Jay Jay's POV
My eyes cracked open to the dim morning light, and the very first thing I felt was a dull, rhythmic sledgehammer swinging inside my lower abdomen.
Great. Fantastic. Wonderful.
I shifted slightly, and a familiar, dreaded warmth confirmed my worst fears. My period had arrived. And honestly? I blamed Keifer entirely. He had been so utterly relentless last night, driving his jealousy into me for hours, that my body had clearly decided to just throw in the towel and open the floodgates ahead of schedule.
Then I looked down at the sheets.
My breath hitched, and a wave of cold, dizzying nausea hit me instantly. Blood. Even though it was just my monthly cycle, the sight of it made my stomach do a violent flip. My hands started to shake. The old, suffocating weight of my blood trauma rushed right back into my chest, making my throat tighten. I hated it. I hated looking at it, I hated the smell of it, and I hated how it instantly made me feel like the room was spinning.
I forced myself to look away, taking deep, rattling breaths until the panic receded into a dull, throbbing headache.
To make matters worse, today was exam day at the business college. I couldn't just curl into a ball and weep. I had to get up, scrub the sheets, change, and somehow drag my aching, traumatised body to campus to write an economics paper.
As I painfully shuffled out of the bathroom later, completely drained and clutching my stomach, I found Keifer standing by the kitchen counter. He was already fully dressed, looking effortlessly immaculate and annoyingly handsome, sipping a cup of black coffee. The dark, brooding tension from last night was still written all over his face. He didn't even look up when I walked in. He was actively ignoring me.
Oh, so we're doing the silent treatment now?staring at the back of his head. Fine. Two can play at that game. Except I am currently dying from internal bleeding and cramps, so actually, I need you to talk to me.
I slowly sidled up to the counter, leaning my hip against it and trying to look casual, even though my uterus was currently trying to strangle itself.
"Keifer," I croaked, my voice still a little raspy.
He didn't budge. He just picked up his briefcase, his dark eyes fixed straight ahead as he walked right past me toward the front door.
Wow. Okay. Cruel and unusual punishment, my mind grumbled as I trailing miserably behind him like a punished puppy. Look at him. Walking like he owns the pavement. Well, technically he does own like four mega-corporations, so maybe he does own the pavement. But he doesn't own the right to ignore my suffering!
As we got into the car, the silence was so thick you could have cut it with a butter knife. Keifer stared strictly at the road, his jaw clenched, his strong hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were white. He was still absolutely furious about whatever happened two days ago.
I leaned my head against the cool glass of the passenger window, clutching my bag against my stomach like a shield. Since my voice wasn't working, my brain decided to take over the conversation entirely.
'Hey, Watson,' I said to him in my mind, glaring at his perfect profile. 'Are you aware that my stomach is currently hosting a tiny, angry heavy-metal concert? They are playing the drums on my ovaries. It's very loud and very painful. And it is 100% your fault because you were acting like a feral beast last night. You branded me like a cow, Keifer. A very tired, very cramped cow.'
Keifer shifted gears, his shoulder muscles flexing beneath his sharp jacket.
'Look at you, pretending to be a serious, unbothered CEO,' my internal monologue continued, getting progressively sillier as the cramps worsened. 'You think you're so tough with your four companies and your brooding expressions. Well, guess what? I run two companies, and right now, both of my companies are declaring bankruptcy due to a severe shortage of peace and quiet. If you don't look at me in the next five seconds, I am going to mentally curse your coffee to taste like lukewarm dishwater for a week. One... two... three... okay, you have immunity, please just look at me.'
I let out a tiny, pathetic whimper out loud as the car hit a bump, sending a sharp spike of pain through my abdomen.
Keifer's hands twitched slightly on the steering wheel. His dark eyes flickered toward the rearview mirror, then toward me for a split second, before he strictly locked his gaze back on the road. The tension in his shoulders didn't break, but I caught the tiny flare of his nostrils. He knew I was hurting, but his stubborn, jealous anger was keeping him completely locked down.
