Page 38 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

Stella

The ceiling hadn’t changed. It was the same pale paint. The same faint crack in the corner that looked vaguely like a lightning bolt, if you stared long enough.

I’d been staring long enough.

I was curled at the edge of the bed, my spine against the wall like it might hold me up.

I hadn’t left the room since silence began to feel safer than softness, since I woke up next to a man I didn’t deserve to have.

Since I’d decided that if Violet was gone, I didn’t deserve anything but hunger and guilt.

I hadn’t showered. Hadn’t changed. The hoodie swallowing my frame probably used to belong to Sully—oversized, clean, too warm.

My hair was still braided from two days ago, knotted and half-matted.

I didn’t care. I wasn’t trying to be clean, or whole.

I was a girl made of sparks and steel, rusting from the inside out.

My stomach growled. I ignored it. Hunger was something I understood.

It gave me an excuse for the ache in my chest. You don’t get comfort when your sister’s missing.

You don’t get soft mouths and tangled limbs and mind-shattering orgasms when Violet might be zip-tied in a basement.

You don’t get to be held when the only person who’s ever really known you might be screaming in the dark.

I closed my eyes. But memory didn’t ask permission.

Jax’s voice in my ear. The rope dragging across my skin. His touch, reverent, like I wasn’t carved out of tension. Like I could be more than a body that only knew how to hold itself together.

It was the first time since I’d arrived that my shoulders dropped and my lungs remembered how to pull a full breath.

I rolled to my back, lungs heavy. It wasn’t sadness.

It was more like guilt had weight, and had picked my chest as its throne.

Jax had been good. Gentle. Not because I earned it, not because he wanted anything, but because that’s who he was.

He didn’t treat me like a problem. He treated me like art.

Something worth touching. Learning. Holding.

And I hated him for it. Not because it hurt. Because I let it feel good. Because while my sister might’ve been dying, I let someone touch me like I mattered. Worse, I wanted it again. That twist inside wasn’t grief. It was longing. And that made me keeps still. Made me starve.

My hands—still marked with rope-burn and the grit of steel—curled into fists.

I was supposed to be made of iron. I welded steel the size of cars.

Worked with fire hot enough to melt bone.

I didn’t flinch at sparks, or pressure, or the sound of metal screaming.

My life was forged, not felt. And still I lay curled in a hoodie that wasn’t mine, crying like a kid too ashamed to scream.

I’d spent years insisting softness belonged to Violet, the steady one. The one who soothed what I never tried to hide. Now, she was gone, and all my edges turned inward.

Our parents never got it. They called her organized, and me intense. Thought that was balance. But Violet always got me. She never asked me to be less. When I picked up a torch at fifteen, she didn’t call it dangerous. She called it genius.

She drove me to my first gallery show in boots she couldn’t afford. Wrote my artist bio. Sent thank-you notes when I forgot. She didn’t just fix my mistakes. She cleared the wreckage before I even saw it.

And I let her. Because it was easier. Because I was the chaos, and she was the order. Because she made it look effortless, like she was built to carry what I found so difficult to manage.

And now she was gone.

The woman who ran my life like a synchronized system, who buffered my blowups with Outlook reminders and slotted my breakdowns into color-coded blocks, was probably chained to a concrete floor, alone in the dark. And I couldn’t bring myself to check the inbox.

I let her disappear behind me again and again, not just a few weeks ago, not just at the gallery event where the art collector flirted with her more than he looked at my work, and not just when I had the harebrained idea that I could afford to buy and run an art studio in the Kansas City Industrial District.

I let her vanish behind my ambition, my art, my fire.

And she let me, because Violet loved me with a devotion that asked for nothing.

And now I didn’t even know if she was alive.

It didn’t hit me all at once. The night with Jax had ended in quiet peace, the kind that seeps into bone without permission.

I’d fallen asleep in his arms, wrapped in a warmth that didn’t feel like surrender, so much as surfacing after too long underwater.

But the moment I opened my eyes and remembered who I was, the shame returned sharp enough to bruise.

I’d let someone hold me. Let him touch me like I was holy.

Let him see me, when the only person I owed myself to might’ve been screaming in the dark.

