JAY JAY POV
I wrapped my hands around his neck, my fingers tangling in the messy hair at the nape of his head. I needed the anchor. I needed to feel the solid, dangerous reality of him
Keifer didn't pull away. Instead, he buried his face in the crook of my neck, his heavy breathing hot against my collarbone.
Then, he started kissing my neck.
It wasn't a gentle, are-you-okay kind of kiss. It was deep, slow, and devastatingly possessive.
Every press of his lips felt like he was trying to scrub Zane's touch off my body, replacing it with his own unmistakable brand.
"Keifer..." I breathed out, my head falling back as a thousand electric shocks shot straight to my toes.
He didn't stop. He moved higher, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin right below my ear, making my knees feel like they were made of warm jelly. I reached up, pulling him closer
"He's not touching you again," Keifer rasped against my skin, his voice dropping into that low, gravelly register that always made my brain short-circuit. "I don't care who he is or what happened in London. If he lays another finger on you, Jay-Jay, I'm not just going to select a coffin for him. I'm going to put him in it."
"I love you," he said, the words heavy and raw against my skin.
Before I could even process the way my heart just executed a perfect double backflip, he was dragging me back toward the school building. He didn't stop until we reached the music room—our unofficial headquarters for terrible decisions.
Click.
The door locked, and the silence of the room felt like it was pressing in on us. Keifer didn't waste a second. He backed me up against the piano
"Are you still mad at me?" he asked, his voice dropping into that deep, gravelly register. He leaned down, his lips ghosting over my jawline in a slow, lingering kiss that made my brain short-circuit.
"So much," I breathed out, trying to push against his chest to give myself some actual air to breathe.
Keifer let out a low, dark chuckle that vibrated right through my bones. He didn't push back. Instead, he looked at me with that signature, arrogant Watson glint—the one that said he'd already won.
"I love that about you, Mrs. Watson," he murmured.
His hands, large and warm, found my waist before sliding slowly, deliberately down to my thighs. I felt his fingers hook into the hem of my skirt, riding the fabric higher until my skin hit the cool air of the room.
"Keifer... we're in school!" I hissed, my face going a shade of red that probably defied the laws of physics.
"I don't care," he rasped, his gaze dropping to where his hands were marking my skin.
He leaned in, his nose brushing against mine, his eyes dark with that possessive, territorial fire.
"You're mine, Jay-Jay. Infinitely. Mad or not, you aren't going anywhere."
He kissed me, and before my brain could even issue a restraining order, I was kissing him back. My hands tangled in his hair, pulling him closer
Jay-Jay, stop this, a part of me screamed. You're supposed to hate him! He used you! He lied! Have some dignity, for heaven's sake!
But then another part of me—the part that was currently melting under his touch—shouted back. Yes, he did, but he admitted it! He could have kept lying, but he chose the truth even if it meant losing you. He loves you so much he'd probably jump off a cliff if you asked him to. He just punched your past into the dirt for you!
I was a walking, breathing civil war.
Keifer felt my hesitation and deepened the kiss, his tongue claiming me with a desperate, hungry intensity that made my thoughts scatter like leaves in a hurricane. His hands were firm on my thighs, his knuckles brushing against my skin as he rode my skirt higher, his touch marking me in a way that felt like forever.
"I've got you," he muttered against my lips, his voice thick and rough. "I'm not letting anything touch you again, Jay. Not him. Not the past. Nothing."
I let out a shaky, broken moan, my resolve crumbling into dust.
I should be angry. I should be walking away. But as he pulled me flush against him, pinning me between his hard body and the piano, I realized that my anger was just a thin veil for how much I needed him.
"You're a jerk, Keifer Watson," I breathed, my eyes fluttering shut.
"I know," he rasped, his lips finding the sensitive spot beneath my jaw. "But I'm your jerk. Infinitely."
And in that moment, the part of me that wanted to hate him officially surrendered. Because despite the lies, despite the Plan,and despite the chaos... he was the only thing that made me feel like I wasn't falling apart.
I love this idiot. There. I said it—at least inside
love him, and as much as it kills me to admit, I don't want it any other way.
But loving him shouldn't be a get-out-of-jail-free card.
You have to work for it, Keifer, I thought, my heart hammering against my ribs. I can't just forgive everything—the Plan, the lies, the chess moves—that easily. You might have saved me from Zane, but you still have to save yourself from being the guy who used me.
I pulled back, breaking the kiss with a sharp breath.
