Chapter 301 - 0301: I’m So Stupid

Chapter 301: Chapter 0301: I’m So Stupid

Elena’s Point Of View

When he asked me to the winter dance, the invitation didn’t just catch me by surprise - it felt like I’d been handed a golden key to a locked kingdom, a world I wasn’t ever supposed to enter. A world where girls like me... quiet, studious, perpetually invisible, living behind thick books and oversized blazers... could actually be seen. Could be wanted. Could matter to someone far beyond grade point averages and class rankings.

I had spent so long believing I was built for the margins of other people’s stories, never the center of my own, that the mere idea of being chosen felt almost unbearable in its sweetness.

For three whole weeks before the dance, I lived in a state of suspended animation. I spent every spare hour sewing and altering a deep blue velvet dress I’d scavenged from a thrift store downtown, stitching desperate hope into every hidden seam. I pricked my fingers more times than I could count, but I didn’t care; each small sting felt like a sacrifice worth making for the version of myself I was trying to create.

The fabric hugged my waist just right, catching the dim hallway light, and for the first time in my entire teenage existence, I felt genuinely beautiful rather than merely tolerated. I practiced walking in the secondhand heels I’d bought, twirling in front of my bedroom mirror late at night, whispering to my reflection that maybe, just maybe, I belonged somewhere other than the library.

When the night of the dance finally arrived, stepping into the gymnasium felt like walking onto an alien planet. The air smelled of cheap punch, pine decorations, and nervous sweat. The room was draped in silver streamers and fairy lights that cast a magical, forgiving glow over the sea of couples swaying beneath the bleachers.

My heart hammered so hard I could feel it in my ears, and I pressed a hand to my stomach, trying to steady the swarm of butterflies threatening to escape.

And then I saw him.

Jaxx stood near the gymnasium entrance, leaning against the brick wall in a sharp charcoal suit that somehow made him look even more dangerous than his usual leather jacket. The moment our eyes locked across the crowded room, my heart leaped straight into my throat.

He pushed off the wall and walked straight toward me through the murmuring crowd, parting the sea of students like he owned the ground beneath his feet. I remember thinking, absurdly, that I should run - not from fear, but from the sheer disbelief that this was happening to me at all.

"Damn, Bambina," he murmured low as he reached me, his dark gaze raking over my face with an intensity that made my knees go weak. A slow, dark smirk curved his lips. "I told you... you look so stunning with your hair down and those glasses off."

My face exploded with heat. A furious, burning blush rushed from my collarbones straight up to the roots of my hair, and I dropped my gaze, utterly mortified yet soaring on a cloud of absolute euphoria. "You... you don’t look so bad yourself, Jaxx," I stammered, smoothing the front of my blue dress with trembling fingers.

Before I could say another word, his large, warm hand came up, wrapping firmly around my waist. With a smooth, effortless pull, he hauled me flush against the hard, muscular wall of his chest, completely ignoring the curious stares and whispered gossip of everyone around us. He didn’t care who was watching. He pulled me so tight I could feel the erratic beat of his heart thumping against mine, matching my own frantic rhythm. For one suspended moment, I let myself believe that this was real, that someone like him could want someone like me without condition or cruelty.

"Dance with me," he whispered against my ear, his breath hot and sending delicious shivers racing down my spine.

Without waiting for an answer, he swept me into the center of the floor as the band shifted into a slow, melancholic ballad. We moved together in a tight, isolated orbit, cut off from the rest of the world by the sheer gravitational pull of his presence. His arms locked around my waist, keeping me pinned against him, and every brush of his body against mine sent dizzying shockwaves through my system.

The music swelled, wrapping around us like a heavy blanket. Up close, I could smell his familiar scent... rich cedar, rain, and the faint, intoxicating musk of danger. I looked up into his dark, hooded eyes, watching the way the gymnasium lights caught the slight scar above his brow, and sudden, overwhelming courage bloomed inside my chest.

