Page 17 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

Jax

Barefoot and disheveled, she paced in a restless geometry, the kind that made the air crackle.

Her hoodie slipped off one shoulder, exposing a stretch of skin that read more like unfinished math than flirtation.

Hair clung to her cheek, a mess of static and unraveling order.

It wasn’t chaos. It was compression, a system pushed too far.

I leaned against the counter, coffee cooling in my hand, and let her movements brand themselves into my memory. Every step, twitch, and breath spoke of effort. This wasn’t fidgeting. It was survival.

She flipped a page in her notebook with too much force and muttered something under her breath, half math, half madness. Maddy glanced up, voice soft but edged with curiosity. “You okay?”

Stella didn’t look up. “No.”

She turned another page, fists clenched. “I need something to do before I crawl out of my skin.”

Maddy blinked, thrown. She opened her mouth, but Stella kept moving, voice rising.

“Not yoga. Not deep breathing. Not painting my fucking nails.” She held up the notebook, a mess of scratchy diagrams and frantic numbers. “Something real. With my hands.”

Sully walked in just in time to hear it, sipping some green horror of a shake he swore was banana-flavored. He paused, cocking his head. “What kind of real are we talking about?”

Stella didn’t even flinch.

“Do you have any welding equipment?”

The whole room went still, as if someone had sucked the air out of it.

Maddy’s brows went up. Sully actually lowered his drink.

“Actually…” He scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah. Old stick welding unit in the workshop. No clue if it still runs, and the rods are all pretty old, but it’s there.”

And that’s when I saw it.

The first real shift in her. The kind that didn’t scream or snap. It settled instead. Quiet and deliberate. Her hands steadied. Her shoulders dropped a fraction. That pulse of frantic energy finally found something to latch onto.

And fuck if it didn’t do something to me.

It wasn’t the welding. It was the way she looked at the world in that moment. Like she remembered there was still a version of herself worth reaching for.

I set my coffee down before I could think better of it. My voice was low, instinctual. “I’ll take her.”

Maddy turned to me, surprise flickering behind her eyes. “You sure?”

I didn’t answer. Just nodded and moved for the hall, the decision already made, somewhere deeper than reason. I didn’t know why I cared. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I just wanted to see what she built when no one was watching.

“You want to weld?” I asked, holding the door and glancing back. Her blink was quick, like she hadn’t expected me to let her out of the house, but her nod followed instantly, sharp with intent.

I let the corner of my mouth twitch, more reflex than smile. Just a signal. A truce. Maybe a dare.

“Come on.”

The workshop door groaned open, resisting as if it hadn’t been used in weeks. The air inside hit thick—oil, steel, sawdust, and heat baked into concrete. Dry and metallic. The kind of scent that sank into your skin and stayed.

Overhead, the long fluorescent strips flickered on one by one, casting a wash of sterile light over the room.

It was bigger than it looked from outside—high ceilings, pegboards sagging with rusted clamps and power tools, shelves cluttered with coiled cords and forgotten boxes.

In the back, an old Chevelle sat in stasis—hood gaping, bumper missing, a socket wrench balanced on the frame like someone walked off mid-thought.

We hadn’t accepted new work in a few weeks, so most of the space sat empty.

She stepped in and stalled, scanning the room like she was logging a crime scene. I didn’t speak. Just made my way to the breaker that powered the outlet that the welder was plugged into and flipped it. The stick welder gave a grunt and began to hum, and a red light blinked to life.

“It’s a stick unit, like Sully said.” I said. “She’s not pretty, but she works as far as I know.”

Stella drifted past me like she didn’t hear, like her body had already chosen. She stopped at the machine, head tilted, fingers skimming the edges with a kind of reverence. Her voice was a murmur. “I prefer TIG. Cleaner welds.” She tapped a dial. “But this’ll do.”

And that was it. She was gone. Not out of the room, but somewhere deeper.

Somewhere internal. She tied her hair tighter.

Pulled gloves from a shelf, and rolled up her sleeves.

Grabbed some scrap metal from a stack to one side, and wire-brushed off the layer of rust that had accumulated.

She touched the equipment like she’d missed it. Like it had once been hers.

I leaned against the wall and watched.

She moved with rhythm, not finesse. Not for show.

But with focus. She measured by eye, not ruler.

