Chapter 308 - 0308: I Panicked

Chapter 308: Chapter 0308: I Panicked

Jaxx’s Point Of View

The amber liquid in my glass was the only thing standing between me and a complete breakdown, and even that was failing. I stared into the swirling depths of the bourbon, watching the ice cubes knock against each other... sharp, cold, drifting aimlessly like fragments of my shattered composure.

The clink of ice against crystal echoed in the silence, a metronome counting down to my inevitable unraveling. Outside, the city murmured its endless hum, oblivious to the wreckage unfolding twenty floors up, in a penthouse that suddenly felt more like a cage than a sanctuary.

"I know, Roman," I rasped, my voice sounding like I’d been swallowing glass shards for days. I finally looked up at him, the weight of the last week dragging at my eyes, making them feel heavy as stones. His expression held no judgment, only patient concern, which somehow made everything worse. I almost wished he’d yell at me, call me the coward I knew myself to be. It would have been easier to bear than this quiet, steady patience.

"I know it’s my fault. I should’ve come clean. I should’ve walked into her office on day one and said, ’Hey, the man who ruined your life? I share his blood.’ But I was a coward." The words tasted bitter on my tongue, each one an admission I’d been avoiding for weeks. More than weeks... years, if I was being honest with myself.

I let out a breath that felt like it was ripping straight from my lungs, tearing at the tissue on its way up. The pain was almost welcome, a physical manifestation of the guilt that had been eating me alive from the inside.

"I understand her feelings. Completely. Every time I see that look of disgust on her face, like I’m something she scraped off her shoe... I think about my mother. I think about the day she found out the truth about Sebastian. The lies. The secret family. The fact that she was just a footnote in his grand design, a convenient distraction he could discard when it suited him."

My throat tightened with the memory of her tears, the way her hands had trembled as she’d read that letter. I could still see her sitting at the kitchen table, the afternoon light streaming through the window, illuminating the devastation on her face as her entire world collapsed around her. She’d aged ten years in that single moment, and I’d stood in the doorway, too young and too helpless to do anything but watch her break.

"I grew up hating him for making her feel like nothing, for reducing a woman who gave him everything to a mere inconvenience. And now?" I slammed the glass down on the marble counter, a jagged crack appearing in the base, spiderwebbing outward like the fractures in my chest. Bourbon seeped through the fissure, pooling on the pristine white surface, a fitting metaphor for my life. "I hate myself because I made Elena feel exactly like that. I became the man I swore I’d never be.

The man I spent my entire childhood despising." The irony wasn’t lost on me. All those years of running from Sebastian’s shadow, only to discover I’d been walking in his footsteps the whole time, each stride an unconscious echo of the very cruelty that had shaped my hatred.

Roman didn’t flinch at my outburst. He’d seen me at my worst before, though perhaps never quite this broken. He just leaned back against the kitchen island, crossing his arms over his chest, his gaze heavy and unblinking, assessing me with the brutal honesty only a true friend could deliver. The kind of friend who wouldn’t let you drown in self-pity, even when you desperately wanted to. There was something steadying in his stillness, a silent reminder that he’d weathered worse storms with me and had no intention of leaving now.

"You just have to give her time, Jaxx," he said, his voice steady but firm, cutting through the fog of my despair. "She’s not just angry; she’s grieving a version of you that she thought was real. The version who made her laugh in the break room, who remembered how she took her coffee, who looked at her like she mattered." He paused, letting that sink in, watching as each word landed like a stone in still water.

"That version of you wasn’t entirely fake, you know. You can’t manufacture genuine connection. What you two had... have, it’s real. The lies just poisoned it." He shifted his weight, his expression growing darker. "She’ll come around, but you have to stop being an absolute ass. You hurt her real bad years ago, man. I haven’t forgotten that night at the dance." His jaw clenched, and I could see the old anger flickering in his eyes, a rare crack in his usual easy demeanor.

"I’m your best friend, but I almost punched you into next Tuesday myself. Hell, I should have. Maybe if someone had knocked some sense into you back then, you wouldn’t be standing here now, repeating the same mistakes." The memory hit me like a physical blow, stealing the air from my lungs.

The gym. The silver streamers catching the light from the disco ball, casting fractured rainbows across the polished floor. The smell of cheap punch and teenage desperation, mixed with the cloying sweetness of corsages already wilting in the heat. I could almost hear the bassline of some forgotten pop song thudding through the speakers, a soundtrack to the worst thing I’d ever done.

The way she had looked at me with those wide, trusting eyes... the eyes of a girl who thought she’d found a sanctuary in the chaos of high school, someone who saw past the armor I wore. And I had destroyed it. I had shredded her heart in front of the whole school, used words like weapons, each one carefully chosen to inflict maximum damage.

I told myself I was doing it to keep my own walls from crumbling, to maintain the carefully constructed image that protected me from feeling anything real. But the truth was simpler and far more damning: I was terrified. Terrified of what she made me feel, of the vulnerability she inspired, of the possibility that I might actually deserve something good.

So I’d done what Sebastian had taught me, even if he’d never meant to teach it: I’d struck first. I’d hurt her before she could hurt me. The look on her face when I’d turned away... that moment when hope died in her eyes still haunted my dreams. Sometimes I woke up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, her expression burned into my retinas. The way her lips had parted in shock.

The slight tremor in her chin as she fought back tears. The way she’d wrapped her arms around herself, as if trying to hold the pieces together. I’d walked away without looking back, my friends clapping me on the shoulder like I’d won some kind of victory.

