Page 39 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

Stella

I didn’t know what I expected when I finally left my grief cave. Maybe a few veterans drinking under the stars, quietly stewing in feelings they refused to name. What I found instead was shirtless chaos.

I’d come down from my room around dinner time, slinking through the halls like a displaced ghost. Expecting a meal in progress, I’d instead found an empty house and a note sitting on the middle of the kitchen table, written in Jax’s steady, even hand.

Stella, we’ve all headed down to the pond to cool off. You’re welcome to join us if you get this. No pressure. If you decide to come, just head southwest from the back deck and look for the path with the hanging lights. You can’t miss it. Hope to see you there.

P.S. There will be beer and s’mores.

P.P.S. Don’t get any funny ideas. I can track all the security cameras remotely. Unless you want to see what the punishment for a third escape attempt would be…

-Jax

I stared at the message for a long time, a million thoughts running through my head.

They’d really left me all alone in the house?

Maddy had mentioned that the pond was about a twenty-minute walk through the woods; could Jax really get back fast enough to catch me if I tried to run?

Something inside me said he absolutely could.

The man was a ghost when he wanted to be.

In the end, loneliness won out. I’d been alone for the better part of three days, and I was starved for human interaction.

And as much as I dreaded being around Jax, Sully’s words stayed with me.

Survival wasn’t always escape. Sometimes it was staying.

And as much as I wanted Violet to survive, I knew she would want me to survive as well.

So I grabbed an apple and started munching on it as I headed out the back door.

I heard them before I saw them. The sound of raucous laughter and yelling drifted over the lip of the ridge like smoke as I reached the end of the lantern-lit path. As I crested the edge of the rise, my breath caught as I stared down at the oddest mixture of tranquility and chaos I’d ever seen.

Sully clung to Deacon’s back, yelling “Charge” like a frat boy on a dare, while Deacon, soaked and stone-faced, looked like he was calculating prison time and considering the pond as both weapon and alibi.

Maddy stood waist-deep, wielding a pool noodle like she’d been summoned by Poseidon himself.

She shouted something about battle and slapped the water hard enough to soak Bellamy, who sat on a mossy rock chewing a granola bar like she’d been assigned to document the downfall of man for National Geographic.

Off to the side, a shirtless Jax stacked firewood, his golden skin gleaming.

Sweat clung to his temples, catching the firelight in a way that made it hard to remember why I’d ever sworn off physical contact or emotional vulnerability.

I came out here looking for peace, maybe clarity. Instead, I found a circus.

Just when I thought it couldn’t escalate, a glow stick flew from the darkness and nailed Carrick in the forehead as he emerged from the pond like a dripping Calvin Klein model. He blinked, said nothing, and stood there radiating the damp fury of a man regretting everything.

“I’m fine,” he muttered, obviously completely over it.

“No one said you weren’t,” Bellamy replied without looking up, still chewing.

Sully launched off Deacon’s back with a sound somewhere between a dolphin mating call and a Viking battle cry. Water exploded. Maddy shrieked. Deacon just sighed.

Jax looked up and caught my eye. “Hey there, stranger,” he said, and just like that, I forgot how to breathe through my nose.

“Hey,” I replied, refusing to look directly at his abs as he crouched to adjust the firewood. “Is this some full-moon pagan ritual no one warned me about?”

He grinned—easy, unbothered, and far too confident. “Pond therapy. Requires zero emotional growth and a high tolerance for unsolicited chaos.”

“Perfect,” I said. “I’m emotionally stunted and deeply judgmental.”

From the pond, Maddy shrieked, “THE WATER GODS DEMAND TRIBUTE!” and hurled a floating ring at Sully, who dodged easily. Bellamy wiped her cheek, unbothered. “Every time I think we’ve peaked as a group, someone yells about water gods. It’s impressive, actually.”

Carrick, still dripping, took a splash to the face without so much as a blink. His expression remained unchanged—pure, stoic chaos.

“How do you people function?” I muttered, inching toward the firepit.

Jax pulled a beer from the cooler and handed it over. “We usually don’t. That’s the point.”

I hesitated before taking it. The hiss of the can cracked sharp in the air, strangely steadying. I didn’t drink. Just held it, fingers wrapped tight around the cold metal, giving myself a second to adjust to being around this many people again.

Jax crouched to tend the fire, silent and unhurried.

Behind him, Sully fought a duck-shaped float with the chaos of a drunken uncle, while Deacon looked on like he regretted every social decision he’d ever made.

And for the first time in days, a laugh slipped free—unpolished, surprised.

