Page 20 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

I should have brushed past it, just a vague answer to a throwaway joke.

But something in the curve of his voice stuck.

No tease, no bravado. Just quiet honesty.

And I wasn’t prepared for how it settled in my chest, how it made me notice his hands, the deliberate flex of his knuckles, the sure pull of the rope.

It shouldn’t have drawn me in, but it did.

He was practiced. Precise. Magnetic in his restraint.

It reminded me of how I moved when I welded, when the world narrowed to flame and form, and nothing else existed but pressure and control.

I hated the comparison the second it landed.

Watching him, how fully he owned every motion, twisted something low in my gut.

Not heat. Not desire. Just awareness. Raw.

Sharp. It wasn’t the rope. It was him. The unapologetic way he existed in his skin.

No shrinking. No spectacle. Just presence. I hated how much I envied that.

I pulled my knees in tighter, pretending to focus on Bellamy stacking cards, but my gaze kept drifting, catching on the way the rope slid between his fingers, ordered and sure, like he’d done it a thousand times. Like he could do it again. To me.

I swallowed that thought like it burned.

This house was already messing with my sense of safety.

I didn’t need it screwing with my self-control too.

It was too easy to forget. To sink into the couch, drink from a mug I hadn’t poured, watch Bellamy press her toes into Carrick’s thigh like she owned the air between them, or listen to Deacon wrap the room in chords softer than he should’ve been capable of.

Too easy to ignore that I was still a prisoner here, just one with throw blankets and a curated Spotify soundtrack.

So I did what I always did when things started to feel safe. I broke the silence.

“Seriously though…” I said, voice light enough to pass as idle curiosity, even as my fingers tightened around the mug.

“Who the hell are you people?” It was a joke.

Mostly. But one with teeth under the gloss.

I wasn’t asking what they did for a living.

I was asking what kind of men laughed this easily while carrying that much darkness behind their eyes.

Maddy stretched out on the couch across from me like a cat who’d just taken her first sip of whiskey. “Depends on the day,” she said with a grin. “Babysitters. Assassins. Furniture movers.”

Bellamy didn’t even lift her head. “Carrick once built an entire coffee bar because Niko blinked too loudly at a French press.”

Carrick scoffed. “It was a shit press.”

“And you’re so normal about it,” Bellamy replied, flipping another card onto the pile between them.

Sully strolled in from the kitchen holding a beer and a bowl of popcorn like the chaos suited him. “We’re former military. Some of us were in intelligence. Some combat. A couple of ghosts.”

The way he said it, casual, matter-of-fact, landed cleaner than it should have, like a blade slicing skin without the sting.

I blinked. “And you all just... retired here?”

The warmth didn’t leave the room, but it changed. Shifted.

Niko slid into the room behind Sully and sat, a wine glass dangling between two fingers like it weighed nothing. His voice dropped low, the kind of deep that made people listen before they understood why. “We built this place because we stopped believing the people in charge were helping anyone.”

He didn’t blink.

“So now we help the ones they forget,” Sully added, and just like that, the room exhaled differently.

No jokes. No quips. Even Deacon’s guitar softened into something barely there, threading silence with sound just loud enough to hear.

I let it sit in my chest for a breath before curling my hands around the mug, letting the heat ground me.

“That sounds like a recruitment speech,” I said eventually, dry enough to pass for teasing, even as something inside twisted at the truth of it.

Sully didn’t miss a beat, just tossed popcorn into the air and caught it on his tongue with ease. “We’re fresh out of pamphlets, but we throw a mean barbecue.”

The tension cracked. Laughter filled the room—warm, easy, and real. I smiled without trying to. But it wasn’t supposed to feel like this. They weren’t supposed to feel like a we. They weren’t supposed to be something I wanted.

And still, my gaze drifted.

Jax hadn’t said a word since he sat. The rope in his hands had transformed into a series of small, perfect knots, each one tied with quiet reverence, like someone stringing rosary beads. His sleeves were pushed up to the elbows. The ink on his forearm caught the lamplight, shimmering like secrets.

I watched him longer than I meant to. Then, I tilted my head. “And you?” I asked, light as sugar on the tongue. “What made you join the antihero clubhouse?”

Jax didn’t stop tying, but his hands paused, just for a breath. The kind of hesitation that would’ve slipped past anyone not watching him as closely as I had been all evening. Then the motion resumed, fluid again.

“I don’t sleep well when it’s quiet,” he said after a beat, voice low, even, more honest than I expected. “This house is noisy.”

He didn’t elaborate. Didn’t explain. Just finished a loop and pulled the knot tight with a clean, efficient tug.

“And rope.”

No one reacted. They didn’t need to. It was the kind of answer they’d all heard before, maybe not in words, but in the way his presence filled a room without demanding space.

I looked away first, because I felt it. That pull in my stomach, in the base of my spine.

That slow, dangerous tug toward someone absolutely wrong in every way that mattered, who still somehow made the air feel safer just by being in it.

I hated the way he answered me. Hated more that I wanted to ask what else made him feel like he belonged here.

Worst of all, I wasn’t sure I’d survive it if he ever actually told me.

