Chapter Twenty One
PIECES OF US
GABRIELLA'S POV
The morning sun streamed through the curtain. Jax lay beside me, one of his arms stretched across my waist, his face relaxed in the kind of sleep that looked peaceful, boyish even. He looked so different from the man the world feared.
I lay still, listening to the steady beat of his heart against my ear. His warmth was comforting, like a blanket I never wanted to crawl out from under. It was moments like this I never thought I'd get. Moments I never thought I deserved.
His fingers twitched slightly against my bare hip, and a low, sleepy groan rumbled from his chest. He shifted, pulling me closer without fully waking or opening his eyes. His lips brushed lazily across my hairline, and for the first time in a long while, I smiled without thinking twice.
When his voice finally broke the silence, it was rough, low, and barely awake.
"You're staring," he mumbled, cracking one eye open, the corner of his mouth lifting into a crooked smile.
"I like the view," I whispered back, letting my fingers trace the faint scar just above his heart. The one I hadn't asked about yet, but the one my mind couldn't stop wondering about.
His eyes softened as he watched me, brushing a knuckle along my cheek. "You're the only view I care about."
The quiet flattery made heat bloom across my face, but before I could reply, the sharp ring of his phone vibrating on the nightstand interrupted the moment. Jax groaned, burying his face in the crook of my neck like a stubborn child.
"Ignore it," he muttered, voice muffled against my skin.
But the buzzing persisted, longer this time, until with a reluctant sigh, he leaned over me to snatch the phone off the nightstand. His muscles flexed against me as he swiped his thumb across the screen, reading the message that had clearly pulled him out of our bubble.
His jaw tightened just slightly. It was barely noticeable, but I caught it.
"Work?" I guessed softly, brushing the strands of sleep-tousled hair off his forehead.
"Yeah," he said, voice low. "It's Benson. Something about the permits for the warehouse reconstruction."
I nodded, though a faint knot formed in my chest. I hadn't realized until that moment how tightly I was holding on to these stolen hours. We hadn't spent time together for a long while after that first time we met. I hadn't realized I missed him so much.
But Jax must have sensed it, because his hand found mine beneath the covers, his fingers threading through mine.
"I’ll handle it later," he promised, pressing a kiss to my knuckles. "Right now, I want you. Only you”
His words make my heart clench and I smile.
The hours slipped by easily after that, filled with small, sweet things that didn’t need grand gestures. We made breakfast together, if you could call burning toast and making coffee breakfast. Jax’s version of cooking involved stealing bites off my plate before I’d even sat down, and I didn’t even mind.
We wandered the house barefoot, wrapped in each other. His fingers brushed against mine as we walked the hallway, like he couldn’t stand even an inch of distance. And I enjoyed every second.
At some point, he pulled me onto the back porch, slinging a blanket over my shoulders with two mugs of coffee warming his hands. The sun was high, the breeze soft, and it felt like everything was perfect.
“You ever think about the future? Our future?” I asked, my voice barely louder than the rustling leaves.
Jax tilted his head, the question catching him off guard. He set his mug down and pulled me between his legs, wrapping the blanket around both of us.
“All the time,” he said, his voice steady. “But I’ve never been able to picture it... not until you and our little pup, of course.”
The answer made my throat tighten. My heart swelled with both hope and fear. I’d spent so long surviving day-to-day that thinking about the future had felt like tempting fate. But here, wrapped in his arms, I wanted it. I wanted to believe in it..
Later that afternoon, while Jax was busy fixing the old lock on the front door refusing to let anyone else do it after I'd told him to let it be, I decided to surprise him. I wanted to cook him dinner. Proper dinner. Not toast and coffee, not takeout, not a rushed meal between rogue hunts or meetings.
The problem was: I couldn't cook.
I stared at the mess on the counter. It looked like a war zone of flour, eggshells, and half-burned attempts at garlic bread. The pasta sauce bubbled on the stove, smelling more like smoke than tomatoes, and the chicken... well, the less said about the chicken, the better.
I felt my stomach sink. I wanted to give him something. Something normal. Something that didn’t come with blood, or fear, or the weight of the pack on his shoulders. But the kitchen looked like a disaster movie.
The sound of footsteps made me freeze, and I whipped around, trying to hide the burnt pan behind my back.
Jax leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, brows raised, and a barely-there smile tugging at his lips.
“What... happened here?” he asked slowly, trying and failing to bite back a chuckle.
I felt my cheeks flame, biting my lip. “I was trying to make you dinner.”
Jax pushed off the frame and crossed the room, gently taking the pan from my hands, setting it on the stove behind me. His hands came up to cup my face, thumbs brushing away the flour smudges from my cheeks.
“You don’t have to prove anything to me, sweetheart,” he said softly. “I’d take burnt toast and coffee over anything, as long as I get to have it with you.”
The knot in my throat tightened, but for once, it wasn’t from fear or hurt. It was from the overwhelming rush of how much this man could undo me with so little.
I let out a small, shaky laugh. “You might regret saying that when you taste the chicken.”
He laughed, leaning in to brush a kiss against the tip of my nose. “I’ll risk it.”
And just like that, the mess didn’t matter. He cleaned up with me, side by side, the two of us covered in flour and burnt sauce but laughing like we’d never known anything else.
Later, we ordered pizza and when the delivery-wolf had brought it, he took it and we ate it curled up on the living room floor, the empty boxes and half-drunk wine glasses scattered around us like the perfect kind of chaos. His fingers tangled with mine, his thumb brushing circles over the back of my hand as the room grew quieter.
“This,” I whispered, my head resting on his shoulder. “This feels like home.”
His arm tightened around me, lips pressing to the crown of my head. “It is home. You are.”
The words settled deep in my chest, rooting themselves in places I didn’t know were still hollow.
We stayed like that long after the pizza was gone, after the wine turned warm and the night folded in around us. No titles, no pack, no fear.