Page 23 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

Jax

The brain processes betrayal faster than pain. That’s a measurable fact. The amygdala lights up before conscious thought can catch it, floods the system with adrenaline, cues the body to brace. That’s why, when someone you trust lies to you, heartbreak doesn’t come first. Rage does.

That was my first response when I saw her slipping through the trees. The second was control. Because you don’t get to feel rage and act on it. Not if your job is to protect the person who caused it. So, I caught her. Held her. Waited for the fight to drain from her limbs. Then I brought her here.

Now, with early morning sunlight streaming through the window, she was curled on the floor beside my bed.

Arms crossed, spine stiff, jaw locked tight.

Her muscles hadn’t relaxed yet, even if her breathing had slowed.

The blanket I gave her was twisted around her legs like it was kicked more than claimed.

Her hair had fallen across her cheek in soft waves that didn’t match the edge she kept honed when she was awake. She thought she was hiding. She wasn’t.

I hadn’t slept. Just stayed still, one arm behind my head, eyes half-lidded, breath slow.

Calculated stillness. Rest that wasn’t rest. I knew exactly where she was.

Five strides from the door. Average footstep length said she could be gone in under three seconds, if she wanted to be. But she didn’t. Not really.

She had stopped muttering at 3:17. Fell quiet by 3:22.

Her breath evened out around 3:40. But her pulse never steadied.

That was the thing about the body. It always gave you away.

You could learn how to control your voice, regulate your expressions, even pace your breathing, if you’d trained for it.

But the rhythm at the base of your throat?

That betrayed the truth every time. Hers stayed fast. Uneven.

Like her body was fighting a war her mind hadn’t given it permission to name.

At one point, she rolled to face the wall. Not to sleep. To retreat. Self-soothing posture. Defensive. Her back was the only boundary she could build, and even that was trembling. She thought this was over. A pause before the next standoff. She thought we were under a ceasefire.

She was wrong.

She ran. She got caught. And then she made the only choice that actually mattered.

She stayed. Not the punch. Not the anger.

Not even the moment her breath hitched against mine in the dark, caught between panic and something that wasn’t panic at all.

What mattered was that I had left the door unlocked.

She could have walked out. I didn’t stop her.

I didn’t trap her. But she stayed. Right here.

On the floor. In my space. Breathing like it cost her something.

She wanted to test limits? She picked the right subject.

What she didn’t know yet was that I’d spent most of my life studying pressure.

Tension. Control. Not just in applying it.

Understanding it. Precision was everything.

The second you move. The second you stop.

The pause between threat and surrender. She was already inside that rhythm.

She just hadn’t recognized the shape of it yet.

The body always shifted before the mind caught up.

You could read it in the angle of a chin, the brace of a shoulder, the flex of a hand before thought arrived.

That was how I knew she was awake the second the floorboards creaked beneath me.

She didn’t move. Not really. Just a sharp inhale, held tight like she couldn’t decide whether to brace for impact, or disappear into the cracks.

I didn’t acknowledge it. Didn’t speak. I just stood up from the bed, slow and silent, letting the weight of morning fill the room like consequence, and crossed to the door.

No light. No noise. No warning.

Only when I opened it, only when the silence stretched between us like a wire pulled too tight, did her voice finally come, low and wary behind me.

“Are you really going to babysit me all day?”

Her voice was sandpaper and shadow—rough with sleep, frayed with whatever defiance she hadn’t burned through yet.

I didn’t flinch. She wasn’t the kind of woman who yielded just because she was tired.

Not even after being caught. I glanced back and met her eyes, just for a beat.

She hadn’t moved from the blanket. She was still curled against the floorboards, all tension and fight buried in fatigue.

“No,” I said. “ You’re going to follow me .”

That was the only invitation she was going to get. The only warning.

I walked away.

Five steps down the hall, I heard her shift.

The blanket dragged. Her socks hit the floor in soft, hesitant steps, still damp from the woods and streaked with pine tar.

She followed, as I knew she would. Not because she trusted me.

That would come later. She followed because something in her needed to know what came next—and people only chase what already has its hands on them.

