Page 59 of Jax
“I don’t know what I need.”
The words slipped out before I could stop them—quiet, frayed at the edges. Not defiant. Not defensive. Just raw. Honest, in a way I hadn’t meant to be.
Bellamy didn’t flinch. Didn’t rush to respond. She just gave me space.
Then she said it. Simple, calm, and devastatingly kind. “Then we start there.”
She didn’t add anything else. Just curled her legs beneath her, sipped her coffee, and gave me the same look she’d worn from the beginning, like she saw everything, and didn’t think any of it was strange.
I sat there a little longer, my mind spinning, trying to catalog each new sensation, every unexpected word, every tremor in my chest that felt less like fear and more like... awakening.
I didn’t like it. But I didn’t want it to stop. I should be focusing on escape, on saving Violet. But that would mean exposing all of these people to the mercy of the Dom Krovi, and that… that was feeling more and more impossible to go through with by the day.
Eventually, Bellamy leaned forward and set her mug on the table, her movements unhurried. “You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?”
I didn’t answer. Didn’t scoff. Just looked down at my hands, palms pressed together, thumbs twitching.
When I spoke, my voice was rough. “I don’t know. Maybe? Jax talked to me about what a scene would be like, how I would need to give him control. For the first time… it didn’t sound like a threat.”
Bellamy stayed quiet.
“And that scares the shit out of me,” I added, a bitter laugh slipping out.
She leaned back, exhaling softly. “That’s usually how it starts.”
The room went quiet again, not from lack of sound, but from something gentler. It was peaceful because no one here needed me to be anything. Not polite. Not agreeable. Not better.
Just… here.
Still, my thoughts buzzed. What did it mean to want something I didn’t understand? What kind of damage made you crave danger not for survival, but for connection?
“What do you mean by safe,” I asked finally. “When you say it?”
Bellamy looked at me like I’d asked something sacred. “I mean a place where you can fall apart and still be held.”
The answer was so clear, so exact, it knocked the air from my lungs.
Because I didn’t know if I’d ever had that. Not once. And now it was here, held out not as a promise or a trap, but as truth. It didn’t matter that it scared me. It mattered that something in me whispered yes.
I shook my head, letting out a breath that tried and failed to become a scoff. “You’re all so damn calm about this.”
Bellamy grinned. “Well, like I said, kink can be a lot of different things depending on what each person needs from day to day. Sometimes it’s the deep emotional shit, sometimes it’s letting go and finding peace, and sometimes it’s just about meeting each other’s needs. That’s what’s so beautiful and freeing about it. You get to make it whatyouwant it to be.”
I considered her words and measured them against the conversation I’d had with Jax. I couldn’t find any contradictions. Maybe there was something to this, after all. Maybe this was something worth at least considering. If I was going to be stuck in this house for the foreseeable future, perhaps I could afford to want something, even if I didn’t understand it yet.
“It’s just hard to know how to trust it, you know?” I finally said, not meeting her eyes.
Her grin didn’t fade. “No one is going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
My eyes flicked to hers. “And… what if I do want it?”
She didn’t blink. “Then you’ll be ready.”
I stared at her for a long moment. Let it sink in. Let the words wrap around the thought that had been growing like a thorny vine inside my chest since the second she started talking.
And then, so quietly I wasn’t sure she even heard it, I whispered:
“Maybe.”