Drew a line in chalk only after narrowing her gaze like she was tuning a scale.

When the tack-weld didn’t sit right, she muttered, shifted the piece, and set it again with calm precision, as if steel obeyed her.

Where most people went quiet in doubt, she went quiet in clarity.

I didn’t interrupt. Not at first. But I watched the soot settle against her skin like it belonged.

“Pretty passionate about welding, huh?” I asked, voice low.

She didn’t look up. “I mean, it’s my business, so yeah, I guess you could say that..”

“That’s right. You own some sort of an art studio.”

“I hope I still do.” She nudged the steel into position without glancing up. “I hope I can go back to some version of my life after all of this is over. I hope I don’t forget how it feels.”

I wanted to press her about her business, about what made her choose welding, but something in the tight set of her shoulders warned me off, and I fell silent.

The air between us held a kind of pressure that didn’t need language.

Her jaw was locked, spine braced like she was daring me to try.

Whatever edge she was walking, between control and collapse, it wasn’t one she’d cross with an audience.

She struck the tip of the rod to the metal.

The crackle of electricity filled the room, sharp and bright, like a memory exploding backward.

The arc caught, and she stilled, suspended in that breath before the first cut.

Then came movement—steady, smooth, and dialed in.

Her shoulders rolled under the hoodie, spine curving, chin dipped behind the helmet.

Sparks scattered across the bench in bursts of brightness, too fast to track.

She didn’t flinch. Didn’t move. I’d seen people fracture under pressure. She turned it into an alloy.

Something inside me wound tight. Not attraction. Not admiration. Something quieter. Harder to name.

By the time I handed her a water bottle, almost an hour later, she was kneeling on the floor surrounded by the stubby end of spent welding rods, chalk gripped in her glove, sketching lines on the surface of the rusted bench that held the sculpture she was making.

No plan. No diagram. Just instinct. Arcs and angles that refused symmetry.

A jagged spine of steel shaped like a blossom in heat.

Ugly. Fierce. Beautiful in a way that didn’t ask permission.

She didn’t look up, tongue caught between her teeth, one knee bouncing like her voltage outpaced her wiring.

I set the bottle near her elbow. “You sell this stuff?”

She looked up, startled. Not scared. Just like she forgot I existed for a second.

“When someone will buy it,” she said. Then she shrugged. “Not as often as I would like. But money isn’t why I weld.”

She sat back on her heels and peeled the glove off her right hand, revealing fingers marked by old burns and calluses that didn’t come from softness. She gestured toward the chalk lines like they weren’t a big deal.

“Mostly I just needed something that didn’t ask me to be soft.”

That line landed harder than I expected.

Not defensive. Not bitter. Just true.

I nodded, eyes still on the sketch. “Looks like something that could cut you if you looked at it wrong.”

A faint smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Exactly.”

She reached for the sketchbook she’d left on the bench and flipped it open without ceremony.

Pages of chaos greeted me—half-weld ideas, mechanical creatures, strange copper shapes woven through barbed wire designs, all scribbled in a mix of pencil, ink, and what looked like charcoal smudged from the heel of her hand.

She stopped on a sculpture. Metal wings exploded into geometric shrapnel. I didn’t even realize I was leaning in until I caught her watching me.

“I made that one for a gallery showing in Minneapolis,” she said, voice flat like she was listing groceries. “Sold it for four grand.”

“That one?” I nodded toward it.

She gave a humorless laugh. “Yeah. Didn’t see a penny. My boyfriend at the time handled my business side. Managed to spend every cent before I could even ask.”

My hand curled around the edge of the bench, slow and deliberate.

“Did he do anything else?” I kept my voice low, even when it didn’t have to be.

She didn’t answer immediately. When she did, the words came evenly, but not unshaken.

“He knew how to pick a fight I couldn’t win.

Left bruises shaped like words.” The silence that followed didn’t sit awkwardly between us.

It anchored. She closed the notebook without comment, stood, wiped her gloves on soot-streaked thighs, and looked at me with an expression stripped of posturing—unarmored, but not exposed. Just real.

“I don’t need to be rescued, Jax.”

“I didn’t think you did.”

Her mouth tilted in something too brief to be a smile, more flicker than feeling, and then it vanished. She turned back to the steel and lifted the rod holder like nothing had shifted between us. But we both knew it had.