My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 667

Chapter 667

Why?

Why was she being kind to me?

I hadn’t earned it.

The thought settled into my chest so naturally that it didn’t even feel like a thought anymore.

It felt like a fact.

Mom was gone.

Mama D was gone.

Brianna.

Emma.

Morgan.

One after another.

Everyone I loved either left or disappeared. Maybe… Maybe people weren’t supposed to stay with me. Maybe that was the pattern.

Maybe I was-no. I stopped the thought before it finished but another one took its place.

Raphael.

He deserved someone who wasn’t broken. Someone who didn’t carry grief like it had become another organ inside her body.

Claire reached for another slice of bread, “You sure you don’t want one?”

I shook my head, “I’m sure.”

She didn’t argue. She simply nodded and that almost made it worse for me because she wasn’t angry, she wasn’t impatient, she wasn’t asking for anything back.

She was just… being kind.

Kindness always felt borrowed.

Like eventually someone would remember they had given it to the wrong person and come back to take it away.

Mom never had. She had loved me without asking me to earn it.

The memory hit so suddenly that I had to grip the edge of the counter.

She was the only one.

And now…

She was gone.

A heaviness settled over me. It wasn’t the kind that made you cry. It was the kind that convinced you the world would be better if you stopped asking it for anything.

No comfort.

No love.

No patience.

No second chances.

Because people like me… people like me were exhausting. Eventually everyone figured that out.

I looked at Jules again.

She laughed when Claire cut her sandwich into little triangles. Mom used to do that. Claire didn’t know. She had simply done it.

Jules smiled so brightly that something inside me tightened. She was safe. She was being cared for and that mattered more than anything else.

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