April #2
He wasn't bouncing between monitors anymore, just sitting there, focused, typing while she watched.
"Kale lunch first," he said. "Already locked him out of the snack room, so that's done. What else?"
"His Outlook signature?"
Jax's fingers flew.
CHAD STERLING - VP OF MARKETING (Sent from my tiny car)
April made a sound that might have been a laugh, might have been a sob.
"Autocorrect next," Jax said, already typing.
"Team" becomes "Clown troupe"
"Campaign" becomes "Clown-paign"
"Regards" becomes "Regretfully"
"Per my last email" becomes "Per my last HONK"
April stared. "This is... ridiculous."
"That's the point," Jax said. "Mean leaves bruises. Inconvenient tuesday leaves memories."
He pulled up Chad's calendar and created a private hold.
APOLOGY PRACTICE (PRIVATE)
This item was created by Training Bot and cannot be removed.
April covered her mouth.
"One more," Jax said, fingers still moving. "Auto-forward his sent mail to himself. Every email he sends, he gets a copy. Instant. All day."
April blinked. "Won't he just—"
"Can't turn it off without admin access." Jax grinned. "Which I'm revoking in about thirty seconds."
Then his typing paused. "What about his direct deposit? Just a small reroute. He wouldn't even notice for a few days—"
"Jax."
"It's reversible—"
"No financial damage," April said firmly. "That was the rule."
Jax deleted whatever he'd been typing. "Worth a shot."
He turned the screen toward her again. The full list of pranks. Every reversible humiliation.
"Approval?" Jax asked.
“Do it,” she said.
Jax hit Enter.
On the screen, Chad's Outlook signature updated in real-time. The autocorrect entries saved. The calendar hold locked into place. The auto-forward rule activated.
April turned and found him already there. Their faces were inches apart. She could feel his breath, warm in the cold room.
His gaze caught on her mouth. April watched him lick his lips, and then his gaze came back up to meet hers.
The servers hummed. The blue lights blinked.
April pulled back enough to reassert their separate bubbles.
The joy in Jax’s eyes shuttered.
Her eyes darted away, and landed on something behind him. Pinned to the server rack—a card with a Post-it note on top.
“What’s that?”
He followed her gaze and shot his hand out, slapping a spare parts manifest over the card.
Too late. She'd already seen enough: corners soft with handling, a Post-it labeled reasons not to quit.
April looked away. Filed the moment under Definitely Not Now. Swallowed the urge to ask anyway.
Then Jax spoke again, voice sharper. "Nice ring, Feuller. Killian’s grandmother must be spinning in her grave knowing it’s being used for petty revenge."
April froze. "How did you—"
"I own these cameras."
"I saw you go into the supply closet. I saw you come out. I even saw the 'practice' kiss in the CEO’s office."
Jax had been watching. All day. Probably longer.
But all she could think was: he saw.
He saw the patterns. He documented them.
"Did you send me that text? The Poe quote?"
Jax looked at her for a long moment. "Yes."
"Why?"
"Because it was true. Years of love, forgotten in the hatred of a minute. You spent three years with him. You found out this morning. And by lunch, you were wearing another man’s ring."
When he said it like that, it sounded like a police report. All timestamps. No context.
"Poe understood rapid emotional pivots," Jax said. "Obsession. Betrayal. The speed at which things can flip." He paused. "I thought you’d appreciate the literary precedent."
"It was unsettling,"
He held her gaze, long enough for her to see he'd meant every word, then shrugged.
"Good quote, bad timing, story of my life."
April didn’t respond, instead she watched him move back to the keyboard, his hands returning to that same focused precision
"Come here," he said. "I want to show you something."
April moved closer. Found herself leaning in over his shoulder again, except this time she noticed she was doing it. The screen showed an email thread.
FROM: Chad Sterling
TO: Executive Leadership Team
SUBJECT: Q2 Campaign Strategy
Hi clown troupe,
I wanted to loop you in on our campaign metrics...
