He comes back.
Stands in front of me.
“This isn’t even real,” I say.
I don’t know why I say it. Defense mechanism. The thing I say when something is getting too real and I need to put distance between me and it before I do something I can’t take back.
Like tell him the truth.
He looks at me for a long moment.
“Isn’t it.”
Not a question.
The parking lot goes quiet around us.
I don’t have anything to say to that.
I don’t have a single thing.
“Nova.” His voice low. “I sat at that table for two hours watching that man talk to you and I didn’t say a word because it’s not my place and I know it’s not my place and I sat there anyway because I couldn’t make myself leave.”
I look at him.
“And Griffin Novak has been texting you from Tampa and I’m done being reasonable about it.”
“Jax—”
“I turned my car around three blocks from your building,” he says. “I came back for you. Not because of anything else. Because I couldn’t make myself drive home.”
The night air is warm.
Everything is very still.
He still doesn’t know.
He’s standing in front of me choosing me, the guilt floods in
“Jax, there’s something—”
He looks at me.
Open.
That’s what does it. Not angry. Not guarded. Not the version of him I know how to handle. Just open, like he trusts me with whatever comes next.
And I lose my nerve.
I look at the tape on his hand. The set of his shoulders. The whole city leaning toward him like he’s the thing holding it up.
I tell myself I’m protecting his focus.
Maybe part of me is.
The uglier truth is that I’m protecting the way he looks at me. Like I’m not already part of the thing that hurt him. Like I can stay if he never knows what name I used before Nova Shaw.
“Come in,” I say.