JAY JAY POV
I was trying to sleep, I really was. But this asshole was hugging me from behind like a giant, overheated koala.
Keifer's arm was draped heavily over my waist, pulling my back flush against his bare chest. I could feel every steady thrum of his heart through my silk nightdress, and his breath was puffing rhythmically against the back of my neck, sending annoying little shivers down my spine every few seconds.
"Keifer," I hissed into the darkness. "Space. I need personal space."
"Not in the rules," he mumbled, his voice thick with sleep but his grip tightening just a fraction. "The rule was no make-outs. It wasn't 'no cuddling.' I need this to survive the next fourteen days, Jay."
"You're like a human radiator. I'm going to catch fire," I complained, though I didn't actually push his arm away.
His hand, resting on my stomach, started to mindlessly trace patterns over the silk
"Shut up and sleep, wifey," he grumbled, nuzzling his face into the crook of my neck. "Or I'll start counting the hours out loud again."
I huffed, closing my eyes tight. "If you call me wifey one more time before the priest says it, I'm adding another week to the ban."
"You love it," he whispered, his lips grazing my skin just enough to be dangerous.
I went still. The playful atmosphere in the room evaporated instantly, replaced by a sudden, heavy tension. My eyes, which had been drifting shut, snapped open in the darkness.
Keifer's arm didn't move from my waist, but I felt him shift closer, his chin resting gently on my shoulder. His voice lost all its teasing edge, turning quiet and serious.
"Jay," he called out softly.
"Hmm," I responded, my heart starting to thud for a very different reason.
"You said on King's ground that everyone around you either wanted you for money or your..." He hesitated, the word hanging in the air like a ghost. "Or your body. What does that mean?"
The memories I tried so hard to "delete" flickered in the back of my mind.
I closed my eyes for a second, curses running through my mind. I was so drunk that night at King's Ground. The alcohol had loosened the locks on boxes I'd spent years stacking in the back of my brain. Finding out about his "fuck off" plan—that original scheme to get rid of me—had been the match that set the whole thing on fire.
In my anger, the truth had bled out. The ugly, unfiltered truth about how I viewed the world.
I stared at the ceiling, the old weight of those years pressing down on my chest. It felt weirdly quiet in the room now, the silence only filled by our breathing.
"You know how it was, Keifer," I finally said, my voice sounding distant even to my own ears. "Mama Reycee and Papa Jasfer died... our grandparents took care of us, mostly, but they couldn't take the blank space away. And everyone around us during those years—maids, relatives, even some 'friends'—they only wanted the money. After the money, especially since Papa was actually the CEO... everyone thought if they could get rid of me and Jare, they'd have a chance at the company. That's one reason why I had to come to the Philippines."
Keifer's grip on me didn't loosen. If anything, his muscles felt like they were vibrating with a suppressed rage on my behalf.
"Even with Cyrus... it was the same thing," I continued, my throat tight. "He wanted the money and other things. I guess I really was just a way to pass the time for him. Because one day... he drugged me." I felt Keifer flinch behind me. "Thanks to Ben and Robin, I got out safe. The next day, we had a really big fight and... you know the rest of the part."
I didn't need to describe anything Keifer knew.
"Don't mind me asking this question," Keifer began, his voice hesitant, "but why do you hate your real mother, Jeana?"
The name hit me like a slap to the face. The coldness I had been feeling turned into a scorching, white-hot flash of anger.
"Don't call her my mother!" I snapped, my body tensing so hard I almost jolted out of his arms.
"Oh... sorry. I didn't mean to," Keifer said quickly, his voice full of genuine regret.
I took a shaky breath, realizing I had taken it out on him. "I'm sorry," I whispered, rubbing my eyes. "It's just... she doesn't deserve the title."
I turned around in his arms, forcing myself to look him in the eyes. Keifer looked pained, his jaw set so tight it looked like he was physically restraining himself from punching a wall just to vent the frustration building inside him.
"She gave up on us the second we were born," I said, my voice steady despite the old ache in my chest. "She handed me and Jare over to Papa and told him she didn't want anything to do with us. I was eleven when I found out Mama Reycee wasn't my biological mother. I was so devastated and angry that I didn't eat for two days. But Mama Reycee... she sat me down and told me it didn't matter. She said that even if she didn't give birth to me, I was her daughter, and nothing—not even my own anger—could ever change that."
