Chapter Twenty-Seven #4
“You think control keeps you safe, Jax? All I see is fear. Fear to feel. To receive. To let people in. All I see is a woman too scared to enjoy anything at all.” He pauses, weighing his words. “You are exactly what the world turned you into.”
Jax flinches like she’s struck.
She opens her mouth.
Nothing comes out.
But tears rim her eyes.
She wipes them away, baring her teeth like her tears are a sign of weakness.
But Ronyn watches. Good.
He wants real.
“You weren’t doing what I wanted you to do,” she says, voice strained and broken.
Ronyn pushes to sit, dragging his hand through his hair.
“I’m not a fucking puppet, Jax. Sex is for connection—you and me. Not control,” he murmurs, swiping his hands down his face. His voice breaks on the last word despite his obvious effort to stop it.
Pain flashes across her face. “Control is how I keep breathing.”
And for one dangerous heartbeat, he understands her completely.
“Laughing is how I stay human,” Ronyn admits.
A heartbeat passes.
Then another.
Then softer, more dangerous, Ronyn asks, “What’s controlling everything doing for you, Jax?”
Her jaw tightens.
Her voice drops.
Low. Defensive. Sharp.
“It keeps me safe.”
Ronyn exhales sharply. “From what?”
She doesn’t answer.
So he does. “From needing anyone. From the risk of loving someone.”
Her eyes flash, and her voice comes out a low growl. “I don’t want to need anyone. Need is leverage. I’d rather die than hand someone that kind of weapon.”
He can feel the truth in that.
He leans forward slightly, voice rougher now, more exposed. “I want you to need me.”
The words hit her like a blade slipped between ribs—clean. Precise. Deadly.
Ronyn’s breath is unsteady, ragged.
“But you don’t let anything happen unless you’re the one making it happen,” he snaps, growing impatient. “Every relationship worth having requires you to let yourself—even a small piece—be held by another. But you… you hold every piece behind a fucking fortress.”
Her voice drops low, tears rolling freely down her cheeks now.
“If I don’t control it, it can be taken. If I depend on it, it will be ripped away. If I love it, it will die,” she admits, and the words sound like a confession she’s held inside for a lifetime.
Ronyn’s anger dissolves instantly. Because there it is: the real wound beneath all the teeth.
“Just because it’s happened before, doesn’t mean it will happen again. Not everything is an attack.”
“It always becomes one.”
Silence again.
Thick.
Heavy.
Unavoidable.
Then he says it.
The thing he’s been swallowing.
“Even where there is no attack, Jax, you do a fine job of turning it into one all on your own.”
A pause.
That hits deep.
She sits up sharply now, anger rising fast. Because he is seeing too much.
He’s seen it from the first day he met her—but now he’s finally saying it aloud.
“And you can’t outrun pain with jokes, Ronyn. At some point, you’ll have to feel something deeper than humor.”
He huffs a humorless laugh. “Hypocritical to pontificate on feelings when you just numbed yourself out and ignored my existence while you took from me, Jax.”
A long, loaded pause fills the space.
Then Ronyn says the most dangerous thing yet.
Soft.
Steady.
Certain.
“You didn’t want me with you tonight. You wanted the comfort of not being alone without the risk of letting someone in.”
Her throat moves with a hard swallow.
Still, she says nothing.
She doesn’t deny it.
Doesn’t confirm it.
Just stares at him.
Breathing shallow.
Chest tight.
Cornered.
“You can’t keep everyone at arm’s length and call it strength.”
Jax pulls the blankets across her chest, wrapping herself up like she can shield herself from the truth.
“It is strength,” she breathes, her words barely audible. “I exist without needing anyone or anything. It requires strength every fucking heartbeat to be alone in this fucked up world. No one gets to destroy what they can’t reach.”
He shakes his head slowly.
Not cruel.
Not mocking.
Just… sad.
“No. It’s lonely,” he whispers. “And you’re not stronger for it, Jax. You’re… alone.”
Silence detonates between them.
Neither moves.
Neither looks away.
Two survival strategies staring at each other across the wreckage.
Joy and control.
Light and defense.
Connection and certainty.
Then Jax says the cruelest thing she can think of. Because she has to regain ground.
“Maybe feelings don’t suit you after all, Ronyn. You’re easier when you’re joking.”
He nods once. Very small. Very quiet.
“Yeah…” He takes a breath. “And you’re never easy.”
Silence again. Longer this time. No winner. No resolution. Just two people who finally said what they were never supposed to say out loud.
Ronyn pulls on his leather pants and throws a tunic on quickly. “I’ll stay somewhere else. Execute as planned tomorrow,” he strides toward the door, gripping the door knob, and swinging his bow and quiver over his shoulder. “Or don’t. I know you’ll do it your way, regardless.”
He waits for her to say something.
To stop him, to mock him, to throw another blade.
But the silence behind him never breaks.