Not because anything had healed. Not because I was fine.

But because the bonfire-lit madness—the yelling, the splashing, the utter dysfunction—reminded me why I came. Not to disappear. To belong.

Which probably explained how I ended up in the middle of what could only be described as unhinged Roman bathhouse cosplay.

Carrick, of course, was shirtless, and trying to convince Deacon to “loosen up,” while Deacon stood at the water’s edge like a man three syllables from homicide.

He looked carved from stone. Carrick looked like someone had handed him a beer and dared him to start a cult.

He gestured toward the pond, voice full of conviction.

“If you’d cannonball in just once,” he said, “your spine would loosen by at least three vertebrae.”

“I like my spine clenched,” Deacon replied. “And I’m not taking advice from a man who just tried to duel a goose with a glow stick.”

“That goose was looking at me funny.”

“That’s just their face.”

Carrick started to reply but didn’t get far before another glow stick nailed him square in the forehead. He turned in a slow, confused circle like he’d wandered onto the wrong film set.

“Who keeps doing that?” he demanded, scowling at the pond.

Jax, entirely too close to my ear, didn’t lift his gaze. “The glow stick gods. We do not defy them. We adapt.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or run, but before I could decide, Maddy exploded from the pond, wielding a foam noodle like Neptune’s trident. “I’m the Titanic!” she bellowed. “And this time, no one gets to be the iceberg!”

Behind me, Niko spoke with the resigned authority of the world’s most judgmental cruise director. “I am never the iceberg. I am the cold, unrelenting Atlantic, out here ruining lives.”

Bellamy nodded. “That should be on a T-shirt.”

Deacon didn’t look up. “Already printed it.”

I nearly aspirated on my beer. These people couldn’t be real.

Maddy pointed her noodle at me with laser focus. “You. In the water. Now. We need even numbers, and I refuse to let Sully play both sides again.”

Sully, already knee-deep and spinning in confused circles, raised his hands. “I’m neutral Sweden!” He paused for a moment as our eyes met, and he gave me a little nod and a smile that said he was proud of me for choosing to leave my room. I returned the nod with a small smile of my own.

Bellamy didn’t miss a beat. “Sweden folds fast when Maddy’s involved.”

And somehow, amid the splash fights and questionable diplomacy, the chaos wrapped around me. Not tidy. Not quiet. But welcoming. For the first time in too long, I wasn’t choking on my own thoughts. I let it cover me—bright, wild, absurd. Alive.

Then, Deacon emerged from the trees with two beers and, inexplicably, a frog.

“I name him Chauncey,” he said solemnly, like it was a ceremony and not a confusing woodland interlude.

There was a pause before Bellamy muttered, “Why does that frog look like it’s seen some shit?”

“Because he has,” Deacon replied, gently stroking its back like a damp, battle-hardened veteran. “He’s the only one here with actual combat experience.”

I blinked.

“Is no one going to question the fact that he’s got a live amphibian?”

“Nope,” Maddy called. “We’ve moved on. Get your ass in the water, feral metal witch.”

The nickname snapped my attention back to her. “You realize that’s not exactly motivating, right?”

She surged through the water like she was storming Normandy. “You’re on my team. Sully’s a traitor. Bellamy’s otherwise occupied. And Chauncey isn’t allowed in amphibious combat. I need you.”

“I’m not even in a swimsuit.”

“Neither am I. It’s chaos o’clock, baby; we don’t stand on formality here.”

I opened my mouth to argue again, but then Jax crouched in the pond, soaked and shirtless, braced on his thighs, eyes locked on mine like he’d already decided how this ended.

“You riding with me or what?” he asked, voice dipped in challenge. “I’ll be gentle.”

My pulse stuttered. “You drop me and I’ll weld your car shut with you inside it.”

His grin deepened. “That’s the hottest thing anyone’s ever threatened me with.”

Bellamy raised her granola bar. “I’d wear that on a shirt.”

I should’ve stayed put. But my body moved before logic caught up. I stepped forward, jeans dragging through the water, pulled toward the man who had tied me up and shattered every rational thought I had.

It wasn’t the game that made the air snap and hum. It was Jax. That anchored calm beneath the swagger. That brutal focus that said he remembered every inch of me, and wanted more.

He looked up at me as he knelt, steady and sure. “Ready?”

“Not remotely,” I muttered, planting my hands on his shoulders. His skin was slick and sun-warm. When I wrapped my thighs around him, I felt it—quiet, magnetic control. The kind that steadied without softening.