But I’d heard her sob, just once, before the music swallowed the sound. That single, broken sound had echoed in my head for years, resurfacing at the worst moments, a ghost that refused to be exorcised.

"I know," I whispered, remorse coating my throat like bile. "I’m not proud of that kid. That memory haunts me every damn day. I see her face when I close my eyes... not the woman she is now, but that sixteen-year-old girl who just wanted someone to love her. Who trusted me when she shouldn’t have." The weight of it pressed down on my chest, making it hard to breathe.

"Then why did you do it?" Roman asked, his voice softened but still demanding answers I wasn’t sure I could articulate. "Why the hell would you burn it all down like that?"

"I panicked, Roman! I fucking panicked!" I shot to my feet, the chair screeching back against the floor. I started pacing the penthouse, my shadows stretching long and distorted against the walls like dark reflections of everything I’d tried to bury. My hands trembled as I raked them through my hair. "I never expected her to actually like me. I was this notorious kid from nowhere, a street rat with a bad reputation and worse prospects. I thought no one could ever look at me and see anything worth keeping." The admission tasted bitter on my tongue.

"Not after what happened with Talia. Not after being discarded by everyone who was supposed to care. I was disposable, Roman. I knew it. So when Elena looked at me like I mattered..." I stopped pacing, my voice dropping to barely above a whisper. "I couldn’t handle it. I didn’t know how."

Roman watched me, his expression softening just a fraction, understanding flickering in his eyes. "I know, Jaxx. You took it out on her because she was the easiest target for your own self-hatred. You broke her so you wouldn’t have to worry about her breaking you first. Self-preservation at its ugliest. But that was then. This is now." He stood up, walking over to the window and looking out at the city skyline. The lights twinkled like fallen stars, indifferent to the turmoil inside these walls.

"I want you to make up for it. Truly," he said, his reflection ghostly in the glass. "Show her you’ve changed. Show her you’re not just a Moretti with a bigger bank account and a sharper knife. Prove you’re a man who can own his mistakes and do better." He turned around, a slow, mischievous wink tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"And honestly? If she doesn’t take you back, I might just go for her myself. She’s a catch, Jaxx. Even you have to admit that." My reaction was visceral and immediate. Before my brain could even process the joke, my hand had closed into a fist. I stepped toward him, the protective, possessive instinct roaring to life in my chest like a wildfire consuming dry brush. The thought of anyone else touching her, looking at her the way I did, made something primal and dangerous surge through my veins.

Roman let out a short, sharp chuckle and held up his hands in mock surrender, clearly enjoying my reaction more than he should. "Whoa, relax, Killer. Just kidding. I wouldn’t dare go for your woman. I value my life far too much for that." He paused, and something shifted in his expression, something genuine beneath the usual bravado. "Besides," he added, a cryptic smirk playing on his lips as he grabbed his jacket from the back of the stool, "I recently had my eyes on another. Someone who might actually give me a run for my money. Someone who doesn’t take my shit."

I stared at him, my eyes narrowing with suspicion and curiosity. "Who? Since when do you have ’eyes’ on anyone who isn’t a distraction or a one-night stand?"

"Wouldn’t you like to know?" Roman smirked, heading for the elevator with that infuriating swagger of his. He paused with his finger on the button, looking back at me one last time. The playfulness faded from his face, replaced by something more serious. "Fix your mess, Jaxx. I’ll leave you to your brooding. But don’t take too long, some things can’t be fixed if you wait until they’re completely broken."

The elevator doors hissed shut, leaving me in a silence that felt heavy enough to crush me. I dropped my hand, the tension leaving my body in a slow, painful rush that left me feeling hollowed out. I walked over to the balcony, sliding the door open and stepping into the night. The wind whipped my hair across my face, carrying the scent of rain and distant exhaust, the city breathing its restless breath below.

Roman’s words echoed in my head, refusing to quiet. Make up for it. Show her you’ve changed. I looked down at my hands... the hands that had held a scalpel tonight with steady precision, the hands that had fired a hundred rounds into a paper target without missing, the hands that had once held Elena so gently I thought I might break her.

These were hands capable of both healing and destruction, creation and ruin. I was a man of violence and secrets, a Sinclair by blood and a monster by trade. But somewhere beneath all that darkness, there had to be something worth saving. Something worth offering her.

The question was whether she’d see it. Whether she could. But I couldn’t lose her. Not again. Not when I finally knew what it felt like to have a soul, to feel something beyond the cold calculation that had governed my life for so long. The rain began to fall, soft at first, then steadier, soaking through my shirt as I stood there, letting it wash over me like some kind of penance I hadn’t yet earned.

"I have to try," I whispered into the dark, my voice lost in the wind that carried it away into the indifferent night. "I’ll crawl if I have to. I’ll bleed. I’ll burn the whole Sinclair empire to the ground if it means she looks at me without that fear in her eyes. Without that hurt."

The city sprawled before me, millions of lives intersecting and diverging, and somewhere out there was Elena. The girl I’d destroyed. The woman I needed to make whole again. I couldn’t lose her. I wouldn’t. Even if I had to become someone I didn’t recognize to keep her, I would do it.

Even if it meant tearing down every wall I’d built, exposing every vulnerability I’d spent years protecting. Because without Elena, I was just a ghost in a very expensive suit... wealthy, powerful, and utterly, devastatingly empty.

And for the first time in longer than I could remember, I let myself feel the full weight of that emptiness, without flinching away from it, without reaching for another drink to numb it. I simply stood there, letting the rain remind me that I was still, somehow, alive enough to feel this much pain. Alive enough to still hope.