Chapter 17 Definitely Not Regretting It
Jax
It’s been a week and I’m still replaying the same three things on loop. Raine telling me to leave her garage, the door slamming in my face… and Theo, walking around with that freshly-fucked glow he thinks he’s hiding.
I stare at the unread text on my phone.
Jax:
Sunshine, you ghosting me, or did I die and this is hell?
Delivered. No response. The last time she texted me was before the garage. Since then? Theo gets “You alive, Professor?” and Elias gets “Tell your overprotective ass to stop hovering.” I, however, get nothing.
My leg bounces so hard my whole kitchen table rattles. Elias gives me a pointed look over his mug. He’s still in his EMT pants, t-shirt clinging to him after a double shift, hair damp from a shower he clearly needed.
He came over this morning, knowing me too well, and even though I’ve said nothing, he’s read my face well enough to know I’m spiraling.
“Stop.” Elias doesn’t even look up when he says it, but his voice still carries that flat warning. “You’re making me nauseous.”
“She slept with him.” The words come out fast, fueled by panic I can’t swallow down. Why won’t she text me back? “You know that, right?”
Elias exhales slowly, holding himself back. “Yes, Jax. I was present for the part where Theo forgot how doors work and walked into a wall thinking about her.”
“And she still won’t text me back.” I throw that out like it’s a separate injustice, which it obviously is.
“Because you pissed her off.” His tone stays maddeningly calm, and I know he’s not wrong, which only makes it worse.
“I gave her the best almost-orgasm of her life.”
He levels me with a stare that could grate steel. “Almost?”
“Yeah. Almost.” I nod, like that should count for something, when I know it doesn’t.
I know I fucked up.
I know.
“You edged her without warning, she told you to leave, and you left.” He reads back my mistakes like a police statement. “You weaponized her body against her feelings.” He gives me a moment to regret my life choices, then ends me. “Congratulations. These are the consequences.”
I scrub a hand over my face, as if I could erase it all. “Theo got her to say it.”
I wanted it to be me. I tried in the most stupidest way.
“Yeah.”
“She told him she didn’t want to do it alone anymore.”
“Yeah.”
“She cried on him.” The last part comes out quieter, sourer, and I'm unable to joke my way around it.
I try not to carry things. Regrets, sadness, nothing heavy. It’s engrained in me to throw those useless feelings away and pretend everything is fine. Thanks for that, Sis. But with her? God, with her, I can’t. This feeling of fucking up is eating at me, and not just because she won’t text me back.
I look at Elias, who just keeps sipping his coffee like he’s not detonating my insides with facts.
“And that bothers you?” Elias asks it without looking up, voice flat enough to make it worse.
“No.” The lie comes out too fast to be convincing. “I’m great. It doesn’t bother me at all that he got her to say what I wanted her to say.” I gesture at myself like I’m presenting evidence. “I love this for me.”
He snorts just as my phone buzzes, and my brain whiplashes with hope, only to sink a second later when it’s not Raine. It’s a notification from one of the fight organizers with a list of names. Raine's is one of them.
She's fighting tonight.
My grip tightens on my screen.
“Don’t,” Elias says immediately, having gotten the same notification and reading my mind like the daddy he is.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You don’t have to.” He arches a brow as soon as the denial leaves my mouth, voice calm but edged with warning. “I know that look.” He sets his mug down and finally levels me with his attention. “You go in there jealous and unhinged, you’ll blow up everything and set us all back with her.”
“She’s fighting.” The words come out too sharp, because fear always finds my temper first. “Theo’s out of town. You’re on shift in three hours. You’re not gonna be there.” My hand scrubs over my jaw, restless. “What if she gets hurt?”
“Raine has been fighting long before any of us.” His tone stays steady enough to make me want to shake him. “She can handle it.”
“I know she can.” I drag in a breath that doesn’t do a damn thing. “Doesn’t mean I like not being there.”
Elias leans back, studying me with that quiet, clinical patience he saves for idiots and emergencies. “Is this about wanting to support her,” he asks, “or being mad that she picked Theo first?”
“Yes.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose, already tired. “You’re impossible.”
“I’m going crazy.” The confession slips out quieter than the rest, raw enough that it surprises me.
“She won’t talk to me. She let you in. She let him in.
” My laugh doesn’t have any humor in it.
Nothing but the crazed bitterness I’m feeling.
“I’m the joke again. The extra. The fun one.
” I swallow hard, the words catching on the way out.
