9. Ava
Ava
I wake to the soft crackle of a wood stove and the steady warmth pressed against my back.
My eyes flutter open and I realize I'm curled into Jax like he's my personal mountain fortress.
One of his heavy arms has settled around my waist sometime in the night.
His breath brushes warm against my hair.
Oh my goodness. I'm in bed with a US Marshal who looks like he was carved from granite and pure protective instinct.
My heart does a silly little flip even as yesterday crashes back into me full force.
The courtroom. The way Hector Carlos stared straight at me from the defendant's table while I gave my testimony.
Those cold dead eyes promised that no matter what the judge said or how many marshals surrounded me, he would make me pay.
I can still see the blood on the garage floor from what I witnessed.
The cartel wants me gone. And now I'm here in this tiny Idaho safe house with a man who makes my knees weak just by existing.
Fear coils tight in my stomach. I shift a little and Jax's arm tightens around me instantly. His voice comes low and rough right by my ear. "Easy, sweetheart. I've got you."
I squeak out a tiny sound that's half embarrassment and half relief. "Morning. Sorry I kind of attached myself to you like a scared koala."
He chuckles softly, the sound vibrating through his chest and straight into me. "Best thing I've felt in years. Stay right there as long as you need."
I almost do. I almost let the joke be the whole truth of it. But underneath the koala comment my stomach is still tight with something I haven't said out loud to anyone, not even myself in the shower this morning. I push it down anyway. Old habit. Smile first, feel later, preferably never.
We eventually get up and he makes us a simple breakfast of eggs and toast from the stocked supplies.
The small kitchen table feels intimate with just the two of us.
I sip my coffee and watch him move around the cabin with that controlled power, and for a few minutes the warmth of the stove and the smell of toast almost convince me the world outside doesn't exist.
His satellite phone breaks the spell, buzzing hard against the counter.
Jax goes still in that particular way I'm starting to recognize. The way a dog goes still right before a storm. He answers on the second ring. "Hartman."
I can't hear the other end, just Mason's voice as a low rumble of consonants, but I watch Jax's jaw work, watch the line of his shoulders pull tight under his thermal shirt.
He grunts a few short answers. Copy. Understood.
We'll hold. When he sets the phone down his face has gone carefully, deliberately blank, which is somehow worse than if he'd looked worried.
"What is it?" I ask, my own voice smaller than I want it to be.
"Nothing for you to worry about." He picks his coffee back up like that settles it.
"Jax."
He glances at me. Something in my tone must give me away, because his expression shifts, softens at the edges.
"One of the men from your apartment. The one who got away.
They think he surfaced near a gas station outside Timber Creek two days ago.
Could be nothing. Could be him trying to pick up your trail from the old location.
" A beat. "It's a long way from here. I just wanted you to know there's eyes on it. "
A long way from here. He says it like it's supposed to be comforting. It isn't, not really, because far hasn't meant anything this whole time. Far was the library. Far was my apartment. Far has a way of becoming right outside the window with absolutely no warning at all.
I look down at my toast. My throat feels tight in a way that has nothing to do with crumbs.
"Ava." His voice changes, drops the careful neutral and just for a second sounds like Jax instead of Marshal Hartman. "Hey. Look at me."
I do, and I hate that my eyes are stinging.
"I'm fine," I say, which is a lie so transparent I might as well have said the opposite.
"Honestly. I'm great. Eggs are delicious.
Very protein-forward morning. Excellent fuel for whatever, you know, terrifying thing might happen today, probably nothing, ha. "
He doesn't laugh. He just watches me with that focused, steady attention that usually makes my knees weak and right now makes something in my chest crack open instead.
"You don't have to do that," he says quietly.
"Do what?"
"The funny voice. The bit." He nods at me, like he's gesturing at the whole performance. "I've watched you do it since the library. Cracking jokes right when things get bad. I get it. Hell, I respect it. But you don't have to perform okay for me, sweetheart. Not here."
The word bit lands harder than I expect it to. Because he's right, and being seen that clearly by someone is its own kind of terrifying.
"I'm scared," I admit, and my voice actually breaks on the second word, which I was absolutely not planning on.
