Chapter 11
11
i’m here for it
“There was an accident. Back when I was in the Marines,” he started, like he was narrating someone else’s story in that low timber I so enjoyed. “Something went wrong on a mission, and at first, everyone thought I was dead. Obviously, I wasn’t. But… it changed me.”
I waited patiently for more, but inside? I felt like a squirrel trying to ignore a pile of sparkly acorns.
“You’ve seen it already,” he continued. “What it did to me. The reflexes. My strength. Speed.”
He said it like he was listing ingredients for an apple pie recipe and not why half the city thought The Blade was a vampire, and the other simply thought he was a hoax.
My eyes went wide, having my own mini Say it, Bella moment. “So, it’s true? You’re like a real-life superhero, and it’s all… real?”
He snorted, but there was a bitter edge to it. “You’re asking that after witnessing it more than once?”
“Thrice, but who’s counting?”
His lips twitched.
“Was this some kind of Captain America super-soldier experiment?”
Shaking his head, he let out a sigh. “Not on our part. I don’t wanna bore you with the details?—”
“Do you even know me?” I cut in dryly.
He slowly lowered his eyelids. “Fine, I can’t go into the details, but what I can tell you is that our mission was to stop a terrorist group from making super-soldiers of their own. Things went…”
“Sideways?” I guessed.
And when his smirk hit, I felt it in my toes. “Yeah.”
But then I frowned, hating where my mind landed next. “And you were, what? The collateral damage?”
“Something like that,” he murmured, leaning his head against the wall of boxes before closing his eyes. “There was an explosion at the factory, and oddly enough, I wasn’t fast enough.”
Not fast enough.
The visceral images caused by that one sentence had my hand floating to my chest, rubbing at the sharp pang that had coiled there.
I opened my mouth, maybe to argue, maybe to say something not completely useless.
But before I could, Jax let out a rough exhale and pushed off the boxes, rolling his shoulders like he could shake off the memories.
“They’d medically separated me from the military before any of the effects of the serum showed up. Otherwise, I wonder if they would’ve kept me in some lab, ya know?”
I flinched. “Like, to study you?”
He didn’t answer, just cleared his throat with a shrug. “I get that all of this makes me a freak. Even if the military hadn’t separated me, I wouldn’t have been able to stay in once my—Well, once I started to be able to move like I do.”
Tilting my head, I shot him a quick smile. “You really don’t talk about this much, do you?”
His brow furrowed in confusion.
“You can say it, ya know.” When he didn’t seem to get where I was going, I held up my hands and wiggled my fingers. “ Powers .”
He shuddered. “Not calling them that.”
“Fight it all you want, but you’ve got powers, buddy, and you’re basically a walking Marvel movie. I’m here for it.”
I had him. I knew I did.
One second, he’d looked all down and depressed, but the next?
His eyes were a little bit brighter. They crinkled at the edges in a way that made my stomach flip, and when he licked his lips before allowing them to curve into a beautiful— slightly begrudging—smile?
I full-on swooned.
Internally, of course.
“Anyway, whatever. That’s why it’s safe for me to do what I do.”
I got that we’d circled back to me and that he was done talking about himself—but I was still hyper-focused on these new tidbits of who he was, and I wasn’t ready to resume our earlier argument.
“Being The Blade is also the only way for you to put your powers to good use, huh?” I asked quietly, seeing him in a whole new light. “To help people, I mean. It’s not like you could’ve joined the Slate Harbor PD. It would probably be way too noticeable with a body cam on your chest and civilians with phone cameras all over the place.”
His expression was heavy at first, filled with self-deprecation, but that didn’t stop the tiny lift I spied at both corners of his mouth.
Maybe that meant he was okay with my assessment—like maybe it was okay that I’d seen him as easily as he seemed to see me.
A girl could dream, right?
“Thanks for telling me all of that,” I said, wishing it’d come out with my normal voice instead of in a weird, strangled whisper.
“Thanks for…” he trailed off, almost like he couldn’t find the words.
I could hardly blame him, though, right? I’d heard more words from Jax Thorne’s lips in the last few minutes than I had in the last few months.
But, unfortunately, a knock at the door saved him from figuring out whatever he wanted to thank me for.
I dashed over to it, telling myself not to be rude to the person on the other side. It wasn’t their fault I was living out a million book and movie plots in my coffee shop’s storage room.
“Hey, there you are,” Wednesday said the second I opened the door. She opened her mouth to speak, but then she closed it with a snap after spotting the man taking up way too much space behind me.
“This isn’t what it looks like,” I exclaimed, feeling my cheeks warm. “We were just talking.”
“ Right .”
She didn’t believe me.
Real talk—I wouldn’t believe her either.
“Did you need something?” I asked brightly.
“Um, yeah.” She shook her head after tearing her fascinated gaze from Jax, focusing back on me. “Chris is here, and he wants some cereal from your secret stash.”
I snorted. “Tell him I’m off cereal, so he’s out of luck. Anything else?”
“Nope.” Wednesday snickered. “I’ll let you two get back to… talking. ”
Rolling my eyes, I returned her suggestive wave with a sarcastic version before promptly closing the door.
