Jay Jay's POV
The sound of running water echoed from behind the closed bathroom door, a steady, rhythmic hum that felt miles away. I lay completely still in the dark, the sheets tangled around my chest.
My body felt heavy, thoroughly drained, and aching from the sheer force of his relentless weight. I didn't even have the power to lift my arms, let alone get up, find my clothes, and dress myself.
But as I stared at the ceiling, I didn't feel angry. I didn't even feel sad.
Instead, a profound, quiet clarity washed over me. I thought about how he had stormed into this room, driven by a blind, ugly rage at the boardroom, the foundry, and the suffocating lies over his that freaking seinna.
His mind had been completely consumed by chaos, fractured by a madness that made him forget everything else—including his own gentleness. In those terrifying moments, I hadn't been in his thoughts. He hadn't stopped to think, hadn't asked for permission, and hadn't even processed what he was doing to me.
Yet, even in the middle of all that hate and destruction, he hadn't gone to Sienna.
He could have sought out anyone to drown out the noise, but his instincts had driven him straight to my door. It proved a truth I had always felt deep down: his mind can forget, but his heart always remembers. When the world collapsed around him and his logic failed entirely, his heart knew exactly where it belonged. It knew whose warmth it needed to survive. He had chosen me, completely and ruthlessly, because even when he couldn't think straight, his heart couldn't forget who he loved.
Keifer's POV
The bathroom door clicked open, and the steam curled out into the cold bedroom like a shroud. I stepped out, my skin stinging from the scalding water, but the heat hadn't done a damn thing to wash away the filth settling deep in my soul.
I had forced myself to look in the mirror, staring at the monster who had just used the woman as an object to absorb his rage.
I had drummed up the courage to say something—anything—to beg for a forgiveness I didn't deserve. I needed to confess my recklessness, to tell her how deeply the guilt was tearing me apart inside.
But the moment my eyes landed on the bed, the breath was brutally knocked out of my lungs.
Jay Jay looked utterly shattered in the dim light. She lay there like a ghost, beautiful so fragile and physically broken that it made my stomach turn in violent, agonizing loops. The bruises on her skin were a direct roadmap of my unyielding selfishness. The crushing realization that I had done this to her—that I had stolen her voice and drained her of every ounce of life just to silence my own demons—slammed into my chest with an agonizing force.
I was a coward.
I stood frozen, pinned to the floorboards by a suffocating wave of self-loathing, realizing that no apology could ever erase the sheer terror and pain I had inflicted on her tonight.
Jay Jay's POV
The click of the door handle sounded like a gunshot in the freezing silence. I watched through the shadows as Keifer stepped back into the room, his towering frame casting a massive, terrifying shadow across the bed. He opened his mouth, his jaw tightening hard as if he were preparing to deliver the final, crushing blow.
A sharp, agonizing panic sliced through the fragile remains of my sanity. Before he could utter a single syllable, my body reacted out of pure, desperate survival.
Weakly forcing myself up, I dragged my trembling arm down, grabbed the edge of the sheet, and pulled it tightly up to my chest. I hid my bruised body and messy hair from his gaze, desperately trying to shield what little was left of myself. Tears spilled continuously down my exhausted face.
"Please... just don't say it, Keifer," I choked out, my voice completely broken and raw as I trembled beneath the fabric. "I know how disgusting I am to you right now. You look at me and you just feel disgust... but please, don't say that words out loud. I can't take it. I can't bear to hear you say how much you hate what happened. Just... leave. Please, just go."
Keifer's POV
Her words hit my chest like a physical blow, fracturing the last bit of air in my lungs.
Disgusting??
Never.
She thought I was disgusted by her. The agony of that misunderstanding was sharper than any knife. I wanted to scream, to tear my own skin off, to force my useless throat to open and tell her that the only thing disgusting in this room was me.
Leave?
I couldn't leave.
If I walked out that door now, I would be abandoning her to the ghosts of the violence I had just inflicted on her. Every protective instinct in my body—the ones I had brutally suppressed in my blind rage—flared to life with a desperate, aching urgency.
I didn't want to go. More than anything, I wanted to step forward, to gently pry those white-knuckled fingers away from the sheet she was using to hide from me. I wanted to lift her fragile, exhausted body into my arms as if she were made of the finest glass. I wanted to carry her into the bathroom, draw a warm, quiet bath, and wash away the sweat, the tears, and the marks of my own unyielding cruelty with the absolute gentleness she had always deserved.
I wanted to tend to her, to wrap her in the softest blankets, and spend the rest of the night kneeling at her bedside just to prove that she was the only sanctuary I had left in this world.
But as I looked at the raw terror vibrating through her small frame, I realized I had lost the right to comfort her. My touch was no longer a safe haven,it was the weapon that had broken her.
Jay Jay's POV
He didn't move. He just stood there at the edge of the shadows, towering over the bed like an unyielding monolith, his silence stretching out until the room felt completely devoid of air. He didn't deny it. He didn't say a single word to push back against my pleading, and that silence spoke louder than any scream ever could.
I know he is really looking at me with judgmental eyes, I thought, the realization settling into my bones like ice. He's standing there analyzing the mess he made, judging me for how easily I broke, judging me for letting him take everything without a fight.
The weight of his gaze was a physical pressure, stripping away the last illusion of the love I had tried so hard to cling to while he was in the shower. His mind hadn't just forgotten me during the storm,his eyes were confirming that he regretted the aftermath.
The man who had just used my body as a shield against his demons was gone, replaced by a stranger who couldn't even bear to look at the wreckage he'd left behind without feeling a deep, quiet revulsion.
I can't do it anymore, my mind wept, the internal refrain repeating over and over until it was a deafening roar in my head. I can't survive this. I can't look at him looking at me like I'm a mistake.
