You’d known Jackson Teller since you were six years old.

First scraped knees and bikes in the California sun. Then teenage nights on the back of his dad’s old Harley, flying down winding roads like you had nowhere else to be. And later, late-night calls when his world spun too fast and too bloody, and you were the only thing that ever made it slow down.

Now you were sitting on the picnic table outside Teller-Morrow, cigarette in hand, watching as Jax paced across the lot, jaw tight, eyes stormy.

“You okay?” you asked, knowing the answer.

He didn’t answer right away—just looked at you like he always did when things got too heavy: like you were the only damn thing keeping him grounded.

“They voted without me,” he finally muttered. “Clay pulled something behind my back.”

You sighed. “You want me to talk some sense into him?”

That pulled a smile from him, just barely. “You? In that crow-eater tank top? You’d make half the table confess to murder if you looked at ’em long enough.”

“Good,” you said, smirking. “I’m expensive muscle.”

But even in the joke, something hung between you—something unsaid, something years old and heavy.

Jax sat down beside you, close enough that your knees touched. You’d known him through every version of himself—before the cuts, before the violence, before the weight of the gavel. But lately, he looked at you like he wanted something more than friendship. Like he was afraid to want it.