Layla’s POV
The morning sun was hard and bright, slamming down on the roof of the old auto-body shop Jax called a fortress. It wasn’t much to look at from the outside—just a big, ugly box of corrugated metal in the middle of nowhere. But inside, it had started to feel… not like home, but like a place you could catch your breath. For a minute, anyway.
Me and Chloe were sitting on two busted-up office chairs we’d dragged into the shade by the open bay door. We were sipping iced tea from plastic cups, watching the heat waves shimmer off the asphalt that led to the main road. It was so quiet you could hear the flies buzzing. The kind of quiet that makes your skin itch.
Chloe swirled the ice in her mug. “You think he’s gonna let you leave anytime soon?”
“Jax doesn’t ‘let’ people do things,