I squeezed my eyes shut, clutching the linen so hard against my collarbone that my fingers cramped, praying to whatever forces left in the dark that he would just turn around and walk away before the judgment in his eyes turned into words.
Keifer's POV
"I know you think I'm dangerous for your family," she choked out, her voice a fragile, broken thread in the dark room. She was trembling so violently that the sheet clutched to her chest shook. "But please... trust me one time. I'm not saying this because of what you just did to me. I'm not trying to trap you. I just want you—just one time, just one single time—to listen to me. To trust me. Please, one time..."
Her desperate plea pierced through the thick layer of self-loathing freezing my limbs.
Dangerous? My chest heaved as her words echoed in the silence.
God, no.
The realization of what I had done, and what she thought was happening inside my head, hit me with a sickening force. She thought my brutality was a punishment. She thought I looked at her and saw a threat to my family's legacy, an enemy to be broken and discarded.
The truth was so much worse. I hadn't treated her like an enemy because she was dangerous to my family,I had treated her like an object because I was a coward trying to outrun my own weakness.
My father's poisonous warnings about her being a liability had rattled in my mind, but it wasn't hate that drove me to her bed. It was the terrifying, undeniable truth that she was the only thing in this world that mattered to me.
I had been terrified of how easily she could shatter the walls I built to protect my family's lies, so I had tried to conquer her, to force her to bear the weight of my chaos without ever asking for her consent.
She's begging me for trust, I thought, staring at the fresh tears tracking through the sweat on her flushed cheeks. After I literally forced my body on her. After I took everything she had without a single word of care.
An aggressive, bitter fury flared up in my chest—not at her, but at the ugly reality of what I had just done. I don't want her to feel like I just used her, my mind screamed, the thought twisting like a knife in my gut. I hated the idea of her thinking she was nothing more than a disposable tool to quiet the madness in my head. I wanted to deny it. I wanted to look her in the eye and tell her she was wrong.
But the sickening truth stopped me dead. But I did use her. I literally forced myself on her.
There was no protecting her feelings from the truth, because the truth was a crime. I hadn't asked if she wanted me. I hadn't waited for a nod or a sigh. I had just taken her, overpowering her entirely with my weight and my relentless, selfish rhythm.
I had broken through every single one of her boundaries out of sheer, unyielding desperation, and no matter how much I hated myself for it, I couldn't undo the force I had used against her fragile frame.
The sheer grace of her asking me to trust her, rather than screaming at me for violating her, made me feel completely unworthy of standing in the same room. She wasn't angry about the marks I left or the relentless pace I forced upon her. She was just terrified that I was going to push her away with hurtful words, that I was going to choose Sienna and the boardroom over the heart that had just anchored me to reality.
My throat tightened, a painful knot preventing me from speaking. I didn't want to leave. Every instinct screamed at me to cross the distance, to drop to my knees, and to beg her to let me take care of her fragile body. But how could I ask her to trust me when I had just proven I couldn't even trust myself to be gentle with her?
"Yes," I choked out, the word tasting like ash.
The syllable felt entirely too small for the massive, sickening weight of what I had just done. It was the only thing I could give her—the absolute bare minimum of compliance after taking everything else without permission.
Her shoulders dropped slightly, a fragile wave of relief washing over her flushed, tear-streaked face. She didn't scream. She didn't curse my name. Instead, she just looked at me with those wide, haunted eyes.
"Please, Keifer," she whispered, her voice barely carrying across the small space between us. "Just... leave. Let me clean the mess."
The mess.
My stomach violently churned. She was talking about the physical aftermath of my brutality, the wreckage left behind by a man who had completely lost his mind and used her body as a battlefield to quiet his own demons.
"You shouldn't have to clean anything," I rasping out, my voice thick with a sudden, suffocating wave of self-loathing. "Let me—"
"No," she interrupted quietly, her tone final as she shook her head. "Don't touch it. Don't look at it. Just go."
Before I could move or protest, she reached past me, her small hand trembling as she gathered a pile of clothes from the chair. She held them out, keeping her gaze strictly lowered, completely avoiding my eyes.
"Put these on," she murmured, her fingers tightening against the dark, oversized cotton sweats I always wore here. "You always wear them. Take them and go."
The fabric felt heavy in my hands, a physical uniform of my routine depravity. Every time I put them on, it meant I had just taken a piece of her soul.
"I—," the words feeling pathetic, cheap, and entirely insulting given the bruises that would undoubtedly form on her skin tomorrow.
"Don't," she whispered, her voice cracking slightly as she took a half-step back, creating a deliberate chasm between us. "Don't say anything , Keifer. Just change."
I pulled the clothes on in agonizing silence. As the soft fabric settled against my skin, the familiar texture triggered a violent rush of memories, spinning my mind backward into the darkness of our past.
But the voices in my head start.
'Bath first, butterfly, then you can sleep.'
'Don't hide from me.'
'You're safe.'
'Just breathe with me.'
What iam thinking, hearing is that true?
I couldn't look at her for another second. I turned and stepped out, the heavy bedroom door clicking shut behind me and slicing through the suffocating tension.
I stood alone in the dim hallway, my chest heaving as the cold air hit my overheated skin.
Inside that room, she was currently cleaning up the evidence of my crime. She was protecting my sanity while picking up the broken pieces of her own boundaries.
I leaned my head back against the wall, closing my eyes, but the darkness offered no escape from the self-loathing clawing at my throat. I had agreed to leave because her eyes begged for space, but every step away from her felt like a coward's retreat. I didn't deserve her grace, I didn't deserve her trust, and I certainly didn't deserve the quiet sanctuary she provided.
I walked down the dark corridor, completely unworthy of the woman I had just broken.