It felt like now or never. The weight of weeks of unspoken longing, of late-night tutoring sessions, of stolen touches in the boxing ring, all of it pushed me past my fear. I thought of every moment he’d made me laugh when I least expected it, every glance that had lingered just a beat too long to mean nothing.

Tell him, Elena, a voice in my head urged. He seems to like you too. Who kisses a girl the way he kisses you if they don’t like her? Who holds a girl like this in front of the whole school?

I swallowed hard, my throat dry as dust, and gathered every single ounce of bravery I possessed.

"I like you, Jaxx," I whispered, the words trembling slightly in the cool air between us. "I really, really like you."

The music in my head seemed to screech to a violent halt, even though the melody continued to play around us. Jaxx’s smile vanished in a fraction of a second, as if someone had flipped a switch inside his mind. The warmth, the playful heat, the illusion of intimacy... it all evaporated instantly, replaced by a terrifying, glacial frost. I watched the change happen in real time, and some small, desperate part of me still hoped I had misread it.

He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he slowly stepped back, dropping his hands from my waist as if my skin had suddenly turned to hot coals or fragile glass shards that might cut him.

"What?" The single word fell from his lips, his voice flat, cold, and entirely devoid of the tenderness I’d imagined was there just moments before.

"I... I said I like you," I repeated, though this time the words felt heavy, wrong, toxic in the air between us. The first icy tendril of dread planted itself deep in my stomach, spreading paralysis through my veins.

He let out a short, ugly scoff... a sound that cut sharply through the surrounding music and instantly drew the attention of the students closest to us. I watched heads whip around, conversations die out instantly, and eyes sharpen with malicious, predatory interest. The circle of teenagers around us began to tighten like a closing noose. I felt impossibly small beneath their stares, as though I were shrinking into the very floor I stood on.

"What? Just because I gave you a little bit of attention, you actually assume that I like you?" His voice rose, carrying easily across the floor, ensuring our audience caught every single syllable. Each word was a calculated, brutal strike. "You actually thought I liked you, Elena? You must be completely, utterly delusional."

I felt every drop of blood drain from my face, leaving me hollow, freezing, and utterly exposed. My fingers went completely numb. The surrounding students crowded in closer, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the dreaded flash of a phone camera lifting up, capturing my public execution for future mockery. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I registered the irony: I had wanted so badly to be seen, and now I would be seen by everyone, in the worst possible way.

"But... the gym," I whispered, my voice cracking with pathetic desperation, tears stinging the backs of my eyes. The memory of his lips on mine, his hands gentle in my hair just days ago, felt like a cruel, mocking fever dream. "The kisses... you said I was beautiful."

"Bambina," he sneered, leaning in close so only I could hear the venom dripping from his tongue, though his eyes deliberately flaunted our audience. The pet name that had once made my stomach flip now twisted like a poisoned blade. "You were fun. You did taste great, I’ll give you that much. But did you really think I’d ever date a scholarship nerd? You were just a way to kill time between classes. A little entertainment during a boring semester."

He spoke the word entertainment like it was something greasy, something utterly beneath his notice.

The word struck me like a physical punch to the gut. My chest constricted so tightly I couldn’t draw a breath. "But... you said..."

He stepped closer still, invading the space I desperately wanted to put between us, turning the moment into a public spectacle designed to maximize my absolute humiliation. He lowered his voice into a mocking whisper, his face inches from mine. "Don’t look so tragic, Bambina. You should be flattered I paid you any attention at all. A girl like you? You were never meant for this world."

The laughter erupted around us like a physical shockwave. It wasn’t scattered chuckles or polite giggles; it was a loud, cruel roar of teenage malice that crashed over my head. The deep blue velvet dress I’d spent weeks sewing, the dress I’d worn with such fierce pride, suddenly felt cheap, hideous, and profoundly pathetic. Every stitch I had placed with such hope now felt like evidence of my own foolishness, displayed for the entire school to ridicule.