Keifer, on the other hand, didn't want to let go. His hands tightened on my thighs, his knuckles white against my skin, and his eyes were dark with a mix of desperation and that territorial fire. He looked like he was one second away from dragging me back into his space and never letting the world see me again.
"I love you so fucking much," he rasped, his voice breaking in that deep, gravelly register that always made my resolve feel like it was made of wet paper.
He leaned in again, his forehead resting against mine, his breathing heavy and frantic.
"I know," I whispered, my voice finally finding a bit of its steel. I reached up and placed my hands on his chest, feeling the frantic, rhythmic thud of his heart. "But 'I love you' doesn't fix a broken trust, Keifer. It just means I'm willing to give you the chance to fix it yourself."
I looked him straight in the eyes, ignoring the way my knees were still trembling.
"You're on the blacklist, remember? And right now, you're going to have to do a lot more than punch my exes and kiss my neck to get off of it."
Keifer stared at me for a long, silent moment. The smirk didn't come back. Instead, a slow, determined nod replaced it.
"Challenge accepted, Mrs. Watson," he murmured, his thumb tracing the hem of my skirt. "I'll crawl if I have to. Just don't ask me to stop loving you. Because that's the one thing I'm never going to be able to do."
"I'm not asking you to stop loving me," I started, my voice trembling with a mix of leftover adrenaline and a sudden, fierce clarity. I grabbed the front of his shirt, my knuckles brushing against the warm skin of his chest. "I'm asking you to love me so fucking much that... that you forget there's even a chessboard in this room."
I looked him straight in the eye, ignoring the way my heart was doing a frantic, caffeinated sprint.
"I want to be the reason you throw away the plans, Keifer. I want to be the one thing in your life that isn't a strategy. If you're going to be truly mine then the Asshole has to retire whenever it's just the two of us."
Keifer didn't blink. He didn't even move. He just stared at me with an intensity so raw it felt like he was memorizing my soul. For a second, the heavy, brooding tension in the music room shifted.
"The board is already gone, Jay-Jay," he rasped, his voice dropping into that deep, vibrato-rich register. He reached up, his large, warm hands covering mine where they clutched his shirt. "It burned down the moment I realized I'd rather lose the war than lose you."
He leaned in, his forehead resting against mine, his breath hot against my lips.
"I'll love you until my heart stops beating," he whispered, a solemn promise vibrating through his chest. "I'll love you until Mrs. Watson isn't just a label I forced on you, but the only name you ever want to hear. I'm going to make you forget there was ever a version of me that didn't worship at your feet."
He didn't wait for a response. He captured my lips again, but this time it wasn't a claim it was a surrender.
And as I kissed him back, letting my fingers tangle in his hair, I realized that for a girl who'd just discovered her whole life was a lie, this wreckage was the only place I finally felt like I was telling the truth.
I love him. Infinitely.
And heaven help anyone who thinks they can take me away from my favorite asshole.
I managed to pull myself out of Keifer's intoxicating grip, leaving him standing in the middle of the music room. My heart was still hammering against my ribs, and my lips felt swollen from his kisses, but I needed air. I needed a different kind of truth.
As I rounded the corner of the hallway, I saw him.
Aries.
"Aries," I called out, my voice sounding steadier than I felt.
He stopped and turned, his usual calm, composed expression softening the moment he saw it was me. "Jay-Jay. How are you?"
How am I? I wanted to laugh. I just found out my mother is a stranger,my fiancé used me as a human chess piece. I'm fantastic.
"Fine," I lied, tucking a stray hair behind my ear. "But can we meet after school? At the cafe downtown. Just you, me, and Jare."
Aries went quiet for a second, his perceptive eyes searching my face. He wasn't like Keifer—he didn't demand or explode—but he had a way of looking through people that made me feel like he already knew what I was going to ask.
He knew about the secret. He had to.
"Okay," Aries nodded slowly, his voice laced with a subtle hint of gravity. "I'll be there, Jay-Jay."
I gave him a small nod and walked away before I could let the tears start again. I needed to hear it from him, too. I needed to know if he'd known all along—if he had looked at me and seen a sister, or if I was just another ghost in his family's closet.
Today, the labels were finally going to be stripped away.
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AFTER SCHOOL: THE CAFE
Jare and I sat in a secluded booth at the back of the cafe, the steam from our untouched coffees curling into the air.
Jare was unusually quiet, his eyes fixed on the door, his jaw set in that protective bodyguard line.
Then, the bell chimed. Aries walked in.
He didn't have his Section A entourage. He looked... normal. Vulnerable, even. He slid into the seat opposite us, and for a long moment, the silence was so heavy it felt like it was its own person sitting at the table.