I paused, remembering the warmth of her voice compared to the cold reality that followed.
"I was so furious with Grandpa when he told me I had to move to the Philippines," I continued, looking at Keifer's darkening expression. "I fought him on it. It didn't make sense—why was I being sent away while Jare got to stay behind? It wasn't until later that I realized the truth: Jeana had gone to Grandpa and made a deal. She told him she wanted to 'take me in and protect me' from the vultures circling the estate. Grandpa agreed, even though Jare hated the idea of his little sister being sent to a different continent."
A bitter laugh escaped my lips. "But it was all a lie. She didn't want to protect me; she wanted the paycheck Grandpa was sending for my 'upkeep.' She was constantly on the move, chasing new boyfriends and eventually her husband. And every guy she was with? They were jerks, Keifer. All of them. Jeana would blow through everything Grandpa sent her, leaving me to clean up the mess and deal with the fallout."
I felt Keifer's grip tighten, his pulse racing under my hand.
"Grandpa sent me a weekly allowance, too," I added quietly. "But I refused to let her touch a cent of it. I ended up donating all of it to orphanages and elderly homes. So, whenever she demanded money from me to pay off her debts or her boyfriends, I worked part-time jobs. I worked to pay off her life, just so she'd leave mine alone."
Keifer looked at me, his eyes softening from the cold rage they'd held just moments ago. He leaned down and pressed a long, lingering kiss to my forehead, his way of trying to physically pull the bad memories out of my head.
"But then, after some incident I don't really remember much about, I woke up in a hospital," I continued, my voice smaller now. "When I asked Kuya Angelo what happened, he didn't explain. He just said I got into a fight. After that, I went to live with Lola for a while, but eventually, I moved into Kuya Angelo's house because I was creating way too much trouble."
Keifer tilted his head, a small, curious smirk forming on his face—the first bit of light I'd seen in his expression since we started talking.
"Yeah?" he asked, his voice dropping into that teasing rumble. "How much trouble are we talking about, Mrs. Watson?"
I looked away, feeling a flush that had nothing to do with the make-out session from earlier. "It's not my proudest moment, but I was... well, I was a bitch to most of the students, really. I was angry, Keifer. I was angry at Jeana, angry at my parents for dying, and angry at Grandpa for sending me away. I took it out on everyone. If someone looked at me wrong, I'd make their life a living hell for a week."
"A bitch, huh?" Keifer chuckled, his arm tightening around me as he pulled me back into his chest. "So, basically what you're saying is you were exactly like the girl I met at the beginning of the school year , just with less experience at hiding it."
"Hey!" I poked him in the ribs, but I was smiling. "I'm much more sophisticated now."
"You are," he agreed, his thumb tracing my lower lip. "But now I get it. You weren't being a bitch for the sake of it. You were just making sure no one got close enough to drugged you or take your money again. You were marking your territory before anyone else could try to claim it."
He looked at me with a newfound respect that made my heart swell.
"I like the 'trouble' version of you, Jay-Jay. She's a fighter. But from now on," he whispered, his eyes locking onto mine, "if you want to be a bitch to someone, let me know. I'll be the one to back you up so you don't end up in a hospital bed again. Deal?"
I rested my head on his shoulder, the heavy weight of the past finally feeling a little lighter. "Deal, Watson."
"Good," he murmured. "Now, since we're being honest... tell me about this 'sophisticated' trouble you caused. I want to know exactly what I'm marrying into."
I bit my lip, eyeing him warily. "Promise you won't get mad, but when I first started at Holy Shits—I mean, Saints—maybe a month or two in, Mia, Ben, Robin, and I went to a club. I was completely wasted, and... well, I kind of accidentally-on-purpose set the principal's office on fire."
"Barracuda," Keifer teased, a smirk playing on his lips.
"Asshole, it was a one-time thing!" I shot back, feeling a sense of relief. "And thank God for Robin. He knew people who could hack into the system. He made a few calls and got the security footage deleted. If Kuya Angelo had found out, I'd be a dead woman."
Keifer chuckled, but his curiosity wasn't satisfied yet. "Yeah? What else did you do? And who's this Max guy Ben mentioned? You know, the day you found out we were tracking you and you almost punched me."
"Right, Max," I sighed. This was when I was fifteen, just for the record. "He was one of those guys who thought he had a chance just because I was being friendly. At the time, I was actually dating a guy named Jason. When Max found out about Jason, he had this delusion that I was cheating on him—even though Max and I never even dated! He started ranting, calling me a bitch, and just as he was about to call me a slut, I clocked him. He ended up with a broken nose."
