Chapter 26 Chapter 26

Chapter 26 Chapter 26


Liam had been trying hard all week.

That was the thing about boys like Liam, when they sensed the ground shifting under them they did not examine the cause. They just turned up the warmth. Flowers on Thursday. A playlist he texted me Friday morning with the caption made this for you, which probably took him twenty minutes but was meant to land like hours of effort. A good morning text every day, something he hadn't done in months.

Love bombing.

That was what Mika had called it, flatly, when I mentioned the flowers.

He senses something is different and he's pouring water on a fire he doesn't fully understand yet.

She was right. She was usually right about these things.

I had accepted the flowers. Responded to the texts. Let him believe the warmth was landing the way he intended.

The costume was still on.

It would come off when I was ready. Not before.

Luca's was the kind of restaurant that required a reservation three weeks out.

Dark walls, low lighting, tables spaced far enough apart that conversations stayed private. The kind of place that understood what it was selling was not just food but the feeling of being in a room where only certain people were allowed. Liam loved places like this. He had been taking me to them since the first month of our relationship, which I had understood even then as a statement , look where I can take you, look what I can give you, more than it was ever about the food.

He was already at the table when I arrived.

Standing when he saw me come through the door, which was a move he saved for nights when he was trying, the full performance, jacket pressed, the warm smile aimed directly at me from across the room.

I walked toward him in a dress the color of deep green not the red, not tonight, the red was for war and this dinner was not war yet. This was me still try to be patience with Liam.

He kissed my cheek. Pulled out my chair. The whole thing.

"You look incredible," he said.

"Thank you," I said.

We sat.

The menus came. The bread basket came. The candle between us was the kind that burned low and steady and made everything look like something worth keeping.

Liam talked. He was good at talking when he was in performance mode, smooth stories, easy laughter, the full attention that had made me feel chosen eleven months ago when I hadn't yet learned the difference between attention and management.

I listened.

I ate my bread.

I was a perfect dinner companion.

And then, somewhere between the bread and the first course arriving, I felt it.

The specific pressure of being watched.

Not by Liam though because he doesn't really care that much but someone across the room.

I did not look up immediately. I finished the thought I was in the middle of, made the response Liam was waiting for, took a sip of water. Then, casually, I looked around the restaurant to take in the room, I turned my head.

The table beside the far window.

One person.

Dark jacket. No menu. A glass of water and nothing else, like someone who had come here for a reason that wasn't dinner.

Jax.

He was not looking at me when I found him. He was looking at the window, the street outside, dark and wet from earlier rain with the same expression he brought whenever he's around me. Composed. Patient. Somewhere behind his own thoughts.

Then he looked up.

Our eyes met across the restaurant.

He did not react. No nod, no smile, nothing that could be read by anyone watching. Just the steady, reading look. Two seconds, maybe three.

Then he picked up his water glass and looked back at the window.

Like I was part of the room's wallpaper. Like this was an accidental coincidence and he was handling it politely.

I turned back to Liam.

This is not accidental, I thought.

Nothing about Jax was ever accidental.

"so I told Coach that the rotation made no sense," Liam was saying, breaking a piece of bread with the casual ease of a boy who had no idea the person sitting across from him had just had a full conversation with someone else using no words at all. "He actually listened for once. Might change the lineup before the next game."

"That's good," I said.

"You think so?"

"I think if the rotation isn't working, changing it is the right move."

He smiled. Pleased. He heard it as a comment about basketball.

I meant something else entirely.

The food arrived. The conversation continued. Liam was warm and present in the way he got when he was working at something — a version of himself that was genuinely good company, the version that had made me say yes eleven months ago and had kept me saying yes long after I should have stopped.

I ate my pasta.

I laughed at the right moments.

I let him refill my water.

And every few minutes, without turning my head, I was aware of the table by the window. The dark jacket. The steady presence.

Jax had come here tonight for a reason.

I did not know the full shape of it yet.

But I trusted, in the specific, new way I had started trusting him, the way you trusted someone who had stood beside you on a cliffside and said nothing while you fell apart and then drove you home without making it a moment — that the reason would become clear.

Dessert menus came.

Liam reached across the table and put his hand over mine.

"I know things have been weird lately," he said. His voice dropped to the serious register. The one that sounded like honesty and was its cousin.

I looked at him.

"I want to fix that," he said. "I know I've been distracted. I want us to be good again."

His hand was warm over mine.

The gold necklace was at my throat.

"We're fine," I said.

He searched my face.

The surface was perfect.

"Yeah?" he said.

"Yeah," I said. Warm. Easy. Completely convincing.

He squeezed my hand and smiled and reached for the dessert menu.

Across the restaurant, Jax looked out at the rain.

And somewhere in the middle of what should have been a romantic anniversary dinner, I understood that we were all three of us in the same room and only one of us knew why.