Jax’s shirt.
“HOW LONG?” I yelled out, my voice nearly breaking.
“A couple months,” Beth croaked out.
My heart absorbed the words upon impact.
I couldn’t fucking believe it.
My boyfriend and my sister.
Fucking. Under the same roof.
For months.
While he was still fucking me.
Disgust slammed into my body with the force of a tidal wave.
HIT. HIT. HIT. HIT.
I needed to get the fuck out of here as soon as possiblebefore I completely lost it.
I spun around and headed straight to the door.
My sister started sobbing hysterically, pleading with menot to leave. Jax tried to downplay the situation. A slew ofexcuses fell out of his mouth like he was reciting lines fromevery terrible movie cheating scene ever—“We were justmessing around . . . It just happened out of nowhere . . . Iswear we never meant to hurt you.” God, how dense could hepossibly be? Of course they meant to hurt me. If they didn’tmean to hurt me, they wouldn’t have fucking done it in thefirst place!
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t BREATHE. The pain in mychest kept expanding and expanding as they continued to hurltheir stupid, half-assed explanations for infidelity at me untilI finally had enough of it and the melting pot of emotionsbrewing inside me erupted.
“JUST STOP IT!” I screamed as I twisted back to them,wishing they could just shut the fuck up and leave me alone.
But my pleas went unheard. The more they tried to reason withme, the more suffocated I felt; the more my lungs struggled tocatch air.
“JUST STOP!”
I started to feel dizzy. Overwhelmed. My eyes blinkedrapidly as I tried to gain some sense of control but the worldaround me slowed and warped and swiveled and everythingbecame more unsettled, more constricting . . .
“JUST STOP JUST STOP JUST STOP.”
HIT. HIT. HIT. HIT. HIT. HIT.
“JUST STOP JUST STOP JUST STOP JUST STOP.”
HIT. HIT. HIT. HIT. HIT. HIT.
“JUST STOP!” I rasp to myself as the punching bag swings back so hard that it collides with my body, causing me to lose my footing and stumble to the ground.
I unravel the boxing wraps from my hands and fling them across the mat as hard as I can, frustration leaking out of me in tears and sweat as I try to get my breathing back under control. My head is spinning so hard my brain feels like it’s about to fall out. If I don’t get enough oxygen into my system right now, I might just pass out.
Calm down, Sienna. Deep breaths, I schooled myself. In,out, in, out, in, out. . .
My fingers dig into my blond hair but it’s all tangled and in disarray, with strands sticking to my sweat-slicked face.
When I drag my hands out of my hair, they feel weird and sore. I stretch them out in front of me, palms facing down.
There’s no mistaking the pools of red on my knuckles.
Looks like the no-gloves idea really panned out for you,didn’t it? I think to myself, mentally slapping myself for being this stupid. I knew that it was a rookie move. I knew it, and like a fool, I did it anyway because I’d hoped the physical pain could override the emotional pain.