'Fine,' I huffed mentally, closing my eyes and wrapping my arms tighter around my middle. 'Be a statue. See if I care. When I fail this exam because my brain cells have melted from pain, I'm going to write your name on the paper and tell the professor you held my grades hostage with your silence. Just wait, Keifer Watson. Just you wait.'
AUTHOR POV
The morning at the college was already suffocatingly tense, but the atmosphere inside Jay Jay's lecture hall was about to boil over.
Jay Jay sat at her desk, her face entirely pale as she fought a brutal, two-front war against her own body. The sharp, nauseating cramps were twisting her stomach into knots, and the lingering, dizzying anxiety from her morning blood trauma still had her mind feeling completely frayed. She kept her head low, her arms wrapped tightly around her middle, wanting nothing more than to blend into the background, finish the exam, and vanish.
But peace was a luxury she wasn't allowed today.
Near the front of the lecture hall, a loud, arrogant debate had broken out among a group of male students. What started as a casual discussion about corporate leadership quickly degraded into a toxic, disrespectful rant about gender.
"Let's be realistic," one guy scoffed, leaning back in his chair with a smug grin. "Women are just fundamentally too weak for the high-stakes corporate world. They're too emotional, too fragile. When the pressure gets real, they break. They just don't have the stomach or the strength for the real fight."
A few other boys laughed in agreement, tossing out careless, demeaning jokes. The few girls in the section stiffened, looking uncomfortable and insulted, but no one wanted to start a full-blown shouting match right before a major exam. Jay Jay heard every word, but she strictly forced her eyes shut. She was too exhausted to care. She had two corporations of her own to run; she didn't need to prove her worth to a room full of loudmouth college boys.
Unfortunately, her silence wasn't enough for them.
One of the ringleaders of the debate, a tall, arrogant student named Marcus, noticed her total lack of reaction. Wanting a reaction to fuel his ego, he marched right over to her desk, slamming his hand down on the wood.
"Hey, Jay Jay," Marcus barked, a mocking smirk on his lips. "What about you? You're always sitting there acting so quiet and superior. Why don't you weigh in? Or are you just proving my point? Too weak and scared to even open your mouth and defend your own side?"
Jay Jay didn't move. She didn't even look up at him. "Leave me alone, Marcus. I'm not in the mood."
"See? Exactly what I mean," Marcus laughed loudly, turning back to the room to gather more applause. He reached out, his hand gripping her shoulder roughly to force her to stand up. "Completely useless under pressure. Just a weak little—"
He never finished the sentence.
Something in Jay Jay snapped. The combination of physical agony, emotional trauma, and the sheer audacity of this boy putting his hands on her broke through her restraint.
Before Marcus could even register what was happening, Jay Jay's fist flew forward. Crack.
It was a perfectly aimed, brutally heavy punch straight to his jaw. The sheer force of the impact sent Marcus staggering backward, his feet tangling before he crashed heavily against a row of desks. The entire lecture hall went dead silent. Shocked gasps echoed through the room.
"What the hell?!" one of Marcus's friends shouted, snapping out of his stupor. Two boys instantly lunged forward to defend their friend, but Jay Jay was already moving.
Fueled by a sudden, fierce rush of adrenaline that completely drowned out her cramps, she didn't back down an inch. When the first boy reached for her, she sidestepped smoothly, grabbing his arm and using his own momentum to slam him face-first into the chalkboard. The second boy tried to grab her from behind, but Jay Jay turned sharply, driving her elbow straight into his ribs with enough force to knock the wind completely out of him. He collapsed to his knees, gasping for air.
Jay Jay stood in the center of the room, her chest heaving, her knuckles bleeding slightly from the punch. The sheer, commanding authority of a CEO radiated off her, completely paralyzing the remaining students. She glared down at the boys groaning on the floor, her voice cutting through the silence like a razor blade.
"Weak?" Jay Jay hissed, her tone dropping into a deadly, fierce vibration that commanded absolute attention. "You dare stand there and call women weak?"
She took a slow, menacing step toward Marcus, who was holding his bleeding lip in sheer terror.
