"Now? Can't it wait until I've had coffee?" I'm pour myself a cup, adding sugar without measuring because precision feels impossible right now.
"It can wait. But you should know that Blackwood wants to keep you here through the weekend while they do the security overhaul. Brandon thinks having you return before upgraded systems are installed would be tactically unwise."
The clinical language is supposed to make this feel professional rather than personal. Like we're discussing a threat matrix instead of the fact that I'm displaced from my home, living in a safe house, dependent on others to keep me safe. The coffee tastes bitter even with sugar.
"So I'm stuck here until when? Monday?"
"At minimum. Possibly longer depending on what Blackwood finds during the security assessment." He's moving closer now, the way he does when he's trying to read my expression for signs of panic or breakdown. "But you're not stuck. This is temporary displacement, not imprisonment."
"Feels like imprisonment. Feels like my entire life has been reduced to safe houses and surveillance and trying not to think about Trask being in my bedroom while I was asleep."The words come out harder than I intended, sharp edges of fear dressed up as anger.
Jax stops moving and gives me the space to process without trying to fix it immediately. This is what Gabriel never understood—that sometimes I just need to say my mind out loud without it being solved or minimized or explained away.
"You're right," he says finally. "This is terrifying and violating and not something that gets fixed with better security protocols. But we will fix it. Trask made a tactical error by escalating to breaking and entering. He left physical evidence, gave us documentation of trespass, created the legal grounds for restraining orders we didn't have when he was just taking photographs."
The operational assessment is supposed to be reassuring. Instead it just reminds me how much of my safety depends on legal technicalities and threat analysis.
I set down my coffee, lean against the kitchen counter, try to find words for what I'm feeling that aren't just variations of scared and angry and exhausted. "I can't go back to my apartment. Even after the security upgrade. Even with restraining orders and legal protections and whatever else Blackwood installs. I can't sleep there knowing he was in my bedroom."
"Then we find you a new apartment. Something Trask doesn't know about and that Ezra can't trace, somewhere that gives you actual distance from the violation." Jax is using his problem-solving voice, the one that reduces emotional chaos to tactical solutions. "Solange can help with the search. I'll handle security vetting. We'll have you relocated within two weeks."
Two weeks. Fourteen more days of living in temporary housing, of being displaced from the small apartment I chosespecifically because it wasn't the house where my husband monitored my every move. Now I'm back to being monitored, back to depending on someone else's surveillance for safety, back to the same dynamic I spent five years trying to escape.
"Basically trading one cage for another just because this one feels safer." I find myself saying out loud. I know it's not the same. I made sure Brandon got Jax here. I asked him not to just consult, I wanted him to stay here. I made the choice this time, instead of having it made for me. But he responds before I can take back my words.
"Is that what you think this is? Another cage?" Jax's voice is careful, neutral, the way it gets when he's trying not to influence my answer.
I turn to face him fully. He deserves better than my constant analysis, my endless second-guessing. "I'm tired of overthinking this. Tired of trying to separate what I feel from why I feel it. Maybe attraction and protection are entangled. Maybe I can't untangle them. Maybe I don't need to."
"Then stop."
"Just like that? Just decide to stop overthinking and trust that what I feel is real?"
"Why not?" He moves closer and closes the distance between us until I can see the exhaustion in his face that mirrors mine. "We've spent two weeks dancing around in avoidance, trying to create clarity through distance and analysis. All we've learned is that distance makes us miserable and analysis just creates more questions. So maybe we should try something different."
"Like what?"
"Like this." His hands come up to frame my face, his thumbs tracing my cheekbones with careful attention. "Likeadmitting that I check the traffic camera near your building every morning around eight, just to see you leave for work. To see if the Blackwood team is with you, but mostly just to see you, to know what you're wearing that day, if you look tired or okay. Like acknowledging that I've had to stop myself from texting you a dozen times, from driving past your building just to be closer to where you are even if I can't see you. Like being honest that restraining myself from wanting you, from showing up at your door, from checking on you, from just being near you—has taken more discipline than any surveillance protocol I've ever maintained."
The confession lands with more weight than it should. He's been watching for me on traffic cameras. Still finding ways to see me even from a distance, even when he promised himself he'd let go. The knowledge should feel like a violation, like proof that surveillance is all he knows. Instead it feels like evidence that what we have is real—that he's been struggling just as much as I have, finding his own ways to stay connected when the distance felt unbearable.
"Show me," I say.
"Show you what?"
"Show me how you want me. Not as professional assessment or threat analysis or any of the ways you've been hiding behind operational language. Just show me."
His hands tighten on my face, and for a moment I think he's going to pull back, to argue that this isn't the right time or the right circumstances or any of the thousand rational reasons we've been using to avoid this. Instead he closes the remaining distance and kisses me with the kind of focused intensity that makes everything else irrelevant.
This isn't the careful and testing kiss from two weeks ago. This is decisive, claiming, the physical manifestation of every boundary we've been maintaining collapsing into want that's too strong to keep restraining. His mouth moves against mine with purpose, his tongue tracing the seam of my lips until I open for him, and the sensation of being tasted rather than just kissed makes my knees weak enough that I'm grateful for the counter at my back.
His hands move from my face to my waist, pulling me closer until there's no space between us, just the friction of clothes and the architectural problem of two bodies trying to occupy the same coordinates. I can feel him getting hard against my hip, can feel the way his breathing has shifted from controlled to something more ragged, and the knowledge that he wants me this badly makes my entire body respond in ways I haven't felt since before Gabriel taught me that desire was just another thing to be monitored and controlled.
I pull back enough to catch my breath, to see his face in the dim light. His pupils are blown wide, his lips already swollen from kissing, and he's looking at me like I'm something he's been wanting for weeks and can finally have.
"Bedroom," I say, because the counter is uncomfortable and this deserves better than quick and desperate in a safe house kitchen.
He doesn't answer with words. Just lifts me in one fluid movement that makes me gasp, my legs wrapping around his waist automatically as he carries me toward the bedroom. His hands are under my thighs, supporting my weight, his fingers pressing into skin hard enough that I know there will be marks tomorrow. The thought shouldn't be as appealing as it is—evidence of his hands on me, proof that this actually happened.