“And I can live with that most days, but not when I’m so infatuated with her and she’s pretending I don’t exist.”
Elias watches me for a long moment with an unreadable expression.
“If you go,” he says slowly, voice dropping into something colder, “and you hurt her again, I’m not stopping her when she takes your head off.”
“Would never ask you to.” The answer comes easy when it's true.
“And I’m not stopping myself,” he adds, eyes still locked on mine.
“That part I assumed.” My mouth twitches, and it’s the closest thing to a smile I’ve managed all night.
Silence stretches between us, thick with everything I’m not saying and everything he already knows.
Then Elias sighs, resignation slipping in around the edges. “You’re gonna go anyway.”
“Yeah.” No point pretending otherwise. I cannot live another moment with her ignoring me. I need to see her. I need to hear her. I need her to forgive me.
“At least don’t start a fight in the middle of a fight.” He mutters it like a prayer he doesn’t believe in.
I salute him as I grab my jacket, already moving. “No promises.”
The fight’s over fast.
Three clean hits, and she's knocked him out. Raine’s hand is raised by the ref's in victory. That’s all I let myself register before I’m sliding along the wall, keeping my head down, watching which door she disappears behind.
The hallway is narrow concrete, with one buzzing strip light overhead that’s trying its best and failing.
It flickers just enough to make everything look a little haunted, and the sound bounces off the walls so hard it turns footsteps into a whole announcement.
The air smells like sweat and industrial lemon cleaner, with a faint metallic tang that makes me think the pipes in this place have seen things.
Raine ducks into a changing room at the end without breaking stride, so I follow her in.
The room is basically a sad little box. One wooden bench that’s been sweated on by generations.
A plastic chair in the corner that looks one wrong sit away from breaking.
A single hook on the wall with a cheap towel hanging off it, limp and defeated.
The floor’s damp in a few spots, and the whole place smells like mold and disinfectant, which is a brutal combo when I’m already on edge.
She’s halfway through shrugging off her hoodie when I flip the lock.
“What the—”
Her head snaps up at the sound, her cyan streaks sticking to the sweat at her temples, eyes still bright from the fight.
I lean back against the door, propping my foot up and stuffing my hands in my jacket pockets. “Hey, Sunshine.”
Her whole body goes rigid, anger now wrestling with her adrenaline. “No.”
“Hi to you, too.” I keep my tone bright, like I’m not risking getting my face rearranged.
“Get out.”
“Missed you, too.”
Her glare could cut glass as she pins me with it. “Jax.” My name comes out in a clipped warning. “I’m not playing. Open the door.”
“No.”
She lets out one short laugh, sharp enough to count as a weapon. “You really want to get your ass kicked in here? Because I’m still wired enough to make that happen.”
I probably deserve it. There’s no room for excuses here. I push off the door anyway and take a few steps in, forcing myself to breathe like I’m not walking into a buzzsaw.
“Yeah,” I tell her, voice lowering a notch. “Still not leaving.”
She tosses the hoodie aside and yanks at the tape on her hands, ripping it off in harsh, angry pulls.
The sound of it makes something in my chest twist. This is what she does when she doesn’t know what to do with what she’s feeling.
She turns it into force. Into movement. Into something she can control.
I’ve learned this now. Wish I could do something with it.
“Why are you here?” The demand comes out hard, eyes locked on mine as if she’s daring me to lie.
I could give her the easy answer. I’m good at easy answers. I live in them. I use them to get out of trouble and into smiles and out of the heavy stuff that sticks. But she’s been ignoring me for days, and I’ve been spiraling in circles around it, pretending it’s fine while it eats me alive.
“Had a free night. Thought I’d watch you beat the shit out of someone.
It’s better than TV.” I shrug, throwing on my usual grin because habits are a disease.
And for some reason, I don’t want to give her the power.
Yet I expect her to give me hers. I know it’s wrong, but it’s what I’m used to. It’s all I know.
“Don't lie.” She doesn’t even blink, just waits, unimpressed, like she knows me down to my last brain cell.
My jaw tightens before I can stop it, knowing I can’t joke my way out of this. “Because you’re ignoring me and I hate it.”
“Aw.” She claps her hands once, slow and sarcastic, like she’s applauding a child for learning cause and effect. “Actions have consequences. Who knew?”
“I know exactly what I did.” The answer comes out harsher than I mean it to, not pretending I’m innocent. I’m here because it hurts. “I’m not confused.”