Page 40 of Jax
I tried to toss back something clever. Shrug it off. But the words tangled in my mouth as if they were already caught in rope. It wasn’t a joke. And I didn’t want to ask.
I wanted to know. And that scared me more than anything else.
10
Stella
I stole his rope.Not because I needed it, but because I wanted to. I wanted him to feel it, to know it was me. No matter how many rules they stacked around me like bricks, I still knew how to climb. It wasn’t about strategy. I took it for spite. For the weight. For the curl of rebellion still coiled in my spine, alive and ready, like a sleeping animal. I wound the rope around my waist beneath my sweatshirt, tucking the ends flat against my skin. I wanted it to leave a mark. I wanted to feel it when I ran. Jax would notice, and that was the point.
The tiny screwdriver tucked under the wire edge of my bra had been a lucky find in the workshop; I’d grabbed it when Jax wasn’t looking. I’d never tried to pick a lock, but maybe this would give me an edge.
Every breath scraped bone. My ribs ached from holding everything in.
I sat on the edge of the bed, spine locked, bare toes pressed to the floor. Still. Silent. Listening for patterns. Counting the space between creaks in the wall and the wind’s shifting pace against the eaves. Everyone was asleep. I’d waited long enough—past Sully’s sweep, past the thud of Deacon’s boots on theporch, past the soft shuffle of someone kicking off their shoes by the couch. Maddy, probably. I knew their rhythm now. Knew it like a hymn.
He said there’d be consequences. But I couldn’t stay. Not with Violet still out there. I couldn’t lie still knowing she might be begging for help with my name on her mouth.
So I made an effigy of myself lying in the bed, blanket pulled up high, a pillow molded beneath it into something vaguely human. Limbs tucked in tight. It wouldn’t pass anything but the most cursory of glances, but it might buy me a few minutes.
The moonlight spilled in through the window in cold silver angles, slicing the dark into clean lines. I’d cracked the curtain just enough to reach the latch. My fingers moved without thought, slipping the screwdriver into place, giving it a slow twist. The mechanism clicked, a clean little sigh of metal. I eased the window open inch by inch. No creak. No protest. Just air.
The night pressed against my face—hot, heavy, unavoidable. I let it smother the fear, let it turn sweat into resolve. One leg through. Then the other. I landed in a crouch, feet buried in gravel, knees bent, hands braced. The stones cut through my socks, but not my focus.
I ran. Into the dark. Toward the sliver of woods curling around the property, like it had always been waiting for me. I stayed low. Breath tight. Shoulders hunched. The rope around my ribs pressed with every step—weight, reminder, promise. I didn’t look back. Looking back made noise. Made ghosts. Made failure.
I’d mapped the route in silence—every gap in the fence, every camera blind spot, every root that strained against chain-link like it wanted out just as bad. I’d trained with fake stretches, dropped keys, clumsy stumbles. I rehearsed until the ground remembered me.
This wasn’t panic; it was precision. I wasn’t running away. I was running toward something.
The trees opened for me like they knew I wasn’t supposed to be there. Their movement felt less wind-stirred and more like deliberate retreat, parting not from nature but from instinct, shifting aside for recklessness in a way that sent a chill down my spine. They leaned apart with the slow groan of old wood and older warnings, and I moved through them like I belonged to the dark. My skin buzzed with adrenaline, spine pulled tight, every nerve sharpened to the pitch of survival. I didn’t look back. Didn’t hear anything but my own pulse roaring behind my eyes.
Hope was a liability. It slowed you down. Made you second-guess the noise behind you. Made you hesitate when your foot hit a root. Hope softened edges, dulled instincts, and soft girls didn’t make it out of places like this. So I kept my eyes forward, and let the dark move through me until it felt like muscle memory.
The path I’d rehearsed in my head stretched ahead of me—familiar, terrible, mine. I slipped off the gravel and into the narrow belt of trees that circled the compound, lungs drawing in the moss-heavy air until it burned. I welcomed it. Let it strip the last remnants of comfort from my chest and harden what remained. I didn’t want comfort. I wantedout.
My socks whispered across the forest floor, gliding over pine needles and damp leaves without a sound. I ducked low beneath a heavy branch, breath controlled as I searched for the fence, just past the tree with the split trunk, just beyond the stone remnants of something that used to matter. I pressed harder into the run, silent and sharp beneath the cover of trees. The rope beneath my sweatshirt scraped with every stride, friction blooming against my waist like a secret I couldn’t afford to keep. Jax’s scent still clung to the fibers—smoke, restraint, somethingraw and unwanted—and it curled around me like memory, familiar in the worst way.
Five more steps. Then four. The broken fence came into view, half-hidden in overgrowth, its spine sagging like it had given up trying to hold shape. My chest tightened, not with fear, but with something bright and electric.I was going to make it. I could already taste freedom on the cold air. Three steps. Two. One….
And the world turned upside down.
There was no sound. No rustle. No warning. Just the sudden, brutal crush of contact, and then I was airborne, yanked from my path like the universe had grabbed my collar. The impact came sideways and fast, a body slamming earth as bark and grit carved into my skin, lungs collapsing around the absence of air.
I didn’t fall.
I was taken.
The weight pinned me instantly, heavy and deliberate, and it wasn’t the shock of hitting the ground that undid me. It was the pressure. The immovable force that settled on top of me like a verdict. I didn’t have to see him. I knew.
Jax.
His arms bracketed my head, one thigh driven hard between my legs, locking me down with terrifying, deliberate control even as the pressure of his knee threatened to make me gasp out what air I had left. He didn’t speak or shift. Just breathed, slow and quiet, not merciful, not forgiving. Calculated. Waiting. Like even his silence was a sentence I had earned. The heat of his breath grazed my cheek, curling through the cold and threading into something deeper. I twisted on instinct, hips bucking in defiance, trying to dislodge him.
It only made it worse.
The movement pulled me tighter against him, his thigh pressing harder, friction blooming in my rebellious core. Mybreath caught, sharp and involuntary. It wasn’t fear or rage. It was pure arousal. Low. Ugly. Real. And the second I felt it, I hated him—for catching me, for holding me still, for being faster. But mostly, I hated him for making me like it.
What the hell is wrong with me?
