His back was too her, that was good. Because otherwise he’d have seen the same blind panic that the captain had seen earlier, only softened with exhaustion and far too much alcohol. How many times in one day could a woman flee in terror? If Nicki had been less drunk, less shattered three times might have been the answer but Jax lucked out. She had all but fled from the captain when he’d asked to earn her trust, and now there was Jax asking for permission to use her name. Only it wasn’t just that, it was more than that. It had to be for the air to thrum with all the tension it did. She shook and she panicked and for the first few minutes of his reading she heard not a word. She missed out on his unique cadence and recitation because she was too lost in panic to hear it.

But she’d not fled from the captain and there had been some catharsis in holding him and stating her commitment to the ship, to him. There had been some healing in hearing his words back even if the scene had gone so awry. This ship, this was where she wanted to be, when she’d spoken earlier to the captain she had been in earnest. She’d let him in, just a little because he was the captain, he was the ship. 

But then, Jax seemed just as devoted, he was as much a part of the ship as the captain. Not all the crew was, she could feel it when she worked with them, but some of the crew loved the skate nearly as much as her master, as much as Nicki. Jax was one of them. 

Roots were dangerous things sometimes, they worked their way into cracks and weakened the solid core of things. But also, she reflected, her eyes falling on a mustard yellow book of botany of the eastern seaboard that sat on the shelf over her desk, roots also held things together through the storm. Hodling soil to the coast line as waves and wind pummeled it. Roots kept a tree up strong no matter the gale or the way the earth danced under it. A storm was coming, she could feel it. Maybe it was time for roots. She’d pondered kissing a pistol this day, she could ponder it or more another day if things went badly. 

[i]Besides[/i], she thought ruefully, she couldn’t seem to keep him out. Somehow he kept worming his way in. Perhaps just letting him in would circumvent a whole lot of trouble. She thought of his smile, his inexplicable unsettling smile and thought about seeing it more often. Was that a good thing? Probably not. 

Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the fact that she’d used up her daily allotment of terror, or maybe it was her ears caching onto the wonderfully unique reading of Jax but it suddenly seemed like something she could try, something she could live through. When he paused to take a drink she put down her now empty bottle and put her hand on his shoulder where it lay against her bed. When had she finished the bottle? She found herself wondering as her head swam a little.

“Jax.” She said the word and her honeyed voice did as much to those three letters as they had done to prose earlier, wrapping around it in rich-sweetness and hinting at mysteries and great depths. She said his name like a benediction. 

“You may use my name.” she said and then bit her lip, uncertain if she had just made a terrible decision. But then hadn’t the captain called her by her Christian name earlier? “You may call me Nicki, but not in front of the men. Please.”