My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 386

Chapter 386

I was a secret arrangement in the dark, and now… a buddy.

My throat felt completely dry, like it was coated in sand. I swallowed hard, forcing my trembling jaw to move as I stared at him through the dim light.

“Friends?” I whispered.

The word sounded incredibly small, a tiny, broken sound that completely gave away how much it hurt to say it out loud. I hated how weak it made me sound, but I couldn’t stop it from slipping past my lips.

Raphael didn’t notice the ache hiding in my voice. Instead, a slow, bright grin spread across his face, his eyes crinkling at the corners as if a massive weight had just been lifted off his shoulders.

He gave his head a nod, his fingers giving the skin of my thigh another gentle, reassuring squeeze.

“Friend,” he said, his deep voice sounding light and totally satisfied with himself, like he had just solved the hardest puzzle in the world.

I forced my jaw to lock tight, fighting with everything inside me to pull my crumbling pieces back together.

I took a deep, slow breath through my nose, forcing the burning tears back down into my throat before they could spill over my eyelashes.

I swallowed the thick, bitter taste of my own heartbreak, burying the pain so deep under the surface that he wouldn’t be able to catch even a glimpse of it. I couldn’t let him see how much that single word had just destroyed

The hot, heavy tears finally spilled over, soaking straight into the clothes.

He had broken his own rules for me. He had bared his soul and called me his best friend. It was the most beautiful, fragile thing anyone had ever given me, and it was the ultimate rejection all at once.

He was close enough to touch my scars, close enough to fix my mind, but he was completely out of reach.

He would never love me the way I had started to love him.

I pressed my forehead harder into the clothes, the fabric scratching against my skin as I wept in the pitch black, letting the cold truth wash over me in the dark.