Page 64 of Jax
The rope coiled through my hands on instinct, each loop smoothing into the next as I moved through the rhythm I knew. But my thoughts were fixed on the moment her body changed. Not because of the rope. Because of where I’d touched her. Near the place old pain still lived. I hadn’t meant to find it. But I had. And it didn’t matter whether I’d known. What mattered was that she’d trusted me, and I’d brushed a buried scar, anyway.
Time blurred. A minute. Maybe more.
When she glanced over, her eyes were wet, guarded, her body still drawn in tight. I didn’t reach. Didn’t ask. Just stayed, bearing witness. Then, quietly, I shifted and extended one hand, palm up, resting on the floor near her. Not a request. Not a plea. Just there.
She didn’t take it. But she didn’t move away either.
I would’ve waited as long as it took.
We sat that way for a while. I didn’t fill the silence. I stayed kneeling, spine straight, hand still, my breath even. An anchor, not an answer. She’d learned to treat gentleness like a trick. So I didn’t push. I just waited.
The rope lay coiled beside us in full view. No threat. No shame. Just rope.
“You were perfect,” I said, voice low. “Not because of what we built. Because you honored your line.”
Her eyes stayed down. “It didn’t feel perfect.”
“That’s because you’re used to thinking power means pushing through.” I kept my voice level, low. “But real power is in the stop. In saying: no more.”
“Then why do I feel like I failed?” Her voice broke again, and this time, she didn’t try to hide it.
“Because the part of you that survived is still bracing for the next hit.”
She looked at me then—blue eyes fierce and fractured—and I let her. Let her see the steadiness I hadn’t spoken aloud.
“That voice telling you that you shouldn’t have needed to stop? That’s not your voice. That’s a memory. Someone else’s damage trying to write your story.”
She stared, like I’d peeled back something fragile, then shifted—slowly, cautiously—until she sat cross-legged beside me, posture still protective, but her shoulder touched mine. I didn’t move or speak. Just let the quiet stretch like a held breath.
Then she whispered, “What if I never get back to who I was before?”
“You won’t,” I said, voice even.
Her jaw tightened. I reached for her hand carefully, open, and wrapped my fingers around hers.
“You’ll be someone new. Stronger. Someone who knows stop isn’t the opposite of power. It is power.”
She stared at our hands like they were foreign, then said, “Why does it feel like I broke something that was finally starting to work?”
“You didn’t break it. You protected it.”
A tear slid down her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away, so I did, gently, one knuckle brushing skin still warm from the rope.
“I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but this is what matters. Not the build-up, or the bindings. This. The moment when you spoke, and I listened. That’s the foundation. Not the scene. Not the knots. This.”
She breathed in, then out. Slower this time. “I don’t think I’ve ever done that before,” she said. “Stopped something when I needed to. I used to just let it happen, and pretend I could handle it.”
“You don’t have to pretend with me. Not ever.”
We sat shoulder to shoulder, breathing the same air, and I knew in my bones that this was the moment that counted. Because Stella hadn’t just safeworded. She’d reclaimed her voice.
And I’d heard it.
The silence stretched, and I let it. This wasn’t something to fix. It wasn’t a failure. It was reclamation.
Then, barely audible, she whispered, “I just wanted to feel like it was mine again.”
No armor in her voice, just truth, raw and frayed at the edge. I swallowed hard and gave a single nod.
