Which brings me back to Jax.
I straighten the quilt, smoothing wrinkles that don’t matter. “You should rest,” I tell Violet. “It’s been a long morning.”
“You should too,” she says softly. “You look tired.”
She’s right. I feel hollow around the edges—a mix of fear and adrenaline and the sick dread of that clinic email lying unopened in my jacket pocket.
But I’m a mother. Rest is secondary to survival.
“I’ll make tea,” I say instead.
When I walk back into the living room, Jax is at the kitchen counter, pouring steaming water into a mug. For himself, I assume—until he glances up and holds it out to me.
It’s chamomile.
My favorite.
“How did you—”
“You smell like it,” he mutters, shrugging one shoulder. “Or your laundry does.”
I blink. That’s… unexpectedly kind. Thoughtful, even.
But the man looks like he regrets offering it the second it leaves his hand.
“Thank you,” I say, wrapping my fingers around the warm ceramic.
He nods stiffly, like politeness physically pains him, then turns back toward the stove. A pot simmers there—soup, maybe? Something that smells like garlic and herbs and a home I haven’t had in a long time.
“You’re cooking?” I ask before I can stop myself.
“Gotta eat,” he says, back still to me.
“You didn’t have to make extra.”
Impossibly, he tenses even more. “I didn’t. This is just… what I make.”
“Oh.” A smile tugs at my mouth. “Meaning it’s totally fine to steal from the pot when you’re not looking.”
That gets him. Not a smile. Not even close. But his shoulder twitches in a way that feels like the ghost of one.
“Violet’s got an appetite?” he mutters.
“She could out-eat a linebacker.”
“Hm.”
He stands like that—rigid, unreadable—for a long moment before he clears his throat. “I’ll, uh… bring more wood inside. Storm’s getting worse.”
He doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t wait for a response. He grabs his coat and steps out into the wind.
I stand there with the mug in my hands, the steam warming my face, the emptiness of the room settling around me like something half-welcome, half-strange.
The truth slips in quietly, sneaking into my ribs before I notice:
This cabin feels different with him gone. Less charged. Less… alive.
And that scares me more than the storm outside.
