Page 71 of Jax
“She found the pattern,” I continued, eyes fixed on the center of the bag. “Every weak point. Every shatter line. Mapped me like a field op and then walked away like none of it meant a thing.”
Carrick tilted his head. “And what if it did?”
I glanced at him. “Then why shut down? Why erase it like it didn’t happen?”
He shrugged slowly, the gesture fluid and infuriating. “Because it scared her. Because it mattered. Because she’s been trained, like all of us, to retreat from the things that threaten her control.”
I stared at the bag, but didn’t move.
“I didn’t push her,” I said. “I didn’t corner her. I let her lead.”
“And that,” Carrick said, “is probably why it hit harder. She had agency. She walked into the fire and still burned herself, and now you’re the collateral.”
I exhaled hard. My hands flexed. “You ever think you’re smarter than your instincts? Like you could avoid the crash because you saw it coming from a mile away?”
Carrick’s mouth quirked. “That’s called being human, Jax. Smart or not.”
“I thought I’d be smarter,” I admitted. “I saw what the stress of living under threat did to Maddy. To Bellamy. I thought I’d be the exception. That I could care without falling. That I could hold space for someone, and still keep my distance.”
“And?” Carrick asked, arms folded tighter.
“And I was wrong.”
I leaned my head against the bag, eyes closed, breath heavy. Sweat slipped down my temple, mixing with the pressure behind my eyes. Every tendon, every joint pulsed with strain. I wasn’t falling apart. Not visibly. But something in me had shifted, something foundational.
“I didn’t want to be her fantasy,” I said, voice low. “I wanted to be real.”
Carrick let the silence stretch. “Then you were. And that’s the part she’ll remember, even if she never says it out loud.”
I nodded, small and tight. His words hit home. But it didn’t help. What she touched wasn’t some abstract part of me I could wipe clean. It was the part I kept sealed off. The part that still believe that maybe connection was possible, if you built it slow enough. And now all I had were bruised knuckles and silence.
The house had gone stillhours ago. The kind of quiet that only comes after midnight, layered in thick walls and long-buried tension. No traffic. No buzz. Just wind against the sidingand floorboards creaking like the house itself remembered too much.
I had cleaned up from my extended workout session, showered, and had spent the rest of the day holed up in my cave, following leads and updating surveillance records. At least I’d tried too. I’d caught myself multiple times staring off into space, replaying the events of last night, wondering where I’d gone wrong. I was missing too many variables to be able to figure out the pattern. With a stretch and a sigh, I decided that I needed some caffeine, and headed towards the kitchen.
I found Maddy already there, perched barefoot on the counter, eating cereal from a bowl too big to belong in any cabinet. One leg tucked under her, the other swinging loose like this was just another Tuesday in the Reaper Retreat of Emotional Dysfunction. She looked up as I walked in, spoon frozen midair, curls piled on her head in a chaos of defiance against gravity and logic. She didn’t ask why I was awake. She didn’t have to.
“You look like you went ten rounds with something that didn’t even fight back,” she said, chewing.
I gave her a half-smile. “It didn’t. That was the problem.”
She watched me for a beat too long, something patient and perceptive in her gaze. Maddy wasn’t nosy, not exactly, but she didn’t miss much. And when it came to pain, hers or anyone else’s, she was a sponge. Quiet. Absorbent. Soaking up more than she let on.
“You okay?” she asked finally, tone deceptively light.
I leaned against the counter opposite her and reached for the nearest mug. No coffee. Just something to hold. Something to fill the space between us that wasn’t silence or sympathy.
“She’s gone without leaving,” I said, staring at the cabinet. “It’s an impressive skill set.”
Maddy crunched slowly, then set the spoon down with a soft clink. “Yeah. She seems to be good at that.”
“She’s not angry. Not cold. Just… absent.”
“People don’t vanish like that unless they’ve had practice.”
I nodded, not at her, but at the logic of it. “I didn’t push.”
“I know,” she said softly. “That’s probably why it hit harder.”
