Page 76 of Jax
Sully clung to Deacon’s back, yelling “Charge” like a frat boy on a dare, while Deacon, soaked and stone-faced, looked like hewas calculating prison time and considering the pond as both weapon and alibi.
Maddy stood waist-deep, wielding a pool noodle like she’d been summoned by Poseidon himself. She shouted something about battle and slapped the water hard enough to soak Bellamy, who sat on a mossy rock chewing a granola bar like she’d been assigned to document the downfall of man for National Geographic.
Off to the side, a shirtless Jax stacked firewood, his golden skin gleaming. Sweat clung to his temples, catching the firelight in a way that made it hard to remember why I’d ever sworn off physical contact or emotional vulnerability. I came out here looking for peace, maybe clarity. Instead, I found a circus.
Just when I thought it couldn’t escalate, a glow stick flew from the darkness and nailed Carrick in the forehead as he emerged from the pond like a dripping Calvin Klein model. He blinked, said nothing, and stood there radiating the damp fury of a man regretting everything.
“I’m fine,” he muttered, obviously completely over it.
“No one said you weren’t,” Bellamy replied without looking up, still chewing.
Sully launched off Deacon’s back with a sound somewhere between a dolphin mating call and a Viking battle cry. Water exploded. Maddy shrieked. Deacon just sighed.
Jax looked up and caught my eye. “Hey there, stranger,” he said, and just like that, I forgot how to breathe through my nose.
“Hey,” I replied, refusing to look directly at his abs as he crouched to adjust the firewood. “Is this some full-moon pagan ritual no one warned me about?”
He grinned—easy, unbothered, and far too confident. “Pond therapy. Requires zero emotional growth and a high tolerance for unsolicited chaos.”
“Perfect,” I said. “I’m emotionally stunted and deeply judgmental.”
From the pond, Maddy shrieked, “THE WATER GODS DEMAND TRIBUTE!” and hurled a floating ring at Sully, who dodged easily. Bellamy wiped her cheek, unbothered. “Every time I think we’ve peaked as a group, someone yells about water gods. It’s impressive, actually.”
Carrick, still dripping, took a splash to the face without so much as a blink. His expression remained unchanged—pure, stoic chaos.
“How do you people function?” I muttered, inching toward the firepit.
Jax pulled a beer from the cooler and handed it over. “We usually don’t. That’s the point.”
I hesitated before taking it. The hiss of the can cracked sharp in the air, strangely steadying. I didn’t drink. Just held it, fingers wrapped tight around the cold metal, giving myself a second to adjust to being around this many people again.
Jax crouched to tend the fire, silent and unhurried. Behind him, Sully fought a duck-shaped float with the chaos of a drunken uncle, while Deacon looked on like he regretted every social decision he’d ever made. And for the first time in days, a laugh slipped free—unpolished, surprised. Not because anything had healed. Not because I was fine. But because the bonfire-lit madness—the yelling, the splashing, the utter dysfunction—reminded me why I came. Not to disappear. To belong.
Which probably explained how I ended up in the middle of what could only be described as unhinged Roman bathhouse cosplay. Carrick, of course, was shirtless, and trying to convince Deacon to “loosen up,” while Deacon stood at the water’s edge like a man three syllables from homicide. He looked carved from stone. Carrick looked like someone had handed him a beerand dared him to start a cult. He gestured toward the pond, voice full of conviction.
“If you’d cannonball in just once,” he said, “your spine would loosen by at least three vertebrae.”
“I like my spine clenched,” Deacon replied. “And I’m not taking advice from a man who just tried to duel a goose with a glow stick.”
“That goose was looking at me funny.”
“That’s just their face.”
Carrick started to reply but didn’t get far before another glow stick nailed him square in the forehead. He turned in a slow, confused circle like he’d wandered onto the wrong film set.
“Who keeps doing that?” he demanded, scowling at the pond.
Jax, entirely too close to my ear, didn’t lift his gaze. “The glow stick gods. We do not defy them. We adapt.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or run, but before I could decide, Maddy exploded from the pond, wielding a foam noodle like Neptune’s trident. “I’m the Titanic!” she bellowed. “And this time, no one gets to be the iceberg!”
Behind me, Niko spoke with the resigned authority of the world’s most judgmental cruise director. “I am never the iceberg. I am the cold, unrelenting Atlantic, out here ruining lives.”
Bellamy nodded. “That should be on a T-shirt.”
Deacon didn’t look up. “Already printed it.”
I nearly aspirated on my beer. These people couldn’t be real.
