Page 40 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

He stood with effortless strength, hands curving around my calves like it was the most natural thing in the world. For one suspended breath, that was everything.

Then Maddy screamed, “CHARGE!”

Chaos returned instantly. Sully surged beneath her, and suddenly we were colliding—elbows, laughter, water everywhere. Jax shifted beneath me with seamless precision, adjusting without words, calm in the storm like he’d done this a hundred times. Like he knew exactly how to keep me balanced.

Maddy lunged again, both hands reaching. I swatted her away.

“Are you trying to grab my boobs or win a chicken fight?” I snapped, dodging her wild, noodle-armed swipe.

“YES.”

I lunged. She cackled. Sully yelped. And then I shoved, hard.

Maddy toppled backward in a spectacular arc, flailing like a Muppet on fire before crashing into the water with a theatrical wail.

Silence fell. Then Maddy burst to the surface with both fists in the air. “I DIED GLORIOUSLY.”

Bellamy laughed so hard she nearly fell off the rock. Sully let himself sink backward in surrender. Jax shifted, letting me slide off his shoulders with care. His hands lingered a moment too long on my thighs before letting go. I landed in the water with a splash, my skin buzzing, my pulse wild.

I turned to face him. We were close, close enough to see the faint rise and fall of his chest, to catch the flicker of something darker in his gaze.

“You didn’t drop me,” I said, softer this time.

“I never would.”

It hit harder than it should have. Less because of what he said, more because he meant it. Maybe it was the heat in his voice, or the memory of rope and breath still caught beneath my ribs. Maybe it was that I still hadn’t figured out how to want someone who didn’t flinch when I bared my teeth.

I looked away first. But not before I saw that smile—quiet, knowing, like he already understood what I wasn’t ready to admit.

After some time playing in the water, we made our way toward the fire pit, soaked and humming with leftover adrenaline.

The sun had dropped behind the trees, twilight casting the sky in deepening blue.

Lanterns flickered along the trail. The fire cracked with a soft indifference, steady against the unraveling of the day.

Jax moved beside me with the kind of gravity that pulled everything toward him—slow, steady, heat rolling off him in waves deeper than skin.

It curled low, pressed deep, and I noticed.

God, I noticed. The clean line of his jaw.

The damp curls against his neck. The faint bruises on his collarbone, proof of rope and restraint and how he’d held me like he meant to.

I tightened a towel around myself, pretending it was for warmth. Pretending the fire was enough. Pretending I wasn’t still vibrating with the ghost of his hands.

In the shallows, Carrick and Bellamy were tangled up together like the water had rewritten their priorities. Her legs looped around his waist, his hands were anything but idle, both of them kissing each other like the world had ended and restarted between their mouths.

Maddy flopped onto a flat rock with a soaked sprawl of limbs and triumph. “I demand a prize.”

Niko sat nearby, impossibly dry, beer in hand, one brow raised. “You deserve restraints.”

She turned toward him like a cat catching movement. “That’s what I keep asking for, Sir. And yet… here we are.”

He didn’t argue. Just pulled her onto his lap and shut her up with a kiss that landed more like a claim than affection.

Jax dropped beside me, stretching like the stones belonged to him. “Five bucks says she bites him.”

I shot him a look. “Somehow I get the feeling that I shouldn’t take that bet.

” That smirk of his was a hazard. The kind that made women forget their judgment, and their underwear.

I focused on wringing out my hair, pretending not to notice his gaze, but it stayed, slow and hungry, curling across my skin like he already knew how I tasted.

Around the fire, the team now sprawled in sun-drunk disarray.

Sully had launched into a singalong no one joined.

Bellamy leaned into Carrick, laughing breathlessly each time he kissed her neck.

Maddy poked a marshmallow stick at Niko’s cheek while he looked skyward like divine intervention might still be an option.

Jax leaned in, his warmth brushing mine. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

I didn’t answer. Because it did. And I hated how much I didn’t hate it. So I stayed—wet, warm, fire-lit and full of noise. Surrounded by people who didn’t flinch at the mess. Who made room even when you didn’t know how to ask. My pulse synced with the music, the laughter, the rhythm of his breath.

