Page 81 of Jax
Stella walked beside me, not brittle, not running. The weight in her body was different tonight. Looser at the edges. She wasn’t trying to outpace me or hold me off with a sharp posture. She still carried tension, but it bent in a way I hadn’t seen before. Not defense. Not retreat. Something closer to resolve.
She stopped in the hall, chin tilted, eyes fixed forward. “Can we talk alone?”
Her voice was steady, but her jaw flexed around the last word like it cost her. Not because she doubted me. Because saying it out loud made it real.
My pulse ticked once, low, contained. I nodded. “Of course.”
I didn’t ask where. I already knew. Not the kitchen with Sully’s noise. Not the lounge where Maddy’s static still lingered. Not her room, either. She wanted privacy without confinement. A space that felt contained, but not cornered. So I led her to the cave, with its cedar walls, low light, and shadows wide enough to hold silence without pressing it into her.
The rest of the house hummed above us; Carrick’s laugh on the stairwell, the shuffle of cabinets, running water, but it all blurred into the backdrop. All I watched was her. The set of her shoulders. The way her fingers grazed the wall as we turned the corner, like she needed the texture to keep her grounded in her body.
At the threshold, she paused, scanning the room as though testing it for fractures. Then she walked in first, back straight, chin lifted. A choice, not a mask. I followed slower, settling into the armchair the way I always did. No leaning forward. No reaching out. Just present.
She stayed standing for a moment, hands curling slightly at her sides, like she was holding something fragile and deciding if it was strong enough to survive air. When she turned toward me, her eyes were clear. Nervous, yes. But trusting.
Her voice came low, certain even with the tremor beneath it. “That night. With the rope.” She drew a breath, steady but tight. “I wasn’t okay.”
The words landed clean and heavy, like a blade placed carefully in my hands with the expectation that I wouldn’t drop it. I didn’t. But the shift was immediate, the weight of what she gave me settling between us without drama or apology. Just truth, raw-edged and unflinching.
She stayed standing, arms folded. Her posture was rigid, feet rooted, like moving might unravel the courage it took to open her mouth. The storm behind her eyes hadn’t broken, but it moved there, steady and certain, riding the tremor in her skin. Her body balanced on the line between past and present, between defense and the terrifying possibility of surrender.
I anchored myself in stillness, not absence, but steadiness. A counterweight, not a cage. A presence she could push against without meeting resistance.
This wasn’t a conversation yet. It was an agreement. Trust wouldn’t be extracted. Her pain wouldn’t be interpreted. She needed to inhabit the space without being pulled toward explanation. So I watched the signals instead. The slow rise of her breath, the way her jaw worked like she was testing words that hadn’t settled into language yet.
Stella never left her body. She didn’t dissociate. She endured, survived, with a clarity that made detachment look like cowardice. But tonight, it wasn’t just endurance. She was pressing against the walls, testing the structure, seeing if the room, and I, could hold her without collapse.
I didn’t reach for her. Didn’t soften my tone. Even kindness offered too soon could register as pressure. And she’d had enough of that. Her agency had been taken before. I would not be another hand dressed in care while closing around her will.
When she spoke again, it was quiet, but precise. “It felt good. Until it didn’t. And I couldn’t tell you when that changed.”
Suddenly, the way the scene had played out made more sense. The thing that had caused her to call a safeword wasn’t invalidation, just disruption. The pleasure hadn’t disappeared. It had been overridden. My chest ached, but my thoughts moved quickly, layering meaning over memory. She hadn’t dissociated from the start; it had happened mid-scene. A breath. A rope placement. A shift in tone. Something had pulled her backward, away from the present and into a room she’d barely survived. And I’d been the one holding her when it happened.
She looked at me then. Not hesitant, just braced. Her gaze held weight sharpened by decision, like she was ready to say the worst part aloud.
“I felt like I was back in that room again. Not yours. Theirs.”
The word landed clean and deliberate. Not “his.” Theirs. She didn’t need to explain it. I understood exactly what that room had taken from her.
Still, she was careful not to place the blame on me.
“I knew it wasn’t your fault,” she said. “But my body didn’t. It panicked.”
Her cognitive awareness had lasted just long enough to name the difference, but her nervous system had already decided. Flashback latency. No malice. No red flags. Just a body trying to protect itself from something it couldn’t categorize.
“I couldn’t pull myself out fast enough,” she said, her voice soft but steady.
That was all I needed to hear.
I could’ve said something then—something comforting or polished, the kind of line passed between well-meaning men in my field who think kindness is enough when they’re out of their depth. But she hadn’t come for comfort. She didn’t want guilt or apologies. She wanted clarity. She was testing whether I could meet her in the truth—precisely, cleanly, without flinching.
So I gave her what mattered.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I said, voice level, shaped like fact rather than comfort. “Your body did what it was trained to do. It followed the pattern stress had encoded. It got you out. That’s not a failure. That’s function.”
She didn’t answer or react. But she breathed, slower, deeper. The kind that starts low, deliberate, as if her lungs were finally receiving the message her brain couldn’t yet translate.
“And I didn’t catch up fast enough,” I said. “That’s not your fault. That’s mine.”