"Women are not weak," she spat, her dark eyes flashing with a dangerous intensity. "They are soft-hearted. They are kind, and they choose to bear your absolute nonsense with patience. But don't you ever mistake their kindness for fragility. Women are strong enough to carry life. They are strong enough to give birth to every single one of you bloody men, enduring pain you cowards couldn't survive for a single second!"
She gestured fiercely to the room, her voice rising with unstoppable power.
"No man—no boy in this room—has the right to look down on them. You sit here and disrespect the very grace that brought you into this world, all because you're too small to handle a woman who stands taller than you. If any of you ever put your hands on a woman in this section again, or open your mouth to call them weak, I will personally ensure you don't have the teeth left to speak at all. Do you understand me?!"
The entire room remained frozen, utterly terrified and completely awed by the raw strength and terrifying power of the girl they had so foolishly underestimated. Marcus and his friends scrambled backward, completely humiliated, unable to utter a single word.
Jay Jay's POV
Thank god I actually know how to fight. Honestly, Section E really taught me well. I seriously miss my Section E ulupongs. If those chaotic idiots were here right now, they would have probably turned those arrogant boys into permanent floor mats before I even had to lift a finger.
But dealing with the aftermath of that brawl while writing a three-hour economics paper? Absolute torture.
The adrenaline from the fight evaporated the exact second my pen touched the exam sheet, and the cramps returned with a vengeance. It felt like a tiny, malicious demon was using my uterus as a stress ball. Every single line of supply-and-demand graphs blurred together. I spent the entire exam clutching my burning stomach with one hand, furiously writing definitions with the other, and praying my eyes wouldn't focus on any red ink because my blood trauma was still lingering in the back of my mind.
By the time the timer buzzed, I was sweating, pale, and ready to pass out. But my feet didn't take me to the exit. Against my better judgment, they dragged me straight toward Keifer's lecture section. I just wanted my keifer. I wanted him to stop being mad at me, wrap his huge, warm arms around me, and tell me I did a good job on the paper.
Instead, I walked through the door and my brain completely short-circuited.
There was a girl. Sitting near him. No, scratch that—she wasn't just near him, she was practically trying to fuse her cellular structure with his. She was sitting too damn close. Her shoulder was practically glued to his, and she was leaning over his desk, twisting a strand of her hair around her finger like a textbook cliché.
A massive, roaring wave of possessive, white-hot jealousy slammed into my chest, instantly mixing with my raging period hormones to create a highly volatile emotional cocktail. My mood swung so fast I think I gave myself whiplash.
Oh, look at that, my mind hissed, my eyes narrowing into tiny slits. Look at her. Is she trying to slide onto his lap? If she tilts her head any further, her neck is going to snap. Go ahead, sit on his lap, lady. Do it. I will literally kill you. I will bury you under the business college floorboards and no one will ever find the body. Truly.
The worst part? Keifer wasn't doing a single thing about it. He was just sitting there, looking at his laptop, occasionally glancing at whatever she was pointing to. He wasn't pushing her away. He wasn't barking at her to back off like he usually did with annoying people.
Wow, look at him. Mr. Serious CEO is just enjoying the attention, huh? My internal monologue was practically screaming now, getting more dramatic and nonsensical by the second. Look at that smug, handsome face. Go marry her, Watson! Just go buy a ring right now and have a beautiful wedding in the lecture hall! I hate you. I absolutely hate you, Keifer Watson.
Then, within a fraction of a second, the burning anger completely crumbled into a pathetic, heartbreaking puddle of insecurity. The hormone shift hit me like a truck, and my eyes suddenly stung with hot, emotional tears.
I knew it, I thought miserably, biting the inside of my lip to keep from crying out loud. I knew I wasn't enough for you. You're probably sick of me always being difficult, and tensing up, and fighting people. She probably has perfect, painless periods and doesn't get terrified of blood. You're totally cheating on me in broad daylight. You've moved on. My companies are going bankrupt, my body is dying, and my boyfriend has replaced me with a hair-twirler. I'm going to go live in a cave.
I stood frozen near the back door, glaring at his perfect profile while my brain cycled through five different stages of grief and homicidal rage in the span of ten seconds.
