The unlikely bond

Chapter eight

The late afternoon sun hung low in the sky, casting a golden hue over the hidden beach Mac decided to take her to. The crashing waves provided a constant hum, a strange kind of peace that contrasted with the tension back at the cabin. Jax and Amelia walked in silence for a while, the rhythmic sound of their footsteps in the sand blending with the ocean's lull. The beach was tucked away, secluded from prying eyes, just like everything else about this operation.

Jax had sent the crew out earlier: Lea to gather necessities, the others to dig deeper into Marcus's connections, security, and whereabouts. The situation was more complex than they had anticipated, and the uncertainty gnawed at Jax. But here, away from the noise, away from the crew, something shifted.

Amelia walked beside him, her thoughts swirling with a mess of emotions she was still trying to untangle. The anger, confusion, and fear that had gripped her since her kidnapping had given way to something else in the past few days-an undeniable curiosity about the man at her side. Despite everything he had done, despite the anger she knew still burned in him, there was a depth to Jax that intrigued her.

The silence stretched on, but it wasn't uncomfortable. It felt more like a truce, a temporary suspension of the tension that usually defined their interactions. Amelia glanced over at Jax, watching the way the wind tousled his hair, the hardened lines of his face softened in the golden light of the setting sun. He seemed... different here. More relaxed, more human.

After a few more moments, Jax broke the silence. "It's strange, isn't it?" he said, his voice low, as if he were speaking more to himself than to her. "All this chaos, all this tension... and yet here we are, walking along the beach like it's normal. Like we're not in the middle of a war."

Amelia didn't answer right away. She wasn't sure what to say. She'd seen glimpses of this side of Jax before-the one that wasn't entirely consumed by rage and revenge. But here, on this quiet stretch of sand, he seemed different in a way she hadn't fully realized until now.

"You don't seem like the kind of person who takes many walks on the beach," she said, her voice light but with a hint of curiosity.

Jax smirked, a fleeting expression that almost made him seem approachable. "No, I don't. This was my father's place-he used to come out here, away from everything. I didn't understand it then, but now... maybe I get it."

His voice had a strange melancholy to it, one that Amelia hadn't heard before. It caught her off guard, and for a moment, she saw him not as her captor, but as someone who carried his own burdens, his own ghosts from the past. She wondered how many people had ever seen this side of Jax-the part of him that wasn't hardened by a need for vengeance, the part that remembered a life before all of this.

"You miss him," she said quietly, more of a statement than a question.

Jax's jaw tightened, and he turned his gaze out toward the horizon, watching the waves roll in. "I don't know what I miss anymore," he admitted after a long pause. "It's been so long, I don't know if I miss him or the idea of him."

Amelia had never heard him speak so openly. It was as if the ocean air had loosened the grip his emotions had on him, allowed him to let down his guard for just a moment. She could sense that this wasn't a side of Jax that many, if any, had ever seen.

"I've been angry for so long, it's hard to remember what it felt like before that," Jax continued, his voice low and rough. "Everything I've done, everything I've built, has been about settling the score. But standing here now..."

His voice trailed off, and Amelia could see the war inside him. He was a man driven by revenge, by the need to make her father pay for what he'd done. But underneath all of that was someone who had lost more than he'd ever admit, someone who had been shaped by that loss into the person he was today.