The phone clicked on the second ring.
"Hello?"
A wet, ragged breath filled the line. Then Ben's voice, shattered. "Jax…"
"Ben. What happened"?
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. For Ella. For everything."
"Where are you."?
"I'm outside. At her place."
Jax's jaw tightened. Of course he was. Drawn to the one place he'd burned down. "You shouldn't be there."
"I know." The word was a choked sob. "We need to talk. Tomorrow. Please."
Jax let the silence stretch, letting Ben sit in the hollow sound of his own regret. "Alright," he said, his voice leaving no room for negotiation. "Cafe on Elm. Ten AM. Don't be late."
He ended the call. The sudden silence in the apartment he once shared with Ben was absolute. He placed the phone on the counter and stood in the middle of the living room. The echo of Ben's breakdown faded, replaced by a cold, clear focus. His thoughts didn't linger on the wreckage. They tunneled backward to the source, following the straight line of choices that led to this night.
Three years ago,
he was the quiet one. Ben was a storm of easy confidence who pulled him into his orbit in a loud bar. A month later, Ben burst into their new apartment. "Jax! Meet someone!"
She was half behind him. Ella. "My girlfriend!" Ben announced, pulling her forward.
Jax nodded from the couch. "Hey." But in that glance, a fault line opened in his life. He saw her,the gentle intelligence in her eyes, the careful way she held herself. She gave him a polite, fleeting smile before her attention was pulled back to Ben. He was just the roommate. A background character in her story.
He carried that silent, futile knowledge for a year before the call came about his father. He left for eight months of hospitals and hard labor. When he returned, he was different. The time had stripped away all softness, leaving him lean and sharply defined. The quiet remained, but it had hardened into a steady calm. He was a man rebuilt from tougher materials.
He came back to the same apartment, but to a different Ben—always gone, talking about deals and connections.Jax never saw Ella. He wondered about her, but the question felt like overstepping a line Ben had already erased.Until the day it all tipped over. He heard a scramble from Ben's room. He found a woman, arm trapped under the bedroom door. When he freed her and she turned, it was her. Ella.
His heart hammered. "Jax," he said, searching her face. There was no recognition. Only the panic one shows a stranger. The quiet roommate from years ago was gone, erased by this rougher, more solid man. She didn't see their past in his eyes. Then Ben walked in. His gaze cut from Jax's hands on Ella's arms to her disheveled state, turning cold and sharp. Ben still lived there, but in that silent, charged moment, everything between them fractured.
The professional truth of that fracture came later. At the Jefferson job, Jax was fitting a final shelf when the client who walked in with his new VP. Ben. In a suit from another world, Ben offered a hand with a smooth, empty smile. "Jax. Great work." The friend was gone, replaced by a corporate reflection.
The final piece came a week after that. Ben was packing. "The job's everything. And… I'm getting married. To Clara." He said it like reading a headline. Jax leaned in the doorway, watching the last traces of their shared life get boxed away. Ben moved out. The silence he left behind was vast, but it wasn't empty. It was full of a different kind of possibility.
Now, the echo of that discarded past was sobbing on the phone. Ben had traded a real thing for a glittering cage and was choking on the silence. The sound meant nothing. It changed nothing.
The next morning at 9:50, Jax was already at a corner table in the Elm Street Cafe, a cooling coffee in front of him. He watched the door, his expression unreadable. Ben had ten minutes to show up and face the wreckage he'd made.