Keifer went still, propping himself up on his elbow so he could look down at me with a skeptical expression.
"So... Jason," Keifer began, his voice dropping an octave. "I thought you told me your first boyfriend was gay?"
I gave him a weak, incredibly awkward smile. How was I supposed to explain my petty coping mechanisms?
"Okay, so he's not actually gay," I admitted. "We started off great, really. He was a perfect gentleman for two years. But then he broke up with me, and I was so incredibly pissed off that I just told everyone he was gay to save face. I did the same thing to Cyrus."
I could see the shift in his eyes immediately. The teasing light vanished, replaced by a dark, simmering possessiveness that he poked at like an open wound.
"Jay, be honest," Keifer said, his voice dropping into a low, dangerously quiet register. "Did you actually like Jason at that time?"
I looked at him, seeing the undeniable flash of jealousy crossing his face. His jaw was tight, and the hand resting on the bed beside me curled into a fist, bunching the sheets. I didn't want to lie—not tonight, not after everything we'd shared.
"Yeah," I said softly, meeting his gaze steadily. "I did. But Keifer, that was so long ago. I was a kid trying to find someone who cared about me and not just my last name."
Keifer nodded slowly, but the tension didn't leave his shoulders. He looked away for a second, his throat bobbing as he swallowed. Even though he was trying to play it cool, I could practically feel the jealousy radiating off him like heat from a furnace.
"Two years is a long time," he muttered, more to himself than to me.
I moved closer, placing my hand over his fist until he finally relaxed his fingers and let me mesh mine with his.
I bit my lip, trying to suppress a giggle at the sheer look of betrayal on his face. The jealousy had completely vanished, replaced by pure, unadulterated shock.
"I called you gay too," I confessed, my voice muffled by the pillow.
Keifer froze. He pulled back just enough to stare at me, his eyes wide. "You did what?"
"I was pissed at you!" I defended, waving a hand dismissively. "It was right after I found out about the 'fuck off' plan. I was venting. So I told Mia, Ben, and Robin that you were definitely gay and just using me as a cover."
Keifer groaned, dropping his head back onto the mattress with a thud. "Unbelievable. My future wife is out here running a smear campaign against my masculinity before the wedding even happens." He paused, narrowing his eyes at me. "How long did you say you've known them? Ben, Robin, and Mia?"
"Almost my entire life," I said, a nostalgic smile tugging at my lips. "We've known each other since we were six years old. We actually met during a fight."
"A fight? At six?" Keifer asked, shaking his head. "Of course you did."
"Some kid was being a bully, and the four of us ended up forming a tiny riot squad to take him down. We've been inseparable ever since."
"So, nice," Keifer said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "You told your best friends of almost twelve years—the people who know you better than anyone—that I was gay. Great. Now I can never look Ben or Robin in the eye again without wondering if they're waiting for me to come out of the closet."
"Oh, please," I rolled my eyes, poking his chest. "They didn't believe me for long. Especially not after the way you look at me. Robin actually told me I was 'delusional' and that you were 'dangerously straight' after he saw us"
Keifer's smirk returned, dark and satisfied. He caught my hand, pinning it gently against his chest so I could feel the steady hammer of his heart.
"Dangerously straight, huh?" he whispered, leaning in until our noses brushed. "Well, at least Robin has some common sense. But just so we're clear, Mariano... if I find out you told Keiran that kids thinks I'm already gay for some reasons or any of the Section E that lie, I'm revoking your 'simple kiss' privileges for the rest of the week."
"You wouldn't dare," I challenged, though my breath was hitching.
"Try me," he murmured, his eyes dropping to my lips. "I'm a patient man, but I have my limits. No more rumors about my preferences, and maybe—just maybe—I won't tell Jare about the principal's office."
"Blackmail? Really, Watson?"
"It's only blackmail if you don't like the terms," he chuckled, pulling me back into the crook of his arm. "Now, go to sleep. My 'gay' self needs his beauty rest so I can look good for our wedding photos."
"I told you everything now your turn" I said to him "i refuse to sleep"
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
🚨⚠️🚨⚠️NEXT CHAPTER GOAL 🚨⚠️🚨⚠️
20COMMENTS 🎯🎯🎯🎯