Page 133 of Carrick
I raked a hand through my hair and stood, grabbing my shirt off the floor, dragging it over my head like it might shield me from everything I didn’t want to feel. I didn’t go after her. Not yet. Because what was I supposed to say?Hey, did that mean something to you? Because it’s fucking killing me how much it meant to me.No. I didn’t need a heart-to-heart. I didn’t need the open-ended silence of asking questions I didn’t want the answers to.
I’d seen enough of that in the field; soldiers trying to explain why their lungs collapsed when their brothers didn’t come home, civilians clawing for logic after trauma detonated their lives like a landmine. People desperate to assign reason tothings that didn’t follow rules. But feelings? They’re messier than war. And I’d always trusted logic more.
So if I was going to drag myself out of this spiral, if I had any hope of making sense of the way she’d sunk into me like I was the only steady thing in her world, I needed someone who could pull the emotion apart without getting tangled in it. Which meant one person.
Jax.
The human calculator. A walking behavioral profile with the unnerving habit of telling you what you were feeling before you even realized you were feeling it. The only person I knew who could dissect something this complicated without letting sentiment muddy the facts.
I didn’t need comfort.
I needed perspective.
And I knew exactly where to find it.
The house was quiet,still rubbing the sleep from its eyes, the air thick with that particular stillness that only existed in the early hours. It wasn’t silence exactly. It was the hush that followed a storm—real or emotional—when everything held its breath, waiting to see what survived.
I moved through it slowly, steps soft but steady, hands in my pockets like that might keep the thoughts from spiraling too loudly. The hardwood didn’t creak beneath my boots. The place had learned me by now, learned when I was trying not to be heard.
The kitchen was empty, but the scent of coffee and burnt toast still clung to the air like ghosts. Somewhere deeper in the house, Maddy’s laugh rang out—bright, unbothered—followed by Sully’s familiar drawl. Bellamy was probably with them, playing it cool. Pretending last night hadn’t cracked the goddamn foundation under our feet.
I didn’t stop. Couldn’t. Not until I got my head right.
That meant going deeper—into the one place in the house that never truly slept. Jax’s domain.
His setup wasn’t tucked away like a side project. It had been carved into its own wing, rebuilt with triple-insulated walls, server-grade air flow, redundant power systems, and enough tech to quietly monitor everything from traffic cams to encrypted federal channels. We called it the Cave. Jax called itnecessary.
I knocked once, then pushed the door open without waiting for an answer. I didn’t need one.
The air inside dropped several degrees, cool and sterile, filtered down to a hum. The lights were low, but the room glowed with the dim pulse of monitors—wall-to-wall screens alive with code, heat maps, surveillance feeds. Schematics lit up one screen, lyrics to a Depeche Mode song crawled across another. A pot of tea sat steaming on a nearby shelf, flanked by protein bars neatly arranged in descending order of caloric density.
And in the middle of it all, perched on a rolling chair with one leg tucked underneath him and his hair half-tied back like he’d forgotten it hours ago—was Jax.
He didn’t turn.
“Hi,” he said mildly, fingers flying over the keyboard like he was composing a symphony only he could hear.
“How’d you know it was me?”
“You have a specific cadence to your steps,” he said without missing a keystroke. “You walk like a predator when your brain is full. Heavy heel strike, slightly faster left foot—probably still favoring the lateral sprain you got during that extraction inBudapest. Also, no one else would come to me at six-oh-eight a.m. unless something was wrong. Statistically, it’s almost always you.”
I blinked. “You done?”
“Not even a little,” he said, finally swiveling in his chair to face me. “But I’m guessing you’re not here to talk about my observational prowess or orthopedic memory.”
“No.”
He leaned back, hands folding over his stomach, and studied me the way only a man like him could—not just looking, but analyzing. Mapping emotional posture, micro-expressions, breath tempo.
He didn’t ask what I wanted. He already knew.
“So,” he said slowly. “Emotional dilemma cloaked in a request for logic?”
I let out a breath and dropped into the chair across from him, slouched low with elbows on my knees. “Something like that.”
“Hmm.” He nodded to himself, eyes narrowing just slightly. “You slept with her.”
I didn’t answer. Didn’t flinch either.
