My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 689

Chapter 689

Or…

For me.

She smiled. It wasn’t the bright, carefree smile she wore during her rare moments of happiness. This one was smaller, almost shy. As though she wasn’t entirely certain how I would react to finding her here.

I simply stood there with one hand still resting on the doorknob, staring at the woman who had somehow silenced every thought that had consumed me during the entire drive home.

Hours.

I had spent hours buried inside her past, searching for the child she used to be, trying to understand the life that had shaped her.

And now, there she was.

My chest felt strangely lighter.

Not because my questions had disappeared, they hadn’t. If anything, there were more of them now. But every file I had opened that night had reminded me of one thing, that the girl in those records had survived long enough to become the woman sitting

in front of me.

That mattered more than any report ever could. Her smile widened just enough to reach her eyes.

“You look exhausted,” she said softly.

Only then did I realize I was still standing by the door, still staring at her. As though my mind hadn’t quite accepted that she was

actually here.

The room had become impossibly quiet. The ticking clock on the far wall seemed louder than usual. She sat in the middle of my bed with her hands folded neatly in her lap, her. There was nothing loud about the way she looked, yet somehow she had completely undone the controlled state of mind I had carried home with me.

“What are you doing here?” I asked quietly.

The corners of her lips lifted, “I was waiting for you.”

“You should be resting.”

“I tried,” she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear before looking back at me, “It didn’t work.”

I finally stepped away from the door, though my movements felt strangely slow. She watched me the entire time, her smile softening as I drew closer.

“I got tired of sleeping without you.’

Deserves.

My mind didn’t hear the rest. It had already gone somewhere else.

A little girl struggling to read words on a classroom page while everyone else moved ahead.

A child practicing ballet until her feet bled.

An sixteen-year-old standing in the rain with nowhere else to go.

A frightened young woman forcing herself to smile beneath cheap nightclub lights because she needed money.

The quiet apologies.

“…and I know it isn’t your responsibility to fix me. It never was. I just… I don’t want you to give up on me before I learn how to-

I crossed the remaining distance between us. Her words disappeared. One hand gently cupped her face. The other rested against

the side of her neck.

Then I kissed her, not because I wanted to silence her, but because I couldn’t bear another second of hearing her speak as though she were something broken that needed to earn the right to be loved.