When I turned back to Jax, my knees went weak.
Was he blushing? I mean, I knew I was, but was he?
Somebody take my pulse. I think I might be dead.
Recovering quickly, Jax jammed his hands into the pockets of his dark wash jeans, lifting a curious brow. “What did you mean about the cereal?”
“That I’m off it?”
He nodded.
“I kinda do this thing where I become obsessed with a certain type of food, and then I’ll eat it every day. But then—after an indeterminate amount of time—I’m so sick of it that I swear I’ll never eat it again.”
So many slow blinks I lost count.
“And what about mac and cheese?” he asked, jerking his chin toward an old chalkboard menu against the back wall.
On it, one of our seasonal illustrations advertised our mac and cheese as the ultimate cozy comfort food for students living far from home.
I shook my head like he’d insinuated the impossible. “Not the case with my macs. My mom’s recipe—the one I serve here—is part of a core memory. I’ll never get sick of eating it.”
“I see.”
“So, anywho …” I said, steepling my fingers, “You know what all this super secret serum stuff means, right?”
“I’m scared to ask.”
I snorted, fully expecting a response like that. “It means I’m the Robin to your Batman.”
“That’s DC, not Marvel.”
I held up my hands. “Hey, you’re the expert. Superhero, and all.”
Jax groaned, running a hand through his hair like he was trying to erase my words from his brain. “Please stop saying that.”
Which, of course, guaranteed I would not.
“No, no, no,” I said, stepping closer, practically vibrating with the excitement of lightening the mood. “This is huge. Like, origin story huge. Now, all you need is a theme song. Wait, do you already have one?”
He glared at me, and it was a glare designed to wither souls.
I must be immune.
“No,” he clipped.
I tapped my chin, ignoring his lack of enthusiasm. “We should probably work on that. Maybe something with dramatic drums. Ooh , or violins. Small and sad ones.”
“ Luna ,” he warned, but there was a hint of amusement, or maybe fondness, and I took the W.
Grinning wider, I stepped into his space. “Fine, no song. But do you at least have a lair?”
His eyes closed briefly, like he was counting to ten. And then, he opened one eye, fixing me with a look that screamed Why are you like this?
And honestly, I didn’t have an answer. But I was having way too much fun to care.
And the best part was? He looked like he was having fun, too, and that was the goal.
“See? Superhero life doesn’t have to be all scary and dangerous all the time. Think about how much fun we could have.”
Jax looked like he was teetering on the brink of a mental breakdown. There was interest—no doubt about it—but there was also a deeply ingrained need to maintain his broody aesthetic.
His struggle was clearly real.
“If I give you this,” he growled, reaching into his jacket pocket and fishing out the phone from the night before, “will you stop calling me a superhero?”
I glanced at the phone, then at him, gifting him a satisfied smile.
“Deal,” I chirped, snatching it from his hand with a speed he wished that serum had given him. “Told you that maybe was a yes .”
He watched me, his expression hovering somewhere between amusement and defeat as a faint twitch passed over his lips.
My eyes narrowed, honing in on the movement like a heat-seeking missile.
“You should smile more,” I said, leaning in because personal space was overrated. “I like it.”
Jax cleared his throat, straightening like it might shake off the evidence of his humanity.
I tapped the phone against my palm as butterflies took flight within me. I’d never flirted like this in my life, and while sometimes it showed— looking at you, long-winded mention of his muscles —sometimes I did a pretty decent job.
Perhaps annoyingly decent , if you asked Jax.
But now that I had the phone and he’d agreed to Part One of the World’s Best Plan, I clutched it like a sacred relic, my brain already buzzing with ideas.
Maybe Chris could find something so hidden that Jax had missed it, and it would lead us right to the killer?
We were one step closer.
But before I could celebrate that fact, my own phone vibrated in the pocket of my intentionally latte-colored apron. I glanced down, expecting some random Wilde Brew-related notification, or maybe a meme from Wednesday, who was likely champing at the bit to discuss my storage room rendezvous.
But it wasn’t a meme. It was a text from Chris.
Chris: I’m still here. Can you come out? The Valentine Villain struck again last night and they just found the victims. It was Sam and Fatima. They’re doing a candlelight vigil at the high school. We should go.
And when I registered those words—along with the headline of the article he’d attached?
I suddenly found it hard to breathe.
The Valentine Villain was a monster before I’d read this message, and I’d wanted him stopped. But this time—this attack?
It hit closer to home.
“What is it?” Jax asked, his warm hand on my forearm shocking me from my stupor.
I started to read him the headline, but the words on the screen blurred for a second, like my brain refused to process them properly. My fingers tightened around the phone, my knuckles going white.
“Luna, look at me.”
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I registered the foreign tenderness in Jax’s voice, and that sweet summer child reveled in discovering a new side of him.
But as was my nature, I was capable of feeling a great many things at one time, each of them battling for front and center.
The clear winner here? Rage .
I looked up at Jax, the warmth of our easy banter evaporating like steam from a forgotten cup of coffee.
“If you don’t agree to the fake date plan,” I said through my teeth, my voice deadly calm, “I’m going to threaten to ban you from Wilde Brew again.”
And this time, I wasn’t joking.