I saw the girls who had loathed my proximity to him standing nearby, their faces lit up with vicious triumph, whispering behind their manicured hands. I saw the flashbulbs of cameras capturing every angle of my shattering dignity.

I saw the pity etched across Lexy’s face, and the cold, unyielding stares of the chaperoning teachers who refused to step into the wreckage. Not one adult in that room moved to help me, and that absence of rescue carved itself into my memory almost as deeply as Jaxx’s words had.

My hand moved entirely on its own instinct, faster than thought, faster than shame.

Crack.

My palm connected with his cheek with a sharp, violent snap that echoed through the sudden, stunned silence of the gymnasium. My hand stung fiercely from the impact. His head jerked sharply to the side, a bright red handprint instantly blooming across his skin like a brand, but he didn’t flinch. He didn’t look angry. He slowly turned his head back, wiping his lip with his thumb, and flashed a slow, chilling smirk as if my rage had only entertained him further.

"There she is," he murmured, his voice carrying clearly to the surrounding crowd, sounding entirely unbothered. "The quiet little doctor’s got teeth after all."

I didn’t wait for another word. I couldn’t bear another fraction of a second breathing the same air as him, couldn’t endure another heartbeat of their suffocating laughter. I turned on my heel and bolted.

My heels clicked frantically against the polished gymnasium floor, the sound lost beneath the renewed wave of cruel mockery. I shoved past the silver streamers that now seemed like mocking decorations of my own funeral, pushed through the heavy double doors, and burst out into the freezing night air.

The bitter wind burned my raw throat and lungs, but it was nothing compared to the roaring fire of humiliation tearing me apart inside. I ran until my legs gave out, collapsing onto a cold curb two blocks from the school, where I finally let myself sob without restraint, the velvet dress pooling around me like a wilted flower.

The laughter followed me all the way down the pathway, echoing in my skull long after the physical sound had faded into the dark. It would echo there for years, haunting every step I took, every success I earned, and every wall I tried to build.

I didn’t show up for school for a week. I stayed in bed, staring at the ceiling, crying until my eyes were swollen shut and my throat was raw. The tears came in waves... sometimes silent, sometimes wracking sobs that shook my entire body. I felt the weight of my own stupidity pressing down on my chest, making it hard to breathe. My mother brought soup to my door that I never touched, and my father hovered in the hallway, unsure how to comfort a daughter who wouldn’t explain her grief.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his smirk, heard the laughter, felt the sting of humiliation fresh and sharp. My sister knocked on my door, worried, but I couldn’t face her concern or explain why her brilliant sister had been reduced to this broken thing. I wanted to tell her everything, to let her hold me the way she had when we were children, but shame kept my mouth sealed shut.

How could I tell her that I’d been foolish enough to believe someone like Jaxx could want someone like me?

And now, sitting on the floor of my office years later, the nightmare had looped back around with sickening precision. History hadn’t just repeated itself, it had refined its cruelty, found new ways to devastate me. "I didn’t learn," I sobbed, clutching my hair so hard my scalp ached.

The physical pain was almost welcome, a distraction from the emotional agony. "I let him back in. I let him take my first kiss all over again, and then I let him take everything else. My body, my trust, my self-respect."

Everything I’d spent years rebuilding after that night at the dance. The realization was a sickening weight settling in my stomach. I hadn’t just been played; I’d been dismantled by the same architect of my first heartbreak. The same hands that had pushed me away had pulled me back in, and I’d gone willingly, eagerly even, as if the past had taught me nothing.

As if the scars he’d left the first time had made me more vulnerable rather than wiser. I thought of the girl in the blue velvet dress, so hopeful and so breakable, and grieved for her all over again, knowing she had never truly stopped waiting for someone to prove her wrong. "I’m so stupid."

The words came out broken, barely audible, a confession to the empty room. "So incredibly stupid." And this time, I had no one to blame but myself.