Page 24 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

Some people settled their nerves through silence.

Stella worked through it like it owed her pain.

She moved quickly. Gloves snapped. Mask flipped.

The welder hissed to life. The metal sculpture she’d been shaping looked like collapse frozen in mid-motion, welds misaligned, rebar bent into forms too violent to be called abstract.

It carried the posture of grief trying to stand.

I let her dive in. She needed the burn. I needed to let her.

Across the room, I busied myself with gear—field kits, batteries, anything with repeatable steps.

I’d checked most of it the day before, but I worked through it again, slow and measured.

She thought I was giving her space. I wasn’t.

I was giving her time. That mattered more.

The rhythm broke. A sharp pop at the weld. She swore, but didn’t stop. Repositioned. Tried again. The angle was wrong. Sparks flew wide. Her grip turned rigid. Too much pressure, too little precision. She didn’t adjust. She just forced it.

By minute ten, she was muttering. By twelve, the rod holder clattered against the table. Not thrown, but close.

The flame died mid-breath. She yanked off the mask, hair pulling loose, sweat plastered along her temples, her shirt damp at the spine.

She leaned against the table, knuckles white, eyes locked on the ruined weld like she could will it into submission.

I let the silence hang before I crossed the floor.

Unhurried, careful, the way you approach something wild before it decided whether to allow contact or lash out.

“You done attacking the steel, or is round two still coming?”

She didn’t turn. But her shoulders twitched. She wiped her cheek with the back of her arm, quick and defensive. Her hands were shaking. She didn’t think I’d notice.

“Is that metal fighting back,” I said quietly, “Or is something else grinding you down?”

She didn’t answer. Just exhaled—one breath, jagged and tired.

It wasn’t anger anymore. It was everything else.

The weld wasn’t the problem. It never was.

Frustration like that never started with steel.

It built from the things you didn’t say.

The things you tried to bury under heat and noise.

The rope she’d hidden under her shirt. The weight of being caught. The look in her eyes when it happened.

I waited. Then offered her something better than comfort.

“Let’s get a little farther away from everyone,” I said.

“Clear your head.” She didn’t move at first. Didn’t look at me.

Just breathed, slow and deep, like she was choosing between argument and collapse.

When she finally glanced over, it was sideways, her voice flat but laced with something brittle underneath.

“Sure. Are you going to drag me by the wrist again?”

I let one corner of my mouth lift. Not a smile. Just acknowledgment.

“Only if you make me.”

She didn’t argue.

That was the first shift. No sharp-tongued deflection, no bratty muttering. Just the barest nod, and then she followed. Out of the garage, past the tools she’d abandoned, past the twisted metal still cooling on the table. She moved beside me like it didn’t mean anything, even though it did.

Inside, the house buzzed with a normalcy that didn’t match the weight between us. Sully wiped down the counters in the kitchen, sleeves rolled, singing off-key to something loud and old. He glanced at Stella as we passed, half amused, half warning. She didn’t meet it.

Deacon stood near the window, sharpening a blade with steady focus. He didn’t speak, but his eyes tracked us. Maddy leaned against the island, eating an apple and scrolling on her phone. She looked up, gaze sliding from Stella to me, one brow lifting.

“Field trip?” She asked, tone light but knowing.

“Call it calibration,” I said, without slowing.

Stella didn’t flinch, but I could feel her awareness spike. Not shame, exactly. Just friction. She wasn’t used to walking through a room like it mattered who noticed.

We passed Niko at the top of the stairs, arms crossed, leaning against the wall like he’d been waiting. His eyes narrowed slightly.

“Where are you headed?” he asked.

“I am taking Stella to my cabin.”

He stared at me for a beat too long. Then glanced at her. Then back.

“You sure?”

“I wouldn’t take her there if I wasn’t.”

He nodded, slow and deliberate, but the set of his jaw told me he still didn’t like it. That didn’t matter. He didn’t need to like it, just trust that I had a plan. Which of course, I did.

Stella never looked up, just kept her eyes straight ahead, and her shoulders locked. Her breathing barely changed, but her pulse had climbed high enough for me to register it without even trying. I didn’t say a word. She’d feel it more sharply if I didn’t.

