in sympathy. Carrick dropped into the armchair with that calculated sprawl he only used when he was one inch from doing damage. Bellamy curled into him like a match pressed to flame, her gaze fixed on Quinn expectantly. Deacon didn’t sit. Didn’t lean. He hovered in the archway, silent and immovable, a sentinel made of stillness. Sully settled on the floor, elbows on his knees, his usual levity stripped clean, and that, more than anything, signaled that the storm had hit.
And then there was Stella.
She moved like a pressure front, slow, certain, and dangerous in ways most people wouldn’t recognize until it was too late. She sat beside me, outwardly still as stone, but I could sense the vibration of her soul like a tuning fork. Her thigh touched mine, warm and steady, and I didn’t realize how much I needed that until my body exhaled.
She didn’t speak. Didn’t blink. Her hands stayed folded in her lap, unmoving, while her pulse thudded hard at the base of her throat. I logged it without meaning to. Not fear. She was bracing, and that was always worse. People brace before impact. Before breaching a door. Before bullets split Kevlar. I knew that stance. I’d worn it. And now I saw it in her, ticking like a clock.
Quinn scanned the room, nodded once, and said, “Good. You’re all here.”
Carrick arched a brow, dry as Kansas dust. “Was there a chance we wouldn’t be?”
“I’ve stopped assuming anything,” Quinn said, voice flat enough to rub stone.
Maddy returned with a tray and handed him a mug like this was just a simple house call. He didn’t look at her, but the moment his fingers curled around the ceramic, his shoulders dropped by a degree or two. I logged that too.
He took a sip. Then another. Then looked directly at Stella. “I need to hear it,” he said. “All of it. From you.”
Stella nodded, exhaled once, and said, “Okay.” Just like that, the furniture became benches, the walls a courtroom, and she was the witness, sworn in by something older than law.
Quinn dropped the clipboard onto the coffee table. “Start from the moment you got to the station, and this time, don’t leaveanythingout.”
Stella didn’t flinch. Didn’t stall or shrink. She drew in a breath like she was stepping into snow, and began.
She recounted to Quinn the same story that she had told me and the rest of the guys. About being alone in the interrogation room. About the voice coming over the PA system. Being told that Violet had been taken, and what they expected her to do; how they expected her to betray the sanctity of our compound of misfits and found family.
To her credit, her voice never wavered. I unconsciously kept track of her heart rate and breathing cycle, so I could tell how much stress she was under, reliving this memory again. I didn’t interrupt, just slid my hand over heres, slow and steady. Let her feel my presence like an anchor. She gave me a silent squeeze, but didn’t stop until she was done.
When she had finished her story, Quinn exhaled through his nose, the sound low and grim. “That’s why the recording was deleted,” he said.
Stella blinked. “What?”