I didn’t slow down or check behind me. She wouldn’t fall behind. Pride wouldn’t let her.

We passed through a house still caught in half-sleep. Maddy and Niko’s door was closed. Sully’s gear was stacked outside his room. He was probably out back. Farther down, Deacon’s music hummed low through the wall. That left just me, her, and the quiet tension strung between us like wire.

In the kitchen, I moved with purpose. Burner on. Kettle set. Coffee measured. No wasted steps. She stood in the doorway like she wasn’t sure if she was allowed inside. I didn’t acknowledge the hesitation. She’d figure it out.

Eventually, she did.

I felt her cross behind me with slow, conscious steps, and settle on the edge of the counter like she was pretending to be comfortable.

Like her pulse wasn’t still dragging from last night’s escapades.

She watched me. Not wary. Not warm. Just calculating.

Reading me. The way I moved. The fact that I didn’t say good morning.

How I took my coffee. All of it going into some mental file she’d pull from later.

“So,” she said, voice low. “Are you always this calm?”

I didn’t look up. Stirred my mug. Took a sip. “No,” I said. “But you’re not worth the adrenaline spike… yet.”

She let out a breath. Not quite a laugh, not quite offended, but heated. She liked that. Good. I wasn’t here to soften her. I was here to sharpen her.

She stayed on the counter, legs swinging, hands planted behind her for balance.

Her shirt had twisted slightly, riding up at the hip, revealing a strip of skin and the edge of the rope she’d stolen.

Still tucked under her clothes. Still unspoken.

I didn’t mention it. Not yet. Let her sit with it a little longer.

The kettle hissed. I poured the water and let the steam rise, sharp and citrus-bright. Handed her a mug without asking how she took it. She blinked at it, then at me, like she hadn’t expected me to trust her not to throw it back in my face. Statistically speaking, that was fair.

“You know,” she said after a sip, blowing steam across the surface with something that might’ve passed for humor, “I’ve had quieter mornings in holding cells.”

“Not my fault you insist on being supervised.”

She rolled her eyes and hopped off the counter. “You make it sound like I asked for this.”

“You did,” I said. “Last night. You picked option two, remember?”

“That wasn’t a choice. That was a trap dressed in a power play.”

I took a sip of coffee and didn’t rise to the bait. “No. A trap implies I wanted you to fail. This is containment. Until you prove you won’t implode on contact.”

She went still. Barely. Just a flicker. Her jaw tightening, the mug hesitating near her lips, her spine pulling straighter like I’d struck something she wasn’t ready to name. Then she shook her head and looked back toward the window.

Outside, Sully and Deacon were in the yard. Sully had a table spread with gear—sidearms, knives, tools—working with a mechanical focus that didn’t need narration. Deacon stood beside him, quiet as ever, inspecting a length of chain like it held a secret only he could read.

Inside, the air shifted. Slower. Heavier.

She didn’t sit again. Didn’t pace. Just leaned against the sink, mug in hand, like she hadn’t decided whether to speak or let the silence stretch between us until it frayed. Her eyes stayed on the yard, but her focus was here. With me. That was new.

“So you just pretend to be calm, then?” she asked, quieter this time. Not barbed. Just curious.

I turned to face her fully, arms crossed. “No. But chaos is easy. Stillness is earned.”

Her lips parted as if she might say more, but whatever it was stayed tucked behind her teeth. She sipped her coffee and nodded once.

This wasn’t about control anymore. It was about proximity. About letting her feel something steady, even as she kept trying to fight like it would split her in two.

We stood there in the soft hum of the morning kitchen, heat rising from our mugs, and for the first time, she didn’t flinch under my gaze. She met it. Not with defiance. Definitely not with submission. Just presence. Which, for her, felt close to a miracle.

The quiet didn’t hold. It never did with Stella.

After breakfast, she trailed after me down to the garage, silent and simmering, but different.

Her tension had changed. It wasn’t armor now.

It was pressure turned inward, condensed and heavy, like she hadn’t figured out how to vent it.

She didn’t ask where we were going. When I opened the bay door, she peeled off without a word toward the far corner, her chaos space. I didn’t stop her. I just watched.