She trembled beneath his gaze, her voice breaking apart as if even her words were afraid to exist.
"P… pl… please… l-leave m-me…" she breathed.
The terror in her eyes struck him harder than any blow. It twisted something deep in his chest.
He was so damn confused.
Which version of her was real?
One moment she was all chatter and warmth, soft-hearted and annoyingly persistent. The next, she turned into someone guarded, distant someone who made choices that made no sense. Who was she truly? The girl he thought he knew before everything unraveled? The one trapped in the elevator with him, speaking about life like she had lived a hundred of them? Or the girl who stood in front of him and calmly agreed to be in a forbidden relationship with her own stepfather?
And why—why did she look petrified when he said he would be like Julien?
Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.
