Silence settled, heavy but certain.
We cleaned the kitchen on muscle memory—ice packs in the sink, towels on the counter, lights clicked off. I grabbed my hoodie from the back of a chair and shrugged it on. Theo held the door. Jax walked out then followed.
On the porch, the night pressed cool against my skin. The ocean breathed somewhere out there in the dark, steady and indifferent to our mess.
Jax paused at the steps. “Luke.”
I looked over.
He drew a breath, pain flickering across his face. “Thank you.”
“For what?” I asked.
“Not telling me to stay away,” he said. “Not after that.”
I thought of Avery’s face when she said“I care about Jax,” chin up, eyes bright. I thought of Chase’s fist, the sound of it.
“Don’t make me regret it.”
He nodded once. “I won’t.”
Theo clapped his shoulder as they peeled off toward his car. “Text when you’re home, idiot.”
“You too,” Jax muttered. He slid behind the wheel, engine coughing to life, headlights cutting across the street. He lifted a hand in a short wave and pulled away.
Theo lingered. “You good?” he asked.
“No,” I said honestly. “But I know what to do.”
He grunted approval. “Good luck tomorrow.”
He left, and the night took him. I stood there another beat, the smell of eucalyptus and brine threading through the air, hands shoved in my hoodie pocket until my phone dug into my palm.
We weren’t fixed. Chase was a live wire. Elise was a knife under the table. Logan was circling, teeth out. And somewhere behind all of it, Dunn had his thumb on the scales.
But for the first time since the punch landed, I felt it—the click of something real sliding into place. Tomorrow, we would take the first swing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
MILA
Avery and I made it to my house without speaking. I got her upstairs, into my room, and shut the door on the rest of it. Avery didn’t cry right away. She sat on the edge of my bed with her hands in her lap, staring at the floor, shoulders tight. When the first tear slid, the rest followed—quiet and wrecking.
I folded her into my arms, resting my cheek against her hair. She shook against me until she finally quieted. When she pulled back, the red around her eyes made her look younger and smaller—as though she was the version of her from when I’d first met her.
“My brother hit Jax,” she said, voice scraped raw. “And then he talked about me like I wasn’t in the room.” Her mouth tightened. “As if I’m fragile, incapable of holding my own or making decisions. As if I’ll break.”
I passed her a tissue. She took it but balled it in her fist instead of using it.
“You don’t have to do anything tonight,” I said. “We can stay here. Watch TV. Hang out.”
“Stay.” She mulled over the word before blowing out a breath then finally wiped her eyes. “I’m tired of staying. Ofgetting moved around like furniture. I mean, Chase tells me I’m breakable, and suddenly, everyone’s talking at each other about me instead of to me. What the hell?” Her gaze flicked to the window, to the thin slice of evening beyond the glass. Then her phone pinged. She glanced at it, lips pursing. “I want todosomething.”
I caught the name on her screen. Jasmine. One of Avery’s friends.
“There’s a party tonight. Jasmine and Margie are there now. It’s at Tori’s. Want to go?”
I gnawed on my lip for a second. “It’s a bad idea, Aves. The guys want us to lay low.”
