Chapter 252 - 0252: Chance To Love You Right

Chapter 252: Chapter 0252: Chance To Love You Right

Elena’s Point Of View

Silence.

Heavy, suffocating, absolute silence filled the suite.

My brain had completely stopped attempting to generate responses. The rest of the world dissolved into the background, leaving just the two of us suspended in the electric tension of a moment we couldn’t take back.

Too many chaotic thoughts collided in my head at once, crashing into each other before I could process any of them.

This was Jaxx.

The same infuriating boy who used to drive our literature teachers to the brink of a nervous breakdown with his relentless, arrogant stunts. The same boy who treated school rules like polite suggestions meant to be trampled on whenever it suited his mood. The same boy who could start an argument in an empty room and somehow walk out the victor.

When on earth did he evolve into this?

When did the sharp edges sand down? When did he become this patient, this dangerously sincere man standing right here, looking at me like I was the only fixed star in his universe?

Is he actually sick?

The absurd, hysterical thought popped into my head out of nowhere, nearly making me blurt it out loud. The sheer ridiculousness of it made my chest tighten with a bizarre mix of panic and hysterical disbelief, the kind of laughter that bubbles up precisely when a situation stops making sense.

I narrowed my eyes, studying his face with clinical scrutiny, searching frantically for any plausible explanation for this sudden personality metamorphosis.

No feverish flush on his cheekbones. No glazed look of illness in those dark eyes. No visible head trauma to account for a sudden shift from arrogant menace to a man ready to lay his cards entirely on the table.

So what the hell actually happened here? What cosmic event rewired him?

When did he turn this soft? This deliberate?

I lowered my chin slowly, though my fingers remained resting against the solid warmth of his chest, feeling the steady, unrelenting thrum of his heartbeat beneath my palm.

The heat radiating against my skin made everything feel far too tangible, too immediate, entirely too real to write off as a temporary hallucination I could just sleep off.

Reality came rushing back in like an icy wave, abruptly shattering the spell.

"But I’m still married to Graham," I whispered.

The words tasted bitter and heavy on my tongue, each syllable weighted with the messy, inescapable legal and social complications I couldn’t simply wish away. Saying his name out loud in this moment felt like dragging a ghost into the room, uninvited and unwelcome, but undeniably present all the same.

"As long as he refuses to sign the papers..." My voice dropped into a defeated murmur, shame and frustration curdling in my stomach. "...I’m still his wife. Legally. Technically. Officially."

Before I could spiral any further down that familiar rabbit hole of self-recrimination, his index finger pressed gently against my lips, cutting off the rest of the sentence with a touch so soft it demanded compliance.

He shook his head once, his expression settling into one of absolute, unshakeable resolve.

"I told you to leave that part to me, didn’t I?"

His tone didn’t invite debate, carrying a quiet, lethal confidence that simultaneously reassured every anxious nerve in my body and terrified me to my core.

"You’ll get news tomorrow."

Tomorrow.

That single word made my stomach drop into a freefall of nervous anxiety, my mind instantly sprinting ahead to map out every catastrophic way this could blow up in our faces.

How on earth was he planning to untangle something Graham had been stubbornly weaponizing for months? What kind of leverage could Jaxx possibly possess that would force a man like Graham to back down?

My imagination eagerly supplied a highlight reel of disasters - public confrontations, legal threats, ugly screaming matches, or worse.

"You don’t understand," I stammered, fear bleeding into my tone as I tried to pull back.

His finger stayed firmly against my lips, gentle yet immovable.

"Now stop thinking about him," he commanded, his voice dropping into a register so tender, so profoundly caring, that it genuinely made my chest ache.

"Start thinking about us."

I frowned, a flicker of stubborn resistance flaring up as I reached out and gently pushed his hand away from my mouth, needing air, needing him to grasp the absolute impossibility of what he was casually proposing.

"Us?"

He gave a single, slow nod, his gaze never once breaking contact with mine.

"Yes."

I stared at him like he had just pitched a real estate investment on the dark side of the moon.

"There is no ’us,’ Jaxx."

The words had barely finished clearing my lips before he moved with lightning speed.

One second I was standing there arguing, my voice sharp with defensive logic.

The next second, his mouth crashed down against mine with an intensity that completely robbed me of oxygen.

It wasn’t a gentle greeting; it was sudden, demanding, and fierce... the kind of kiss that instantly vaporized the rest of the sentence I had intended to deliver, along with every single coherent thought struggling to survive in my head.

A surprised gasp escaped my lips precisely as my back pressed harder against the cold glass of the mirror. The jarring contrast between the freezing surface behind me and the scorching heat of his body pressing into mine sent a violent, electric shiver racing down my spine.

My brain scrambled frantically to catch up with the physical shift, hopelessly struggling to bridge the gap between heated words and a thoroughly heated touch.

His hand slid smoothly up my thigh, his warm fingers slipping beneath the loose hem of the oversized cotton shirt I was wearing... his shirt, naturally, because apparently I had been squatting in his wardrobe for forty-eight hours like some permanent fixture who had forgotten how doors or my own clothes worked.

I let out another breathless gasp right against his mouth, my heart hammering like a trapped bird against my ribs.

In hindsight, that tiny gasp was a catastrophic tactical error, because it handed him the exact invitation he needed to deepen the kiss. His tongue brushed past my lips with practiced, devastating confidence, claiming every inch of me without asking permission.

My hands flew upward, landing flat against his broad shoulders... partly to anchor myself against the spinning room, and partly because my legs had suddenly staged a walkout, completely abandoning their primary job of keeping me upright.

His muscles flexed solidly beneath my palms, reassuringly firm even as the ground beneath us felt like it was dissolving into mist.

My internal monologue screamed a rapid-fire sequence of frantic warnings:

This is a terrible idea. You are supposed to be winning this argument. You actually had the upper hand for once, Elena. Focus. Remember why you were mad.

Unsurprisingly, not a single one of those carefully drafted instructions was being executed. Not even close. My nervous system had officially declared total mutiny against common sense.

Because Jaxx kissed like a man who had permanently retired from the inefficiency of talking, operating entirely on the philosophy that physical action spoke louder than words, and he had a hell of a point to prove. Every deliberate sweep of his lips, every confident shift of his weight, was meticulously engineered to erase every rational reason I had for keeping my distance.

Eventually, mercifully, he pulled back just a fraction of an inch... just enough for me to remember that oxygen was a vital component of human survival.

His forehead rested gently against mine, and I could hear his breathing coming in ragged, uneven hitches that mirrored my own. The quiet space felt suspended, heavy with an intimacy that stretched far beyond the physical realm, as though the air itself had thickened around us, reluctant to let the moment end.

I closed my eyes, letting myself exist for one fragile second in the space between who I had been and whoever this moment was asking me to become. Some distant, rational part of me understood I would have to reckon with all of this eventually, untangle every thread of fear and want and old grief. But not yet. Not in this breath.

When he finally spoke, his voice was low, rough around the edges, carrying a hum of amusement beneath the raw, palpable intensity.

"Shut up for once, Elena," he murmured, his thumb tracing one final, achingly tender line along my trembling jaw, "...and give me the chance to love you right."