The moment didn’t vanish; it just shifted.

Someone cracked a joke. Maddy leaned sideways and stole a sip of Niko’s wine with a grin that dared him to complain.

Bellamy tossed a card with the theatrical flair of someone losing on purpose just to make it painful.

Carrick didn’t flinch. Just kept playing, smug and silent.

The tension softened, diffused by warmth and laughter, but Jax’s voice lingered.

I don’t sleep well when it’s quiet.

I didn’t know why it hit the way it did.

Why it curled under my ribs and stayed there, low and unwanted.

There were a dozen reasons not to sleep, and I had most of them.

But something about his tone, about the way the rope moved in his hands while his spine stayed straight and still, made me ache in a way I didn’t have language for.

The truth wasn’t in the words. It was in how he said them.

Flat. Unashamed. Like it didn’t occur to him to justify anything.

And that was what wrecked me. He didn’t posture, because he didn’t have to.

Didn’t justify, because he didn’t owe. It was the kind of honesty that came from someone who’d stopped trying to be understood, and still, impossibly, wanted to be seen.

The room moved around him, but Jax remained still.

Knees bent. Rope coiled across his thighs.

Fingers looped silk with a measured rhythm that spoke of muscle memory and mastery.

Every motion drew the red rope tighter, cleaner, a quiet choreography of pressure and precision.

He moved like a man who knew exactly how much tension a line could take before it gave.

I watched him longer than I meant to, and maybe that was the moment he felt it, my gaze fixed where it didn’t belong.

He didn’t look up. Just murmured, low and dry, “Are you intending to critique my technique, or are you watching for some other reason?”

His voice barely rose above Deacon’s soft guitar. The laughter around us still lingered. But the line cut through it anyway. Clean. Sharp. A wire pulled too tight. And it slipped between my ribs like it belonged there.

I didn’t answer immediately. Just took another sip from my mug, hoping the heat might disguise the catch in my breath, the way the floor felt suddenly less solid. When I finally spoke, it came out quieter than I intended. “I don’t know.”

It was the truth.

It shouldn’t have been. I hated saying things I hadn’t already rehearsed, already weighed and measured and proven safe.

But the words slipped out before I could stop them, and I watched something shift in his posture at the sound of it.

Not surprise. Just... awareness. Like he’d expected the lie, and the truth unsettled him more.

Jax finished the knot with a smooth pull and set it aside, coiled and perfect beside the others. Then, for the first time that night, he looked at me.

Direct. Steady.

And the room fell away.

The laughter, the music, the low hum of conversation, it all blurred at the edges as his gaze locked onto mine and held. There was nothing overt in it. No heat, no flirtation. Just clarity. The kind that saw right through your skin and didn’t bother pretending it didn’t.

His voice was quiet. Honest in a way that made me want to flinch.

“I didn’t come here to be part of anything. Not at first, anyway.”

A pause.

“I didn’t want the team. I didn’t want the house. I didn’t want the cause.”

He rested his elbows on his knees, rope still curled between his fingers.

“I wanted to stop feeling like a threat in every room I walked into.” The words landed with a weight I wasn’t ready for—too sharp, too raw, too much like looking in a mirror I didn’t want to see.

I turned away, suddenly captivated by the pattern of steam curling off my mug, and the heat pressing into my palm like it could anchor me to something safer than this.

But he didn’t stop. Didn’t soften. His voice dropped, not in volume, but in vulnerability.

“I don’t care if people understand me,” he said, each syllable threading quietly into my bones, “but I do care if they leave.”

Something in my chest pulled tight, a low draw of tension I didn’t know what to do with.

I’d spent most of my life surviving rooms by becoming the quietest thing in them, tucking myself into the edges until the danger passed.

Men like Jax weren’t meant for me. I didn’t understand how they moved through the world with that kind of certainty, how they could take up space without force, speak in truths that didn’t ask to be softened first. Maybe that’s what unsettled me most.

I shook it off. Let the conversation carry forward.

Maddy launched into a story about some guy she once dated who made her sign an actual relationship contract, complete with clauses and subheadings and a signature line.

Bellamy was in tears from laughing, and Carrick admitted he was impressed someone cared enough to put in that much effort. And for a second, I almost relaxed.

Almost.

Then Jax said it—quiet, unbothered. Like it was nothing. “If you ever want to know what the rope is really for...” A pause. A knot pulled tight. “Just ask.”

The words didn’t land so much as detonate, cracking the air wide like lightning across dry sky. The entire room shifted, barely perceptible, but enough for me to feel it. Like the air was listening now.

Carrick stopped shuffling. Maddy’s smile curved higher, all teeth and secrets. Bellamy glanced sideways at Niko, who raised an eyebrow. Sully made a low noise that could’ve meant anything. Only Deacon stayed steady, his fingers still moving along the strings, music trailing like smoke.

No one said a word. But I felt them all watching. And Jax? He never looked up. Never gave the moment weight. Which somehow made it heavier.

I tried to toss back something clever. Shrug it off. But the words tangled in my mouth as if they were already caught in rope. It wasn’t a joke. And I didn’t want to ask.

I wanted to know. And that scared me more than anything else.