Keifer's POV
I kept my eyes strictly focused on my laptop screen, but my attention hadn't been on the financial models for the last ten minutes. I knew the exact second she walked into my lecture hall. Even without looking up, I could feel her presence—that familiar, chaotic energy that always disrupted my focus.
When I finally shifted my gaze and looked toward the back door, my chest tightened.
Jay Jay was standing there, frozen. She looked incredibly pale, her skin slick with a light sweat. But it was her face that stopped me. Her eyes were flashing with a dangerous, white-hot fury, yet underneath all that anger, her lower lip was trembling slightly.
Seeing her like that—miserable, angry, and completely focused on me—ignited a dark, petty spark of satisfaction in my chest.
Good, my jaw clenching as the memory of her stubborn defiance from two days ago rushed back. Let her see how it feels.
The girl sitting next to me pointed at something on her notebook, giggling loudly as she leaned even closer into my space. Usually, I would have snapped at her to pack her things and leave. But right now, with Jay Jay's burning gaze locked onto the side of my face, I changed my strategy.
I turned my head toward the girl, deliberately holding her gaze, and let out a low, clear laugh. I smiled, giving her my absolute, undivided attention, making sure my posture looked relaxed and completely unbothered. I wanted every single chuckle to carry across the quiet lecture hall straight to the back door. I wanted Jay Jay to feel the exact same suffocating, relentless pull of jealousy that had driven me entirely out of my mind last night.
Jay Jay's POV
My heart didn't just break it completely shattered into a million jagged pieces.
He laughed. Keifer actually laughed at whatever that hair-twirling parasite just said.
A heavy, suffocating lump formed in my throat, making it almost impossible to breathe. He doesn't even laugh with me this much, I thought, a wave of bitter, stinging tears blurring my vision. He only ever laughs when I tell a really, really hard joke, or when I literally force him to sit down and watch comedy reels with me for an hour. And even then, it's just a low, reluctant chuckle. But with her? He's just offering up his smiles like they're free samples.
I hate you, Keifer Watson. I absolutely, deeply hate you.
'Oh, you think this is a game, Keifer?' I threatened him viciously in the deep recesses of my mind, my inner voice going completely off the rails as another sharp, agonizing cramp twisted my insides like a wet towel. 'Keep ignoring me. Keep letting her breathe your oxygen. The very second we get home, I am going to find the sharpest pair of scissors in the kitchen and I will literally cut your dick off, Watson. Let's see how much you enjoy her attention then. I will snip it right off. Gone. Deleted. Non-existent. You will have to go to your important CEO meetings in a skirt, Keifer, because you won't have anything left to fit into those expensive tailored trousers.'
The mental threats were getting wilder and more violent as the hormones completely hijacked my common sense.
'Actually, no, scissors are too quick,' my mind hissed, my eyes narrowing through the film of tears. 'I'm going to use a rusty butter knife. I will feed your manhood to the neighborhood stray cats, Watson. And then I'm going to glue your laptop shut with industrial cement so you can't run your four precious companies anymore. I'll replace all your expensive cedarwood cologne with cheap lavender body mist, and I'll personally shred every single one of your black shirts until you have nothing left to wear but bright neon pink hoodies. Let's see your little girlfriend twist her hair for a man wearing neon pink!'
But the angry, chaotic thoughts couldn't hold back the pain for long.
Another brutal, crushing wave of cramps hit my abdomen, so severe that my knees actually buckled slightly. I had to grip the back of a nearby desk just to keep myself upright. Sweat poured down my neck, and the dizziness from my morning blood trauma started to cloud the edges of my vision again.
But as painful as my body felt, the ache in my chest was ten times worse.
A hot, heavy tear finally spilled over my eyelashes, tracking down my pale cheek, followed quickly by another. I couldn't stop them. The physical agony of my period was completely merging with the raw, emotional devastation of watching him smile at someone else. It was too hard to look at. Seeing him completely check out, completely ignore my suffering just to give his warmth to another girl, hurt more than any punch I had thrown this morning.
I let out a tiny, broken sob, burying my face in my hands right there at the back of the room, completely defeated by the pain and the sight of him.