Page 58 of Jax
I thought back through everything that had happened since I’d been kidnapped. All the lies I was holding, the secrets I was keeping, what I was planning to do to keep my sister alive. Itwas all too much, and I couldn’t tell a soul about it. Sometimes it felt like it was going to burst out of me if I didn’t keep a death-grip on my resolve.
“Sometimes I don’t think there’s another person in the whole world who could understand what goes on in my head.” I said, trying to sound nonchalant.
She nodded. “Yeah. I get that.”
I looked away. “No offense, but I doubt you do.”
Bellamy didn’t miss a beat. “I used to flinch every time someone touched me. Even people I liked. I’d pretend I was fine, but inside I was locked. Waiting. Braced for something I couldn’t name.”
My stomach pulled tight. “And now?”
She smiled slowly. “Now I let someone tie me up and whisper filth in my ear while I cum so hard I cry.”
I huffed a dry laugh before I could stop myself. “Jesus.”
“Right?” she said, still smiling. “But that didn’t happen overnight. And it didn’t happen because I magically stopped being afraid. It happened because someone showed me I could be terrifiedandsafe. I could let goandstay whole.”
I swallowed around the sudden thickness in my throat.
“What if I’m not built like that?” I asked quietly. “What if I can’t let go? What if that part of me got… cut out somewhere along the way?”
Bellamy shook her head, her voice like velvet over steel. “Then we work with what you have left. No one here wants to change who you are, Stella. But we’re damn good at helping people find the pieces they were told to bury.”
I didn’t answer right away. I just stared down at my hands. They were knotted together in my lap like I could hold my shit together through sheer force of will.
“I used to think being in control was the only way to be the person everyone expected me to be,” I murmured.
“It probably was,” she said softly.
“I don’t know how to unlearn that.”
“You don’t have to. You just have to learn when to put it down.”
I looked up at her then. Really looked.
“You’re serious about this.”
“As a flogger with a name,” she said with a crooked grin.
“That… should be a weird analogy, but it tracks.”
“You’ll meet her, eventually.”
“I don’t know if I want to,” I said, although the doubt in my voice was clear as day. It came out tense, hesitant, like I was trying to shove the curiosity back down before it showed.
Bellamy didn’t press. She just leaned against the arm of the couch, legs folding beneath her like a cat settling in.
“Most people think kink is about sex,” she said. “And sure, it can be. But mostly it’s about honesty. Control. Trust. Learning who you are in a space safe enough to be real. It’s like… your nervous system finally gets to exhale.”
I looked at her. “And if you can’t? If your body never lets go?”
Her smile came with a softness edged in sorrow. “Then we hold you until it does.”
The words hit like a bruise—warm, aching, unexpected. It wasn’t just what she said. It was how certain she was. Like she meant it. Like they all did. And it unraveled something I hadn’t realized I was holding together.
I didn’t know I was trembling until her hand brushed mine. Just for a moment. Just enough to ground me.
“You don’t have to decide anything,” she said. “This isn’t a pitch. There’s no deadline. No pressure. The only thing that matters is what you want. What you need.”