And it hadn’t just been closeness. I had begged.

I had cum. There’s no metaphor pure enough to absolve that kind of betrayal.

No god who’d call it mercy. No forgiveness I could wear without it bleeding through.

My body had sung while Violet might’ve been silenced, and that was the part I couldn’t forgive.

I rolled onto my side, forehead to the mattress, jaw locked against the sound clawing its way up my throat.

This wasn’t guilt, not the kind you earn by accident, because deep down, I didn’t want to undo it. That was the rot.

Jax had given me something no one ever had—control without condition, attention without demand, reverence without agenda.

He hadn’t just touched my body; he’d held it like he understood it.

Like he valued it. Like I wasn’t dangerous to love.

And I wanted that again. Even now. Even with Violet missing.

Even if her blood was drying on concrete somewhere, I wanted him.

That was the part that gutted me. Not the memory. The wanting.

Because it meant I hadn’t died with her. Some part of me still craved pleasure, still reached for connection, still ached to feel anything but terror. And what kind of sister did that make me?

I squeezed my eyes shut, Jax’s voice rising in my memory— You asked for this —spoken like a promise, like he knew I was still learning how to believe I was allowed to want anything at all.

In that moment, I had needed him. The weight of his body.

The rope at my wrists. His voice in my ear.

I needed the way he didn’t flinch when I unraveled.

How he didn’t fix it, just held it. Like the breaking wasn’t failure. It was sacred.

And that made it even worse. Because I hadn’t used him for escape. I’d let him in. I let him matter. And I couldn’t afford that, while Violet was gone.

The air felt thinner, like it had been filtered through grief and left sterile. I sat up slowly, hoodie clinging like a baggy second skin, soaked in days of sweat and shame. My ribs ached. My jaw ached. My throat burned like I’d swallowed rust.

I hadn’t cried. Not because I was strong, but because I didn’t think I deserved the relief.

The knock came like a ghost—soft, uncertain, and barely audible.

Just two dull taps against the wood, the kind made by someone already bracing to be ignored.

I didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe. My first instinct was to curl tighter, vanish deeper into the tangle of sheets and borrowed fabric, pretend I hadn’t heard it at all.

Then came the second sound—quieter, somehow heavier.

The creak of the door, slow and deliberate.

I didn’t look. Just gritted my teeth and waited, every muscle pulled tight, like the presence of another person might rupture whatever fragile balance I’d clawed together.

I was ready to snap. To bite. To drive them off with one look if I had to.

But when I turned my head, it was Sully.

And the fight drained out of me before it could rise.

He stood just inside the doorway, broad shoulders haloed in warm amber light, holding a plate in one hand and a too-small mug in the other.

He looked impossibly gentle for someone built like a linebacker, like a man who’d learned to take up space without making the room feel smaller.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t ask. Just stepped inside like he was delivering something sacred.

His boots moved quietly as breath across the floor. He crossed to the dresser and set the plate down with such care it felt ceremonial. Pancakes. I could smell them—warm, soft, sweet. The coffee was pale with too much milk, served in a cartoonish mug that had no business in a house full of ghosts.

He didn’t sit on the bed, or hover. Just lowered himself to the floor, slow and steady, back against the wall, legs stretched out like he was totally comfortable. Like he knew better than to pretend closeness was something I wanted.

He didn’t speak at first. Just exhaled, eyes scanning the room like the silence might explain something I couldn’t say.

Then, finally, his voice broke through, low and gentle, like he didn’t want to scare off whatever pieces of me were still holding together.

“I’m not gonna ask you what’s wrong. That’d be stupid. ”

I didn’t answer. Just stared at him—sweatpants, hoodie, a few days of stubble, and that same quiet patience he always wore like armor. He didn’t flinch when I met his gaze. Didn’t shift or try to fill the space. Just waited.

“But I brought pancakes,” he added, after a moment. “And they’re the real kind. Not protein powder and false hope.”

I almost smiled, which pissed me off.

“I’m not hungry,” I said, voice scratchy, throat tight.

He didn’t look surprised. “Didn’t think you were.”

I narrowed my eyes slightly. “So why bring them?”