April felt her mouth twitch.
Below it, a reply:
FROM: Jennifer Park, CMO
TO: Chad Sterling
Chad,
Is this some kind of joke?
And what’s with your email signature?
She read Chad’s signature at the bottom:
CHAD STERLING – VP OF MARKETING
(Sent from my tiny car)
The laugh escaped before she could stop it.
Jax was grinning at the screen. "He’s sent four emails in the last ten minutes. 'Clown troupe' has appeared in all of them."
"That’s—" April couldn’t finish. She was laughing too hard.
"Tuesday-level, I didn’t think it would be this satisfying. Thought I’d want more."
The laughter faded.
She turned from the screen to look at him. "I thought you hated me."
"Hated you?" he repeated, like he’d never considered the concept as applied to her.
"Jax. You’ve been—" She gestured between them, then toward the building. The last two years of him being a hoodie-shaped ghost who appeared only when things broke. "You’re cold. You glare. You talk to me like I’m a ticket."
"That’s not…" He dragged a hand over the back of his neck, eyes flicking away to the server racks, the lights.
"I don’t…" he tried again, quieter. "I didn’t hate you. I was containing myself."
"Okay, then explain something to me."
Jax went still. "That sounds like a trap."
"It’s not," she said. "It’s a data request."
His mouth twitched. "Fine."
"You fixed my monitor," April said. "A lot. You always acted annoyed about it."
Jax exhaled through his nose, then closed his eyes briefly.
"I unplugged it," he said.
"You—what?"
"Power cable. You could’ve fixed it yourself. But you put in tickets. So I came up."
She recalculated. The pieces clicked. "You did it so you could see me?"
"I did it so I had a reason to be near you. The printer jams. The paper misloads. I rerouted your tickets to myself for two years; since the laptop."
She could see it now. The way he’d hovered at the edge of her orbit. Chargers appearing. Fixes too fast to be coincidence.
"Okay."
"Okay?"
“Okay.” Her gaze drifted back to the server rack, to the parts manifest still covering the card. "That card, the one you covered up. What is it?"
Jax went very still.
"You don’t have to—" April started.
"No, you should know. You’re the one who wrote it."
He pulled the parts manifest away. The card was there. Corners worn. A Post-it on top: reasons not to quit.
"Two years ago," he said, quieter, "you brought your laptop down here because it was blue-screening every fifteen minutes. Everyone else treated it like a crisis and me like a vending machine. Fix the thing. Close the ticket. Disappear."
He took a step closer. Close enough to see the faint purple scar near his jaw.
"And then you came back the next day with a thank-you card."
"What?"
"A card," he repeated, like the concept was still insane. "Handwritten. Actual paper. You spelled my name right. You said thank you like it mattered. Like I was a person and not the goblin you summon when Outlook starts crying."
His eyes flicked to the blue glow of server racks.
"I kept it, pinned it up where I could see it when everything else was… noise. Because nobody thanks me, April. Not like that. Not ever."
She’d spent three years with Chad feeling like furniture with a pulse. And this guy had seen her.
"Jax," she said quietly.
He looked at her like he was bracing for impact.
"Next time you want something. To be near me, just ask."
"Ask," he echoed, like he was testing the word in real-time.
"Yes," April said. "If you’re going to—" she motioned vaguely between them, "—try and find reasons to be around me, you ask."
"Always," Jax said. Immediate, uncomplicated agreement. Like she’d just handed him the clearest, most beautiful set of requirements he’d ever written down.
Jax’s gaze stayed locked on hers. "You know," he said, voice lower now, "you could punish me."
April blinked. "What?"
"For the monitor thing. The tickets. Two years of manufactured IT emergencies." He leaned back slightly against the desk, arms folding. "I could stay at your desk. On-call support. Immediate response time. You need a charger, I materialize. Password reset? I’m already there. Printer jam—"
"That’s not a punishment," April said.
