You Had Me, You Lost Me, You'll Never Find Me novel Chapter 50

During their senior year of college, Rebecca flew to Italy to perform with a symphony orchestra. Reina went to watch her sister play. After the show, they were walking down the street when an out-of-control truck barreled straight toward Reina.

In a split second, Rebecca shoved her out of the way, her blood spilling across the pavement.

At that exact moment, Ashton had just hung up the phone with Rebecca. While en route to pick her up, he witnessed the entire massacre with his own eyes.

Rebecca bled out in Ashton's arms, begging him to take care of her little sister. She was rushed to the ICU but didn't survive the night.

Rebecca was only twenty-two years old.

For two entire years, Ashton was trapped in a suffocating depression, completely losing his voice for months.

Reina was intensely jealous of the sister who had commanded such consuming love from Ashton.

She genuinely believed Ashton would never love another woman—until Sylvia showed up.

At first glance, Sylvia bore a striking resemblance to Rebecca, but their personalities couldn't have been more polar opposites.

Reina refused to believe Ashton had genuinely fallen for her.

When she saw Sylvia eating cheap catering on set, realizing Ashton never bothered to pick her up, never visited her, and kept their relationship a total secret, she concluded Sylvia was absolutely no threat.

Ashton treated Sylvia with barely a fraction of the devotion he had shown Rebecca.

If a man truly loved someone, why would he refuse to show her off to the world?

But seeing the brutal marks branded onto Sylvia's lips and collarbone tonight shattered Reina's confidence entirely.

Seeing Ashton about to walk away, she threw her arms around his waist from behind.

"Ash! Don't go!"

Ashton's entire body went violently rigid. He paused, then gripped her wrists and forcefully peeled her hands off him.

"You're just a little sister to me."

Tears shimmered in Reina's eyes. "My sister has been gone for six years! Are you still completely obsessed with her?"

Every single year on the anniversary of Rebecca's death, Ashton would sit beside her grave until dawn. The day Reina returned home happened to be Rebecca's birthday. After Ashton ensured Reina was perfectly settled, he immediately drove straight to the cemetery.

She knew he would never forget, but it drove her absolutely insane.

"If she were still alive, she wouldn't want you living like a ghost!"

The fiercely passionate, arrogant boy he used to be had died that year, burying his entire soul in the dirt.

He was truly... psychotic.

If she and Julian were actually dating, seeing such blatant evidence of another man would have caused an explosive fallout.

Thank god they weren't together.

But as Julian drove all the way back to her apartment building in suffocating silence, Sylvia finally realized something was very wrong. She stole a glance at him, noticing his lips were pressed into a tight, hard line. The man who was always flawlessly gentle and considerate clearly had a dark side of his own.

Sylvia had absolutely no idea how to break the tension. Only when they stopped outside her building did she finally ask:

"Julian, are you mad?"

"Yes. I'm intensely jealous," Julian stated. From the side, the slope of his nose looked as sharp as a snow-capped peak. He turned his head slightly to look at Sylvia. "But I don't have the right to be."

"So, can I formally ask for that right?"

His voice was deadly serious. As he gazed down at her, a fierce, burning light danced in his eyes.

Sylvia caught the faint, intoxicating scent of his clean, masculine cologne, feeling utterly captivated.

This man... he truly knew exactly what he was doing.