When I looked down, Deacon’s frog blinked like it understood everything. I tried not to laugh. Too late. Jax caught it and smiled, quiet and knowing. Like it meant something. And maybe it did.

Smoke curled through the air. The fire crackled, throwing gold across the scene as Sully knelt with reverence, rotating his marshmallow like he was solving dark matter equations.

“This is golden perfection,” he said. “Michelangelo had his chapel. I have fire, sugar, and unrelenting skill.” Across from him, Bellamy held her marshmallow in the flames until it caught and blackened.

She didn’t flinch. Just stared it down like it owed her alimony.

“She wants it to scream,” Jax murmured.

I looked on incredulously. “She’s gonna eat that?”

“She’s gonna conquer that,” he corrected. “That marshmallow owes her money.”

Bellamy rotated it slowly, watching it combust with eerie satisfaction. It crackled and sagged, bubbling like it regretted ever existing. Honestly, I respected her energy.

I leaned in, Jax’s shoulder brushing mine. “I’d like to never piss her off.”

He smirked. “Smart. She’s got fire and disappointment on her side.”

Sully, unfazed, pulled his marshmallow from the flames and presented it to Maddy like a gold medal. “To the queen of chaos,” he said solemnly.

Maddy stood like a goddess at a sacrificial altar, dragging a streak of melted chocolate down her throat while locking eyes with Niko. No smile. No blink. Just slow finger to mouth, all sin and vacation.

“You have a napkin,” Niko muttered.

Maddy licked fluff from her wrist. “I have priorities.”

Carrick, seated behind Bellamy with a stick and no control over anything, pointed at Maddy’s neck. “If she attracts ants again, I’m not evacuating the house.”

Bellamy, eyes locked on her second flaming marshmallow, didn’t flinch. “Speak for yourself. I’ll burn the house down.”

Deacon skewered three marshmallows with mechanical grace. His gaze drifted toward the frog still perched on a stone. “Chauncey demands tribute.”

The fire popped. Someone coughed. Maddy blinked.

“…Okay,” she said, slow and incredulous. “That one got me.”

Niko turned his head toward Carrick. “You ever consider that Deacon might be from a monastery somewhere? Like, deep mountain upbringing, vow of silence, only speaks when it’s uncomfortably profound?”

Carrick rubbed a hand over his face. “He certainly communicates best through violence and sarcasm.”

“Same,” Maddy said brightly. “But therapy should help.”

Sully tossed a marshmallow at her like it was a dodgeball. “Eat. Before you seduce another man with cocoa byproduct.”

She caught it in her mouth like a trained seal. “You’re just mad my marshmallows get more action than yours.”

“My marshmallows have honor,” Sully said, scandalized.

“Your marshmallows are virgins,” Bellamy said flatly, still torching hers like she was roasting the last hope of an enemy.

Laughter broke out of me again, sharper, fuller this time, rising from a place I hadn’t felt in days. I let it out and didn’t bury it, not this time. And Jax turned toward me like that sound had realigned his entire axis.

He looked at me like I was the best thing he’d ever heard. He didn’t speak, just handed me a graham cracker with chocolate already placed. No charm. No push. Just quiet, infuriating patience.

I took it, bit in. Chocolate melted across my fingertip, and I licked it away, slow and unhurried, because, for the first time in too long, I actually wanted to savor something.

Jax watched, his gaze trailing from my mouth to my eyes and back again, the firelight turning him into something golden and dangerous.

“I thought I was the one who liked to play with fire,” I murmured.

His smile barely shifted. “Guess we’re both a little combustible.”

I didn’t answer aloud. Just met his eyes and let the silence do its job. He understood. Something in his expression softened, and I felt the weightless, startling click of being seen.

Music floated from someone’s phone. Maddy sang. Sully joined in with harmonies that sometimes fit. I leaned back and let the fire warm my toes, the scent of marshmallow smoke and laughter curling around me like safety.

I wasn’t okay. But I was warm. I was here. And maybe that was enough.

And Jax, he just sat beside me. Close enough to notice, never close enough to demand. A presence, not a pull.

