Chapter 198 - 0198: I Can’t Possibly Miss Him, Right?

Chapter 198: Chapter 0198: I Can’t Possibly Miss Him, Right?

Elena’s Point Of View

One week. Seven days of absolute, deafening nothing. No calls. No messages. No unexpected appearances at my front door with that infuriatingly arrogant stance that used to make my pulse stutter before my brain caught up and reminded me to be furious.

Graham had gone completely radio silent on the divorce papers, and Jaxx? He’d vanished like a ghost. Like he’d never stepped into my life at all. Like that night had been nothing more than a fever dream I’d manufactured in my own head, conjured from loneliness and too much wine and the desperate need to feel something other than numb.

I sat at my kitchen table, the crisp morning sun spilling through the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting long, diagonal shadows across the white marble floor. My mug of black coffee had gone completely cold, a bitter skin forming over the top, but the unpleasant taste barely registered as I stared at the dark screen of my phone.

I was willing it to ring. To buzz. To light up with a single notification. To just do something, anything, to break the oppressive quiet that had settled over my apartment like dust.

Nothing.

I let out a harsh, frustrated sigh, setting the heavy ceramic mug down with a sharp clink that echoed too loudly in the quiet, empty apartment. The sound startled me, which only made me angrier at myself. When had I become someone who jumped at her own noises?

"It’s been more than a week," I muttered to myself, running both hands through my tangled hair, pulling at the roots to shock myself back into reality. "Time to finally involve the lawyer."

But as much as I tried to convince myself that Graham’s silence was the main issue, that wasn’t what had my stomach twisting into tight, painful knots. Graham’s silence was easy. Graham’s silence was almost a relief, a mercy I hadn’t asked for but would gladly accept.

It was the other silence that gutted me.

The heavy, suffocating silence that had me checking my lock screen every five minutes like a desperate, pathetic teenager waiting for a text from her high school crush. The irony wasn’t lost on me... Jaxx had, in fact, been exactly that, once upon a lifetime ago, before everything got complicated and messy and impossible to untangle. Back then, a single glance from him could make my whole day. Apparently, some part of me hadn’t aged past sixteen.

It was utterly pathetic.

I scoffed out loud, shaking my head at my own reflection in the dark glass of the phone. I pushed the device away, letting it slide to the far edge of the table, only to snatch it back up less than three seconds later. My thumb hovered over the screen, unlocking it on instinct, some small, humiliating part of me still hoping.

No new messages. No missed calls. No signal at all.

I should have been relieved. I should have been throwing myself a celebration, popping champagne, toasting to freedom. This was precisely what I’d demanded, wasn’t it? Space. Distance. A cold, surgical, uncompromising break. I had drawn the line myself, in ink, with my own two hands. So why did it feel like a punishment instead of a victory?

Why did it feel like my ribs were slowly caving in on my lungs, like something vital had been scooped out and left hollow in its place?

"There’s no way I could miss him," I said out loud, my voice echoing off the high ceilings as if saying the words to the empty room could somehow make them true. "It is literally impossible. I hate him. I do. He drives me insane."

My traitorous fingers, however, betrayed every word coming out of my mouth. Before my brain could intervene, my thumb tapped directly onto his contact card. His name stared back at me in bold, unyielding letters: Jaxx. For five agonizing seconds, my finger hovered right over the call icon. I considered it.

I genuinely considered hitting dial just to hear the deep, rough rumble of his voice, just to hear him say my name in that low, infuriating tone that always sounded like a challenge and a promise at once. My pulse climbed just imagining it, traitorous and stupid and alive in a way it hadn’t been all week.

"No!" I snapped at myself, slamming the phone facedown onto the marble table with enough force to make the cold coffee slosh over the rim of my mug.

I wasn’t that girl. I was never going to be the girl who sat around in her pajamas, pining, pacing, waiting endlessly for a man to give her a crumb of attention. I was Elena. I was the CEO. I was the one who left, who walked away, who packed her bags and didn’t look back. I had built an empire out of sheer will and spite, and I refused to let anyone, especially a man with a smirk like sin, unravel that.

So why on earth was I acting like this?

Why was I behaving like some lovesick fool, endlessly refreshing my inbox, jumping half an inch out of my skin every single time my phone vibrated, only to feel my heart drop straight into my stomach when the screen showed just another routine automated email from the corporate server? Each disappointment landed harder than the last, a small cruelty I kept inflicting on myself.

"Get a grip, Elena," I hissed, shoving my chair back so abruptly that the metal legs scraped violently against the tile with a sound that set my teeth on edge.

I began pacing the length of the open-concept kitchen, my bare feet silent against the cold floor, my mind spinning completely out of control. Every lap around the island brought a fresh wave of frustration, each one aimed squarely at myself.

This whole situation was utterly ridiculous.

I didn’t miss Jaxx. I couldn’t miss him.

He was arrogant. Infuriating. A walking red flag with a cocky smirk that made my blood boil on impact. So why did the thought of never seeing him again make my stomach clench into a cold fist? Why did the vivid, burning memory of his broad hands on my skin make my breath hitch in my throat right now? Why did I care so much that he hadn’t reached out to check on me?

I hated that I cared. I hated that caring felt inevitable, like gravity, like something I had no say in at all, no matter how many times I told myself otherwise.

I abruptly stopped in front of the hallway mirror. My reflection stared back at me, eyes wide and rimmed with fatigue, cheeks flushed, hair a wild mess, looking utterly unraveled. I barely recognized the woman staring back. Where was the composed executive who closed million-dollar deals without blinking? Where had she gone, and who was this stranger who had taken her place?

