Page 44 of Jax
I felt her cross behind me with slow, conscious steps, and settle on the edge of the counter like she was pretending to be comfortable. Like her pulse wasn’t still dragging from last night’s escapades. She watched me. Not wary. Not warm. Just calculating. Reading me. The way I moved. The fact that I didn’t say good morning. How I took my coffee. All of it going into some mental file she’d pull from later.
“So,” she said, voice low. “Are you always this calm?”
I didn’t look up. Stirred my mug. Took a sip. “No,” I said. “But you’re not worth the adrenaline spike… yet.”
She let out a breath. Not quite a laugh, not quite offended, but heated. She liked that. Good. I wasn’t here to soften her. I was here to sharpen her.
She stayed on the counter, legs swinging, hands planted behind her for balance. Her shirt had twisted slightly, riding up at the hip, revealing a strip of skin and the edge of the rope she’d stolen. Still tucked under her clothes. Still unspoken. I didn’t mention it. Not yet. Let her sit with it a little longer.
The kettle hissed. I poured the water and let the steam rise, sharp and citrus-bright. Handed her a mug without asking how she took it. She blinked at it, then at me, like she hadn’t expected me to trust her not to throw it back in my face. Statistically speaking, that was fair.
“You know,” she said after a sip, blowing steam across the surface with something that might’ve passed for humor, “I’ve had quieter mornings in holding cells.”
“Not my fault you insist on being supervised.”
She rolled her eyes and hopped off the counter. “You make it sound like I asked for this.”
“You did,” I said. “Last night. You picked option two, remember?”
“That wasn’t a choice. That was a trap dressed in a power play.”
I took a sip of coffee and didn’t rise to the bait. “No. A trap implies I wanted you to fail. This is containment. Until you prove you won’t implode on contact.”
She went still. Barely. Just a flicker. Her jaw tightening, the mug hesitating near her lips, her spine pulling straighter like I’d struck something she wasn’t ready to name. Then she shook her head and looked back toward the window.
Outside, Sully and Deacon were in the yard. Sully had a table spread with gear—sidearms, knives, tools—working with a mechanical focus that didn’t need narration. Deacon stood beside him, quiet as ever, inspecting a length of chain like it held a secret only he could read.
Inside, the air shifted. Slower. Heavier.
She didn’t sit again. Didn’t pace. Just leaned against the sink, mug in hand, like she hadn’t decided whether to speak or let the silence stretch between us until it frayed. Her eyes stayed on the yard, but her focus was here. With me. That was new.
“So you justpretendto be calm, then?” she asked, quieter this time. Not barbed. Just curious.
I turned to face her fully, arms crossed. “No. But chaos is easy. Stillness is earned.”
Her lips parted as if she might say more, but whatever it was stayed tucked behind her teeth. She sipped her coffee and nodded once.
This wasn’t about control anymore. It was about proximity. About letting her feel something steady, even as she kept trying to fight like it would split her in two.
We stood there in the soft hum of the morning kitchen, heat rising from our mugs, and for the first time, she didn’t flinch under my gaze. She met it. Not with defiance. Definitely not with submission. Just presence. Which, for her, felt close to a miracle.
The quiet didn’t hold. It never did with Stella. After breakfast, she trailed after me down to the garage, silent and simmering, but different. Her tension had changed. It wasn’t armor now. It was pressure turned inward, condensed and heavy, like she hadn’t figured out how to vent it. She didn’t ask where we were going. When I opened the bay door, she peeled off without a word toward the far corner, her chaos space. I didn’t stop her. I just watched.
Some people settled their nerves through silence. Stella worked through it like it owed her pain. She moved quickly. Gloves snapped. Mask flipped. The welder hissed to life. The metal sculpture she’d been shaping looked like collapse frozen in mid-motion, welds misaligned, rebar bent into forms too violent to be called abstract. It carried the posture of grief trying to stand.
I let her dive in. She needed the burn. I needed to let her. Across the room, I busied myself with gear—field kits, batteries, anything with repeatable steps. I’d checked most of it the day before, but I worked through it again, slow and measured. She thought I was giving her space. I wasn’t. I was giving her time. That mattered more.
The rhythm broke. A sharp pop at the weld. She swore, but didn’t stop. Repositioned. Tried again. The angle was wrong. Sparks flew wide. Her grip turned rigid. Too much pressure, too little precision. She didn’t adjust. She just forced it.
By minute ten, she was muttering. By twelve, the rod holder clattered against the table. Not thrown, but close.
The flame died mid-breath. She yanked off the mask, hair pulling loose, sweat plastered along her temples, her shirt damp at the spine. She leaned against the table, knuckles white, eyes locked on the ruined weld like she could will it into submission. I let the silence hang before I crossed the floor. Unhurried, careful, the way you approach something wild before it decided whether to allow contact or lash out.
“You done attacking the steel, or is round two still coming?”
She didn’t turn. But her shoulders twitched. She wiped her cheek with the back of her arm, quick and defensive. Her hands were shaking. She didn’t think I’d notice.
“Is that metal fighting back,” I said quietly, “Or is something else grinding you down?”