"You know, don't you?" Aries asked, looking directly at me.
"Keifer told me," I whispered, my fingers trembling as I clutched my cup. "He told me everything. About Jeana. About London. About the fact that... we're related."
I looked up, my eyes stinging. "Is it true, Aries? Are you really my brother?"
Aries didn't blink. He reached out, his hand resting on the table as if he wanted to reach for mine but wasn't sure if he was allowed.
"It's true, Jay-Jay," he said, his voice dropping into a low, somber tone. "I've known for a while. I was waiting for the right time to tell you... but Keifer beat me to it."
My heart did a slow, painful somersault. "Why didn't you say anything? Why let me live a lie for so long?"
Aries looked at Jare, then back at me. "Because I wanted you to be happy. I saw how much you loved Reycee and Jasfher. I didn't want to be the one to tell you that the woman you called Mom wasn't the one who gave birth to you."
He paused, a flicker of pain crossing his face. "And because I didn't know if you'd want a brother like me."
Jare and I exchanged a sharp, confused look. My brain was already struggling to process the fact that Aries was my brother, but now he was talking about her like she was a ghost that had haunted him long before she ever reached London.
"What the hell do you mean?" Jare asked, his voice dropping its defensive edge
Aries stared into his coffee, his jaw tightening so hard I thought it might snap
"She left me," Aries said, the words falling like lead weights. "I was probably eight years old when she decided she didn't want me anymore. She just... handed me off. She left me with Mama Gemma. That was the last time I ever called her Mom. I don't like her, Jay. I don't even want to remember her face."
The café noise—the clinking of spoons, the hiss of the espresso machine—all faded into a dull hum.
Eight years old.
While Jare and I were being raised in London, believing Reycee was our biological mother and living in a happy, oblivious bubble, Aries had been here. He'd been the first one she discarded. He was the one who had to grow up knowing exactly what it felt like to be unwanted by the woman who gave him life.
"Eight?" I whispered, the word feeling like a physical weight in my chest. "She left you when you were only eight?"
Aries didn't look away, but his gaze seemed to drift toward a memory that was clearly painful to revisit.
"I don't know her reasons," he said, his voice flat "But when you two were born, she didn't want you either. So when your dad asked to take you to London, she just... agreed. That's what I heard. I heard Kuya Angelo and Mom talking about it years ago."
When Papa asked to take his newborn twins across the world, she didn't see two babies she loved—she saw an exit strategy. She saw a way to be free of us, just like she'd freed herself of Aries when he was eight.
But the weirdest part? I didn't feel the soul-crushing weight I expected. No, what I felt was a cold, clinical detachment.
I didn't care about her. Not really.
I mean, why should I care about her when she didn't care about us?
Why waste my energy grieving a woman who viewed my birth as a legal inconvenience?
She was a stranger who happened to share my DNA, nothing more.
My mother was Reycee—the woman who actually put in the work, who flew across the ocean, who raised me with a love that wasn't conditional on how "useful" I was.
"You're thinking about it too much," Jare said, nudging my shoulder.
"I'm not," I said, my voice steady. "I just realized she's irrelevant. She's a ghost, and I don't believe in hauntings."
Aries looked at me, a flicker of respect crossing his face. "You're stronger than I was at eight, Jay-Jay. I spent years letting her absence define me. You're just... letting her go."
"She's not worth the storage space in my brain," I shrugged.
I looked back at the café, then at the two boys beside me. We were the wreckage she left behind, but looking at us now standing together we were a lot more solid than she ever was.
"I'm done caring about the past. What matters is right now. If you're in, then I'm in. Let's start our official journey from here... as brother and sister." I said to Aries
"I would love that," he said, a genuine smile breaking through his usual mask.
I couldn't help but smile back. The weight in my chest didn't disappear, but it shifted into something manageable. It felt like a tiny piece of the wreckage was finally being put back together.
"Okay, enough with the drama before I start crying again. I think we should get going," I said, trying to sound like my usual self even though my throat felt tight.
Before we left, I moved forward and pulled Aries into a quick, tight hug. It was a silent thank you—for being honest, for staying, and for being the only part of this biological mess that didn't feel like a curse. He stiffened for a second, clearly not used to the affection, but then I felt him exhale as he briefly hugged me back.
Jare and I walked out of the cafe without looking back. The walk home was quiet, both of us lost in our own thoughts.
By the time we reached the house, my feet were dragging. My brain was officially short-circuiting, and all I wanted was to crawl under my covers and pretend the rest of the world didn't exist.
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