Page 43 of Jax
Because Jax had pinned me to the forest floor and looked straight through the version I performed. He’d seen the part I thought I’d buried years ago. The part that didn’t want rescue, that didn’t want gentleness, but craved surrender in a way that was sharp and hard and unspeakably real. And he hadn’t turned away.
I shifted slightly, fingers brushing the underside of the bed frame, solid and unyielding like him. The mattress creaked above, just a shift in weight, a tiny rearrangement of pressure, and I knew he was still awake. Maybe listening. Maybe watching. Maybe stuck inside his own thoughts, as quiet and circling as mine.
I wanted to ask why he’d brought me here instead of locking the door of my room and walking away. I wanted to ask what he saw when he looked at me now. But I didn’t. Because I already knew. He saw someone who didn’t trust herself to stay.Someone who needed to be caught. And he wasn’t punishing me for it. He was giving me the space to admit it.
Tears pricked behind my eyes, sharp and sudden. I blinked them back. I didn’t cry, not audibly, but my throat burned, and my chest ached in that deep, buried way that had nothing to do with bruises.
I curled tighter beneath the blanket, not to disappear, but to hold myself together. The hardwood beneath me stayed cold and unflinching, but it was the stillness in my own chest that shook me most. I’d spent so long convincing myself that distance meant safety, and solitude meant strength. But lying just feet away from the man who’d undone me without cruelty, I couldn’t cling to those beliefs anymore.
I didn’t want to leave. Not from fear or pride or anger. I wanted to stay because, for the first time in years, someone had looked through the noise and seen me, and hadn’t flinched.
That truth settled in my bones like a reckoning. And I knew, even without his touch, that he hadn’t brought me here to punish me. He’d brought me here to let me decide—in the dark and without pressure—whether I was ready to stop running.
11
Jax
The brain processesbetrayal faster than pain. That’s a measurable fact. The amygdala lights up before conscious thought can catch it, floods the system with adrenaline, cues the body to brace. That’s why, when someone you trust lies to you, heartbreak doesn’t come first. Rage does.
That was my first response when I saw her slipping through the trees. The second was control. Because you don’t get to feel rage and act on it. Not if your job is to protect the person who caused it. So, I caught her. Held her. Waited for the fight to drain from her limbs. Then I brought her here.
Now, with early morning sunlight streaming through the window, she was curled on the floor beside my bed. Arms crossed, spine stiff, jaw locked tight. Her muscles hadn’t relaxed yet, even if her breathing had slowed. The blanket I gave her was twisted around her legs like it was kicked more than claimed. Her hair had fallen across her cheek in soft waves that didn’t match the edge she kept honed when she was awake. She thought she was hiding. She wasn’t.
I hadn’t slept. Just stayed still, one arm behind my head, eyes half-lidded, breath slow. Calculated stillness. Rest thatwasn’t rest. I knew exactly where she was. Five strides from the door. Average footstep length said she could be gone in under three seconds, if she wanted to be. But she didn’t. Not really.
She had stopped muttering at 3:17. Fell quiet by 3:22. Her breath evened out around 3:40. But her pulse never steadied. That was the thing about the body. It always gave you away. You could learn how to control your voice, regulate your expressions, even pace your breathing, if you’d trained for it. But the rhythm at the base of your throat? That betrayed the truth every time. Hers stayed fast. Uneven. Like her body was fighting a war her mind hadn’t given it permission to name.
At one point, she rolled to face the wall. Not to sleep. To retreat. Self-soothing posture. Defensive. Her back was the only boundary she could build, and even that was trembling. She thought this was over. A pause before the next standoff. She thought we were under a ceasefire.
She was wrong.
She ran. She got caught. And then she made the only choice that actually mattered. She stayed. Not the punch. Not the anger. Not even the moment her breath hitched against mine in the dark, caught between panic and something that wasn’t panic at all. What mattered was that I had left the door unlocked. She could have walked out. I didn’t stop her. I didn’t trap her. But she stayed. Right here. On the floor. In my space. Breathing like it cost her something.
She wanted to test limits? She picked the right subject. What she didn’t know yet was that I’d spent most of my life studying pressure. Tension. Control. Not just in applying it. Understanding it. Precision was everything. The second you move. The second you stop. The pause between threat and surrender. She was already inside that rhythm. She just hadn’t recognized the shape of it yet.
The body always shifted before the mind caught up. You could read it in the angle of a chin, the brace of a shoulder, the flex of a hand before thought arrived. That was how I knew she was awake the second the floorboards creaked beneath me. She didn’t move. Not really. Just a sharp inhale, held tight like she couldn’t decide whether to brace for impact, or disappear into the cracks. I didn’t acknowledge it. Didn’t speak. I just stood up from the bed, slow and silent, letting the weight of morning fill the room like consequence, and crossed to the door.
No light. No noise. No warning.
Only when I opened it, only when the silence stretched between us like a wire pulled too tight, did her voice finally come, low and wary behind me.
“Are you really going to babysit me all day?”
Her voice was sandpaper and shadow—rough with sleep, frayed with whatever defiance she hadn’t burned through yet. I didn’t flinch. She wasn’t the kind of woman who yielded just because she was tired. Not even after being caught. I glanced back and met her eyes, just for a beat. She hadn’t moved from the blanket. She was still curled against the floorboards, all tension and fight buried in fatigue.
“No,” I said. “You’regoing to followme.”
That was the only invitation she was going to get. The only warning.
I walked away.
Five steps down the hall, I heard her shift. The blanket dragged. Her socks hit the floor in soft, hesitant steps, still damp from the woods and streaked with pine tar. She followed, as I knew she would. Not because she trusted me. That would come later. She followed because something in her needed to know what came next—and people only chase what already has its hands on them. I didn’t slow down or check behind me. She wouldn’t fall behind. Pride wouldn’t let her.
We passed through a house still caught in half-sleep. Maddy and Niko’s door was closed. Sully’s gear was stacked outside his room. He was probably out back. Farther down, Deacon’s music hummed low through the wall. That left just me, her, and the quiet tension strung between us like wire.
In the kitchen, I moved with purpose. Burner on. Kettle set. Coffee measured. No wasted steps. She stood in the doorway like she wasn’t sure if she was allowed inside. I didn’t acknowledge the hesitation. She’d figure it out.
Eventually, she did.
