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, becausefarhasn't meant anything this whole time. Far was the library. Far was my apartment. Far has a way of becomingright outside the windowwith 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 wordbitlands 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 goof 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."
