My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 246

Chapter 246

“But-”

“No,” she interrupted, “You are exactly who you were meant to be, Gianna. You are smart, and you are brave, and you see the world in a way most people are too blind to understand. If you feel like you don’t fit, it’s not because you’re broken. It’s because the rest of the world is built wrong.”

She leaned in closer, her forehead touching mine.

“The world is what needs fixing, Gianna. Not you. To me, you are still that perfect girl from the hospital, and you always will be. Anyone who can’t see that is just a fool.”

I looked into her eyes, seeing the pure, stubborn pride shining there. For a second, I almost believed her. I wanted, to believe that the world was the problem and I was just fine. I didn’t say anything else, I just buried my face back into her lap, breathing in the scent of her perfume and trying to drown out the voice in my head that kept telling me she was wrong.

The clock on my bedside table stared back at me, the glowing numbers mocking how late it was. I lay there in my thin cotton shorts and a t-shirt, the sheets twisted around my legs like a trap. I tossed to the left, then flipped to the right, but my brain wouldn’t shut off.

I let out a long, frustrated breath and sat up, rubbing my face. Sleep wasn’t coming and I had a mountain of college work to do.

I hopped off the bed, my bare feet hitting the cold floor. I grabbed my laptop and a stack of notebooks filled with messy scrawls of neural networks and deep learning models. I shoved my thickest textbook under my arm, the one that explained the complex algorithms I was supposed to be mastering, and snatched up a stray pen.

I needed air.

I crept out of my room, through the dark, silent hallways. I made my way downstairs and pushed open the heavy glass doors to the back terrace.

I walked over to the table where we had sat before the breakfast. It looked different under the moonlight. I spread my things out. I flipped open my laptop, the bright blue light from the screen cutting through the darkness and making me squint.

I sat down and pulled the laptop closer, opening up my latest project. My eyes scanned the lines of code, the Python scripts looking like a foreign language I was slowly forgetting how to speak. I had to finish this model before the week was out, but the math felt like it was dancing on the page. I chewed on the end of my pen, staring at the screen until the glowing characters started to blur.

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