Hired a Gigolo Got a Billionaire (Zoey and Christian) novel Chapter 559

Chapter 559

Gwen’s POV

“You are,” I said automatically, desperately. “Stop this, Nick. This isn’t funny.”

But even as I said it, even as the words left my mouth, they didn’t feel real. They didn’t feel true. There was something fundamentally wrong with them, like trying to force a puzzle piece into the wrong place. You know it doesn’t fit, but you keep pushing anyway.

Because suddenly, when I tried to find proof, when I searched my memories for evidence of our relationship, our engagement, anything that confirmed what I believed was true about us, I saw something else.

I saw a face that wasn’t Nick’s.

A man with darker hair. Different eyes. A different smile. He was saying something I couldn’t hear, but it made my chest tighten with an old, familiar pain. A pain I recognized even without fully understanding

where it came from.

Then another image layered over it.

A pregnancy test in my hand. Two bright pink lines glowing under the bathroom light. I was smiling, showing it to someone standing beside me.

And then came another feeling, crushing and suffocating.

The decision to never get involved with anyone again. To build walls so high around my heart that no one could ever climb them. To decide that work was safer, more reliable, more worthy of investment than people.

And Nick wasn’t there.

He wasn’t in any of those memories. He wasn’t anywhere in my life.

The pain exploded in my head like a bomb going off, sharp and violent, my vision blurring at the edges.

“It can’t be,” I murmured, clutching my head, pressing my temples so hard I knew I’d leave marks. “It can’t be, it can’t be…”

“Gwen,” Nick’s voice sounded too close, too urgent. “Let me explain-”

But he couldn’t.

I could hear him struggling for words, tripping over them as if each one weighed a ton and he didn’t have the strength to carry them all at once.

”

“You made it up,” he said finally, and there was so much anguish in his voice it almost hurt to hear it. Your brain made it up to fill in the gaps, to create a story that made sense when nothing else did. And I… God, Gwen, I wanted to help. I wanted to do what was best for you. The doctor told me not to contradict

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you, said it could be dangerous to stress you, that I had to let your memory come back naturally, in its

own time.”

I managed to open my eyes enough to see him through the pounding pain. He looked shattered. Completely shattered. His face twisted with a level of real suffering that went far beyond anything that

could be faked.

“But I can’t keep doing this,” he went on, the words spilling out too fast, too desperate, crashing into each other as he rushed to get them out. “I can’t. Because I’m too attracted to you, Gwen. Too much. And I know it’s wrong. I know you’re vulnerable, that you don’t fully understand what you’re doing, what you’re actually feeling versus what your confused brain is telling you to feel.”

He ran his hands through his hair so hard it looked like he was trying to rip it out, his movements frantic,

almost violent with frustration.

“I can’t give in and sleep with someone who can’t truly consent,” he said, his voice cracking slightly on he last word. “Someone who believes in a lie I helped keep alive. That would be taking advantage of

ur vulnerability. It would be wrong on every possible level. Even if you’re offering. Even if you think you ant it. You’re not in a position to really decide that.”

His words reached me as if I were underwater, distorted and blurred, losing their meaning somewhere between his mouth and my ears.

“And you need to know the truth,” he continued, taking a step toward me, his hand reaching out as if to touch my arm before stopping halfway. “You need to know that I—”

But I was getting more confused by the second. More lost in a sea of conflicting thoughts. My gaze drifted around the cabin without really seeing anything. The fireplace with its dancing flames. The cold, ancient stone walls. The rug where we’d been lying just moments ago, our bodies tangled, our breaths

mingled.

None of it felt real anymore.

It all felt like something that had happened in a dream. Or in a completely different life.

I searched desperately through my mind for any proof that what he was saying was a lie. A cruel joke. A twisted test to see how I’d react. Anything that wasn’t the awful truth he was trying to force me to see.

But then another image surfaced.

It was Nick again. Not the Nick kissing me or holding me or whispering soft words in my ear. It was Nick with his mouth open in alarm, green eyes wide with horror, shouting a single word that echoed through my memory like thunder.

“Careful!”

And then I felt it again.

My foot slipping on invisible ice covering the steps outside the inn. That sickening moment of losing my balance. Of having nothing solid to grab onto. Of knowing I was falling and being powerless to stop it.

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helifeAnd hoitoan eternity compressed into secdodm.conds.

Bungebant hard and unforgiving.gling

e otoneraosen angin my back hitting the cold stonesathe wall

tipport

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