"No?"
"You’d love that."
His mouth curved. "Yeah. I would."
The servers hummed steadily around them.
"So they work as rewards too," he said, grin sharpening with intent.
Heat crawled up her neck. This man had built a digital paper trail to prove she wasn't crazy.
Had fabricated IT failures for the chance to orbit her desk.
Delivered a petty revenge prank like it was an act of service.
And now, in a server room lined with humming machinery, he was requesting time near her as the reward.
And now—standing in a freezing server room—she was overheating.
"Consequences aren’t sexy until I say so," she managed.
Jax’s eyes went darker. "Noted. What about rules?"
"What about them?"
"You like rules. Boundaries."
"And?"
"Can we make them foreplay?"
April's brain did that thing where it tried to process a sentence and came back with error messages instead of answers. The question just hung there between them.
He'd held himself back for two years, bent systems around her without crossing lines. Now he was asking if her boundaries could be part of what came next.
He was waiting.
Jax's voice dropped even lower. "Can I—"
"Yes." April grabbed the front of his hoodie and pulled him in before the word had even finished leaving her mouth.
Mint and coffee.
Jax groaned against her mouth, and her fingers tightened in his hoodie. His hands found her waist and stayed there for a second, steadying, before he moved.
The kiss deepened. Jax's hands slid up her sides over fabric, ribs rising under his palms as her breath stuttered. He broke the kiss just long enough to press his forehead to hers.
"Can I—"
April answered by pulling him back down, fingers sliding into his hair.
Jax lifted her then—walked her backward two steps until the desk edge hit the back of her thighs, and set her on it, the cold metal biting through her slacks. Jax stepped in close, fitting between her thighs.
April tightened her legs around his hips.
Then his mouth was on hers again. The hesitation gone.
One hand came up to cup the back of her neck, fingers threading into her hair until strands began to fall loose around her face.
The blue LED lights stuttered across his features while the server fans roared like a mechanical heart.
Jax's breath hitched when her fingers tightened in his hair, the scratch of stubble brushing her jaw as his mouth stayed on hers and his hands held her steady at the waist, her body folding closer against his.
The reinforced steel door rattled.
A heavy, rhythmic boom that vibrated through the floor tiles.
“April.” Arthur’s voice was a tectonic rumble from the hallway. “The system is reporting a thermal spike in sector four. Open the door.”
Jax pulled back and swore under his breath. He glanced at the server rack behind her. The one currently throwing heat warnings because they'd been pressed against it for the last five minutes.
He grinned. The server room hummed around them, recycled air carrying the faint scent of ozone and warm electronics. April could feel the heat radiating off the rack behind her, or maybe that was her skin, still burning from where his hands had been.
"Thermal spike," Jax said, his gaze dropping to her mouth before settling on her eyes. "You've been down here for ten minutes, April. The hardware's having feelings about it."
The taste of mint sat on her tongue like evidence.
“Open it, Jax.” She slid off the desk, legs unsteady, fingers finding her hair in an attempt to being it back to some level of corporate respectability.
He hit the mag-lock release, then leaned in close enough for only her to hear.
“Killian has the ring, but I have the receipts.”
April’s stomach flipped. Not the nervous kind. The oh no, this is definitely a thing now kind.
The door opened. Arthur stood in the hallway, arms crossed, his eyes sweeping the room in one efficient scan.
April stood several feet from Jax, both of them breathing too carefully; Jax looked like he’d just won a game she hadn’t realized they were playing, and she was trying very hard to look professional and failing spectacularly.
Arthur's gaze lingered on her face. On the color high in her cheeks and the slightly mussed hair.
He gave her a knowing look.
Then he stepped aside and gestured toward the hallway.
April grabbed her tablet and walked past Arthur, awareness prickling up her spine as she felt his attention track her movement.
Behind her, Jax’s quiet laugh echoed through the server room before the door hissed shut again.