"You’re being completely absurd," I told my reflection, my voice sharp and accusatory. "You ended things. You walked away. You made the boundary. You don’t get to be the one who’s sitting here hurt now."

But the persistent, dull ache in my chest refused to listen to logic.

Because the terrifying truth was this: I did miss him.

Not the boy he’d been years ago, but the man who’d caught me when I was falling apart in the storm. The man who’d looked at me in the dark like I was the only person in the entire universe. The man whose raw intensity had forced me to feel something real again when I was completely numb.

I hadn’t realized how numb I’d become until he cracked that shell open, and now the silence felt like being buried alive inside it once more, the walls closing in a little more with every passing hour.

I groaned out loud, pressing the palms of my hands firmly against my eyes until I saw stars. "This is absolute insanity."

I wasn’t a helpless teenager. I was a grown woman. A boss. A survivor. I didn’t pine. I didn’t wait around. I moved forward. That had always been my rule, my armor, the thing that got me through every disappointment life had thrown at me, the thing I’d built my entire identity around.

So why was I standing here in the middle of my kitchen, my heart pounding against my ribs, my mind racing in circles, my entire body aching for the touch of a man I’d sworn I never wanted near me again?

I forcefully grabbed my phone off the table, my fingers flying across the glowing glass as I pulled up my lead divorce attorney’s contact details. If I couldn’t control my own heart, I could at least control this.

"Enough," I muttered, my jaw setting into a hard, rigid line. "Focus on what actually matters."

The divorce. My company. My life. My sanity. One by one, I recited them like a prayer, like a lifeline I could pull myself up by.

I hit call, pressing the receiver tightly to my ear. It rang twice before the deep, practiced, ultra-professional voice of my lawyer filled the speaker, instantly grounding me back in the version of myself I actually recognized.

"Ms. Elena. Good morning. What can I do for you today?"

"It’s time, Marcus," I said, my voice completely steady, my resolve hardening into iron with every syllable. "Graham hasn’t signed the divorce papers. It’s been a full week, and he’s ignoring service. I want to stop playing nice and move forward with the court immediately."

Marcus rustled some paper on his end. "Are you certain, Elena? Once we file the formal motion for default enforcement and summon him to court, the proceedings become public record. There’s no turning back or resolving this quietly behind closed doors."

"I am more than certain," I said, my voice cutting through the line without a trace of hesitation. "He had his chance to sign the settlement smoothly and keep his dignity. He chose to throw tantrums at Lexy’s store instead. File the motion. Request an emergency court date, freeze the joint assets we flagged, and let’s end this mess once and for all."

"Understood," Marcus replied, his tone shifting into battle-ready sharpness. "I’ll draft the motion immediately and have it filed before the clerk’s office closes today. We’ll serve him at his personal residence and his office simultaneously so he can’t claim ignorance."

"Good. Don’t pull any punches, Marcus."

"I never do, Ms. Elena. I’ll send you the confirmation copy as soon as the judge stamps it."

"Thank you."

I ended the call and dropped the phone onto the desk, my chest expanding with a fierce, burning sense of determination. This was actual progress. This was control. This was me taking the reins of my life back from the men who thought they could manipulate me.

So why did it still feel like I was losing something fundamental inside?

I spent the rest of the morning trying to drown myself in work right from my home office setup. I opened my laptop, pulling up dozens of heavy spreadsheets, investor briefs, and market analysis decks, desperately attempting to drown out the loud, persistent noise in my head. The numbers used to calm me. Today they blurred together into meaningless rows of nothing.

I opened a high-priority quarterly budget report, intending to line-item every single marketing expense. I made it through three lines before my gaze drifted off the screen, staring blankly at the wall.

What is Jaxx doing right now? Is he working? Is he even in the city? Or was I just a one-night distraction to him?

I snapped my head back to the screen, shaking the thoughts away, and grabbed my pen to review a vendor contract. I read the first paragraph four times without processing a single word. My mind was completely useless, spiraling out of control.

I tried typing out an email to Clara regarding the European freight distribution, but halfway through the second sentence, my fingers froze over the keyboard as a vivid memory flashed behind my eyes... Jaxx’s dark eyes locking onto mine, his heavy grip on my waist, the low, raspy sound of his voice whispering my name in the dark.

My breath hitched. I slammed my hands onto the desk, knocking over a stack of sticky notes.

"Focus, Elena! Focus!" I yelled at the empty room, squeezing my eyes shut.

No matter how hard I tried to bury myself in numbers and corporate strategy, my thoughts kept relentlessly drifting back to him.

To the way he’d smirked at me like he knew he was completely under my skin. To the way his voice had dropped when he’d whispered my name right before kissing me. To the devastating, heartbreaking way he’d just let me walk away without putting up a single fight. That, more than anything, was what gnawed at me in the quiet hours... not his absence, but his silence, as though I hadn’t mattered enough to chase.

"He doesn’t care," I told myself harshly, my fingers tightening so hard around my pen that the plastic creaked under the pressure. "He never cared. It was just a game to him. You were just an itch he wanted to scratch from high school."

But then why did it hurt like this?

Why did my chest feel so hollow, like I’d made a massive, irreversible mistake by pushing him away?

"Stop," I snapped out loud, slamming my pen down onto the hard wooden surface of the desk with a crack.

I wasn’t going to do this to myself. I wasn’t going to spiral into some pathetic, self-pitying mess over a man who clearly hadn’t given me a second thought all week. I was going to move on. I was going to rule my company, clear my legal name, and rebuild my world, piece by piece, if that’s what it took.

Even if my traitorous heart didn’t want to.