"I've been scared since the parking garage and I just keep narrating it into something else because if I stop turning it into a story I think I'll just — fall apart.
Completely. Like, ugly-cry, can't-stop, ruin-the-eggs kind of fall apart.
And I didn't want to be the witness who falls apart on you. You've got enough to deal with."
Something moves behind his eyes, something that looks almost like pain. He reaches across the small table and covers my hand with his, his palm rough and warm and so much bigger than mine it should feel like nothing should be able to touch me as long as it's there.
"You can fall apart," he says, low. "I've got you whether you're funny or not. That's not a job I clock out of."
I laugh, wet and a little hiccupy. "That's the most romantic thing anyone's ever said to me and it's also a labor law violation."
The corner of his mouth twitches — that almost-smile I've started collecting like rare books. "Probably." He doesn't let go of my hand. "For what it's worth. I'm not exactly an open book either. Pun intended, librarian."
I sniff and wipe at my eyes with my free hand. "Tell me something real, then. Not the marshal stuff. What was it like, growing up?"
He's quiet long enough that I think he might deflect, the way he usually does — all clear for now, we shouldn't sit here waiting — but instead he exhales and looks at the window, at the snow piled white against the glass.
"Montana ranch. Hard work, early mornings.
My dad taught me that you protect what's yours no matter what it costs you.
Lost him young." His thumb moves once, absently, over my knuckles.
"Joined the military after that. Then the marshals.
Never figured I'd end up guarding someone who quotes herself doing dramatic readings of cereal boxes. "
"In my defense, the ingredient list for Honey Crisp-Os is a genuine emotional journey."
That gets a real laugh out of him, short and surprised, like it caught him off guard as much as me. It loosens something in my chest.
"Your turn," he says. "Tell me something true. No bit."
So I do. I tell him about my dad reading to me every night until I knew which books made him cry even though he pretended he wasn't. About my mother working two jobs and still showing up for every single one of my disastrous school plays.
About how the library became the one place fear couldn't follow me in, because nothing bad has ever happened on page forty-two of anything.
"Until now," I add quietly. "Now fear followed me everywhere. Even into a safe house in the middle of nowhere with a literal armed guard."
"Not everywhere." He turns my hand over in his, tracing one finger slow along my palm like he's reading something written there. "Not when I'm in the room."
I look up at him. The morning light through the window catches the gray in his eyes, makes them look like weather rolling in. "Jax."
"Yeah."
"Thank you. For not letting me perform okay. Nobody's ever done that before. Usually people just take the joke and run with it because it's easier than asking if I'm actually fine."
"I'm not interested in easier." His voice has gone rough again, but it's a different kind of rough than this morning's careful blank. "I'm interested in you."
The air between us changes all at once, goes thick and close the way it does right before a storm finally breaks.
I'm half out of my chair before I've decided to move, and he meets me there, standing, his hand coming up to cradle my jaw like I'm something he's been waiting a long time to be allowed to hold.
"Ava." My name in his mouth sounds like a question and a claim at the same time.
"I'm not scared right now," I whisper, which might be the first completely true thing I've said all morning. "Is that strange?"
"No." His thumb brushes my cheekbone. "That's just what it feels like to be safe."
I rise up on my toes without deciding to, my hands fisting in his shirt. He closes the last inch of distance and kisses me.
It isn't gentle, not exactly—it's hungry, like he's been holding something back since the moment he found me in that library and it's finally allowed to slip its leash.
One big hand slides into my hair, tilting my head exactly where he wants it, while the other flattens against my lower back and pulls me flush against him.
I melt instantly, every scared, performing, exhausted part of me going quiet at once.
He tastes like coffee and certainty and everything I didn't know I needed until right now.
A small sound escapes me and he groans low in response, deepening the kiss until my toes curl against the cold floor and my head goes pleasantly, blessedly empty.
When we finally break apart I'm breathless, my lips tingling, my fingers still fisted in his shirt like I'm not ready to let go of the evidence that this actually happened. He rests his forehead against mine, his chest rising and falling hard.
"Been wanting to do that since the library," he says, voice dark and raspy. "You're mine to protect, Ava."
I smile, shaky but real, no performance in it at all. "Good. Because I think I like being yours."