Chapter 18
After five years of living with a scar on my face and hiding behind a mask due to an accident, I was finally beautiful again. The surgery was a success. The jagged mark that had haunted me every time I looked in the mirror was gone.”
Tonight was Jayson’s birthday, my stepbrother and secret lover. I sat across him and Xander, his closest friend. They were laughing over some inside joke I didn’t catch because my mind was elsewhere.}
I was busy imagining Jayson’s reaction when I finally took off my mask, and finally let him see me–not as the broken girl he once comforted, but as the woman who loved him in secret.
But my smile faded when they slipped into Italian mid–conversation, thinking I couldn’t understand.
Big mistake. I had secretly learned Italian when I once heard Jayson talking to his friends in Italian, so I wouldn’t feel out of place in case they talk again–just like now.
“So,” Xander said, swirling his glass lazily, “you’re really going to marry Fiona after she abandoned you for years?“}
Fiona. The name hit me like ice water. Jayson’s first love. The girl who had shattered him. She’d left him heartbroken and hollow, running off with another man after promising him forever. I remembered the nights he drank too much, the bitterness in his voice when her name slipped out. He never talked about her anymore–or so I thought.
Jayson chuckled softly, sipping his wine, his voice steady and sure. “It’s always been her. I don’t care if she left. She’s all I want.”
My fork hovered mid–air, suspended like the breath I forgot to take.
Xander leaned in, lowering his voice just enough to make me strain to hear. “And what about Kylie? Your secret relationship with her, huh? She still thinks there’s a future–that you’ll marry her someday.“}
The words punched me square in the chest. But Jayson’s response was the blade that twisted the knife.
“She’s just a game. She’s nothing but a convenient distraction.”}
I felt the world tilt beneath me, but I kept my face blank. My heart raced, my stomach clenched, but I refused to let the pain show.
Memories flashed like cruel snapshots–our stolen kisses, whispered promises, his arms wrapped around me in the dark, telling me I was his everything.”
All lies.
i thought back to the mess that made us–my mother marrying Jayson’s father after my parents‘ bitter divorce, blending our lives into one. And somewhere in that mess, I fell for him–hard. I thought it was real. I thought he was real.
I forced a smile, my vision blurring. My hand trembled slightly as I reached for my glass, and in my distraction, it slipped from my fingers, shattering on the floor. Water splashed across my lap.
The noise snapped both of them out of their conversation.}
Xander’s eyes narrowed. “Dude… what if she understood us?“}
Jayson laughed in Italian, the sound hollow in my ears. “No way. She doesn’t speak Italian. She’s stupid. She doesn’t even know I was just using her for revenge–to get even with her mother. And that scar on her face that made her ugly? Dude, I was the reason for it!”} “You’re so cruel, man,” Xavier said in Italian. “If she ever found out that you were the one behind her kidnapping five years ago, that you let those men torture her, she’d curse you! You ruined her beautiful face!“}
Jayson scoffed. “Well, I don’t care. She deserves it! Her mother ruined my family. Because her mother was my father’s mistress, my mom was so stressed that she died because of them! So I destroyed her face to make sure she wouldn’t become a whore like her mother. And now that no one wants her–she doesn’t even have a job that will accept her–she’s stuck with me… and my lies.”}
My world collapsed around me.