We stayed like that, shoulder to shoulder, breaths syncing with no effort at all, as though our bodies had struck a truce our minds hadn’t caught up to. Around us, the world turned in slow spirals of laughter and low music, soft chaos that only exists when people feel safe enough to let go.

Eventually, Jax leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, eyes fixed on the fire. “You don’t have to say anything,” he murmured. “I’ll wait. As long as it takes.”

I didn’t look at him. Couldn’t. But the words wrapped through my ribs like wire—sharp, fragile, and real.

“I’m not frozen,” I said. My voice was low, but sure.

“No,” he said. “You’re molten. Just buried deep.”

That ruined me more than it should’ve. I stayed anyway, tethered by something that wasn’t force or fear.

I didn’t know what came next, but for the first time in a long while, I wasn’t bracing for it.

I wasn’t running, or shrinking, or apologizing.

I was just here, in the middle of it, with a man who saw the fire beneath the wreckage and didn’t look away.

And somewhere between his silence and mine, I started to believe that maybe I was still worth melting for.

By the time the fire burned low and the marshmallows had been reduced to sticky fingers and torn wrappers, the chaos had softened. It didn’t vanish, but it blurred at the edges.

Maddy sprawled on her stomach across a towel, humming the Jurassic Park theme while dragging a marshmallow stick through the ash in a tragic portrait of Sully.

He lay passed out beside her, clutching a half-empty marshmallow bag like a safety blanket.

Bellamy braided wildflowers into Carrick’s hair while he pretended not to care.

Niko muttered about mildew with a beer in hand and his feet propped up like a dad who had lost the war but claimed the recliner.

Jax hadn’t moved. Still close. Still quiet. Still there, with that steady presence that felt like safety.

Deacon, somehow now holding a wine glass I was sure hadn’t existed minutes ago, swirled something red with deliberate calm. Whether Maddy summoned it or he conjured it was unclear.

He took a sip, set the glass on his knee, and delivered the line with absolute composure. “This may be the most chaotic nonsexual orgy I’ve ever attended.”

There was a pause long enough to hold a laugh.

Then Bellamy, dry as a bone, said it without blinking. “It’s called community, Deacon.”

Maddy rolled onto her back and flung her arms out like she was presenting a magic trick. “It’s called foreplay.”

Carrick didn’t even glance up. “It’s called normal when you live with Maddy.”

Niko groaned like a man enduring a migraine in a kindergarten classroom. “I miss when we were dangerous and quiet.”

Sully, eyes still closed, one arm flopped over his forehead like a tragic Victorian widow, replied with a happy sigh. “I don’t.”

I snorted. Loudly. Didn’t bother to hide it. Something about the cadence of their weird little family made the sound rip out of me, real and unfiltered.

Jax looked over, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth like it didn’t quite want to commit to existing yet. “You laughing at us or with us?”

I lifted an eyebrow. “You think there’s a difference?”

His laugh came low and rasping, the kind that rolls through the chest and rises slowly, like bourbon heat and secrets you don’t realize you’re telling.

God, he was trouble.

But not the reckless kind. Trouble with firelight in his eyes and hands that didn’t try to mend what wasn’t his to fix. Trouble with a voice that reached into hollow places and made me forget how long it had been since I felt like someone worth holding onto.

Around us, the others were still arguing about whether marshmallow toasting counted as foreplay when Chauncey the frog reappeared, vaulting off Maddy’s discarded towel and landing squarely on Deacon’s shin like a soldier reporting for duty.

Deacon glanced down, unbothered. “Welcome back, General. The mission continues.”

Bellamy whispered like she meant it, “We need a documentary crew.”

Carrick groaned. “We need a therapist.”

“I am the therapist,” Jax offered mildly.

I leaned into him, just enough for our shoulders to brush. “And yet here we are.”

He didn’t pull away. Didn’t lean in either. Just stayed, anchored and unassuming, a quiet weight beside me that made the wanting feel possible again. Not extravagant. Not dangerous. Just real.

And all around us, the fire cracked, the frog leapt, the fools bickered, and the world spun steady as ever—even as mine, at last, began to turn.