We stepped outside together, leaving the press of the house behind us, the door creaking shut like punctuation.

The forest muted everything immediately.

Trees rose on either side, branches curving overhead, sunlight slicing through in tight golden beams. The cabin wasn’t far, but it felt removed, detached in the way she probably needed.

I led us down the trail, gravel shifting under my boots, and didn’t look back to check if she followed.

I didn’t have to. Her footsteps stayed steady, deliberate, just close enough to be heard.

When we passed through a grove of pale birch, where the light softened and the undergrowth thinned out, she finally spoke. Her tone was dry, but not defensive.

“So what’s in this sacred cabin of yours? Let me guess. Leather furniture. A fridge full of protein shakes. Maybe a moose head over the fireplace.”

I let the silence stretch just long enough to make her second-guess whether I was going to answer. Then, dryly, “Wrong. Rope racks and a whiskey cabinet.”

She snorted. “For some reason, I’m not surprised. I bet your Amazon recommendations are fascinating.”

“Not anymore. I disabled the algorithm. Recommendations are just predictive models, and once you understand the weighting system for user behavior, it’s not that hard to manipulate them. Or shut them down entirely. ”

She snorted in response, rolling her eyes, then stumbled slightly, her foot catching on a root.

She jerked to correct herself, but I was already there, hand wrapping gently around her elbow—steadying, not gripping.

She went still, breath hitching. I didn’t let go.

Not because she needed it, but because I needed her to register the touch.

To feel the control that wasn’t force. She looked at me, wide-eyed and guarded, like she knew something inside her had shifted, but didn’t know what.

“You good?” I asked, voice low. She nodded, slow and deliberate, and didn’t step away. She was beginning to understand this wasn’t about the stumble. It was about what followed.

She didn’t ask where we were going, didn’t speak when I unlocked the door, didn’t bolt when it opened.

She just stepped inside, like someone who already knew better than to ask questions she wasn’t ready to hear the answers to.

I let the door close behind us and didn’t speak right away.

The silence mattered more than anything she could’ve said if she’d been braver.

Or more afraid. But she wasn’t either. She was simply aware, in that quiet, primal way a body recognizes the boundary it’s approaching, even if the mind hasn’t caught up.

That was how I knew I had her attention.

She paused a few steps in, eyes scanning the space—walls, hearth, the iron rack stacked with split wood. She didn’t fidget or smirk. She just looked. I could tell it wasn’t what she expected, which meant the room was already doing its job. Good.

Her gaze caught on the far wall, and I didn’t need to follow it to know what held her attention. The dozens of hanks of rope, arranged with intention, categorized by different fibers and thicknesses, coiled and hung with care. Not just equipment. A vocabulary.

She didn’t say anything, but her arms crossed again in that unconscious, protective motion that likely made her feel steadier without tipping into surrender. She still wasn’t comfortable with the proximity, that much was certain, but she wasn’t running. I made a mental mark in the ‘win’ column.

After a moment I walked past her into the room and across to the wall of rope, took down a coil of 6mm jute, and let it settle in my palm. It carried weight, scent, texture. The memory of friction. I loosened it slowly, deliberately, then dropped to the floor and crossed my legs.

Let her see how I handled it.

I began a simple karada weave, meant to go over the chest, nothing showy.

The kind that taught rhythm and restraint, that made your body memorize structure before anything else.

Behind me, the air shifted. She lowered herself near, angled just slightly, not close enough to join but close enough to observe.

She was still unsure, but she was watching. That was enough.

Without looking up, I said, “Rope needs to breathe, just like the body it binds. Pull it too tight, and it stores tension in the wrong places. Too loose, it knots itself. Treated right, it listens.”

She took her time before answering, her tone flat but threaded with curiosity. “You talk about it like it’s alive.”

“No,” I said, fingers threading another knot, slow and clean. “I talk about it like it’s honest.”

Her voice lightened, a flicker of humor slipping in like a shield. “So… is this like knitting for men with trauma?”

I glanced up, slow and steady. No smile graced her expression, but the shape of one lived somewhere behind it. “You’re not ready for the answer to that.”