He tilted his head and offered the smallest shrug. “Because you’re not okay, either. And eating’s easier than talking.”

I didn’t want to admit he was right. I didn’t want to admit I was starving.

The silence stretched between us again, but this time it wasn’t heavy.

It was… precise. Measured. Like he was giving me room to exist without expectation.

I shifted, finally, pushing up to sit against the headboard, legs pulled to my chest, blanket bunched around my waist. I didn’t reach for the food, but I didn’t tell him to leave either. That had to count for something.

“Want to talk?” he asked after a while, not looking at me when he said it.

“No,” I said honestly. “Not to you.”

He nodded without offense. “Fair. Want me to talk?”

I hesitated, then gave a small shrug. “Sure. Better than my own thoughts.”

He didn’t launch into something heavy. Didn’t try to distract me with drama or jokes.

He told me about his morning, how Deacon nearly blew up the espresso machine again, how Niko still alphabetized the spice rack like a serial killer, how Carrick took one look at the weather report and declared it was a tactical crime not to grill tonight.

He talked like life was still happening out there. Like the world hadn’t stopped spinning just because mine had. And for some fucked up reason, I let him. I let the sound of his voice pull me out, inch by inch, breath by breath, like he was hauling me to shore without ever touching the water.

By the time he paused, the plate was nearly empty.

I hadn’t even noticed.

My shoulders sagged, exhaustion leaking into my bones like rain through rusted seams. I stared down at the half-eaten pancakes, sticky syrup smeared across the plate like proof that I was still human. That I still needed something.

That’s when I felt it, that crack, small but deep, running down the center of my chest, like a stress fracture just beginning to split.

I put the plate aside slowly, hands trembling just enough to betray me. “I can’t talk to him.”

Sully didn’t flinch. Didn’t push. Just nodded, like he’d been waiting for those exact words.

He didn’t ask who. Of course he didn’t. He knew.

“He was good to me,” I said, the words scraping out like a secret I hadn’t meant to share. “Too good.” My throat burned. My fingers curled into the blanket like I could anchor myself there. “And now I hate him for it. Because it felt good. And I don’t deserve it.”

Sully didn’t interrupt or try to soften it. He just sat, eyes quiet, shoulders relaxed, letting me bleed truth at my own pace.

“I can’t explain why,” I choked, heat rising up my spine. “But I don’t deserve his kindness. His goodness.” My voice broke. “I can’t afford to let myself want things like that.”

I expected pushback. Something gentle. Reassuring. Some version of: of course you deserve kindness. But he didn’t give me any of that.

“Sometimes, allowing yourself to be held isn’t about what you deserve,” he said. “Sometimes, it’s about survival.”

The silence after was louder than anything in the room. Not empty. Just honest.

“I don’t know how to make it stop,” I said, the words scraping out more honest than I intended. “The panic. The wanting. It’s all tangled, and I can’t tell what’s mine and what I’m stealing.”

Sully stood slowly, knees cracking like the floor had held him too long. He crossed the room with that quiet ease and crouched next to the bed. Not touching. Just close.

“You breathe through it,” he said, voice low and even, like he knew the shape of every wound I was trying not to name. “You let it be messy. And you stop trying to earn your right to feel.”

I stared at him, hollowed out. Exhausted down to the marrow. “And what if I can’t?”

His gaze didn’t waver. Didn’t soften or brace. Just met my eyes with steady focus that made it impossible to look away. “Then we sit in the dark until you can.”

That was the cruelty of kindness—how it offered no absolution, only presence.

It didn’t solve the pain or close the wound.

It simply said I’m not afraid of your damage .

And somehow that made it worse, because it stripped away every excuse I’d built for why I deserved to suffer alone.

He didn’t even know the truth of why I felt so guilty, and he still offered me comfort without expectation.

But this time, I didn’t weaponize it. I didn’t bite back, or build a wall, or twist the softness into distance. I just let it settle. Let it bruise. Let it be heavy and human. I let myself want something—comfort, maybe. Forgiveness. Or just proof that needing connection didn’t make me weak.

Maybe survival wasn’t always about escape. Maybe sometimes it meant staying. Sitting still. Letting someone else keep watch while you remembered how to breathe.