The Forbidden Throb (Emma and Daniel) novel Chapter 202

Chapter 202

Emma’s POV:

I took a slow breath, forcing myself to sit with the discomfort of her gaze.

This wasn’t about logic or reason. This was about something deeper, something that had been festering for years in the dark corners of her heart. A wound that had calcified into something hard and bitter.

I opened my mouth to respond, but before I could speak, Lily leaned forward slightly,

“Do you know what it’s like, Emma?” Her voice was quiet now, almost conversational. “To live in a place where everyone knows you as that girl who looks like Emma Johnson’? Where the only reason anyone notices you is because you remind them of someone else?”

My stomach twisted.

“On those few blocks in Old Port,” she continued, “everyone knew who you were. Grace’s granddaughter. The girl with the pretty dresses and the

good grades who went off to Boston University. And me?”

She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “I was just ‘the girl who lives upstairs. The one who looks a bit like Emma.””

“Lily-

She cut me off, her voice rising slightly, “Like I was some kind of… knockoff version. A cheaper copy.”

Her hands were shaking now, wrapped around her own untouched coffee cup.

“Do you have any idea how much I hated hearing that?” she whispered. “How much I wanted to scream that I wasn’t like you, that I was my own person, that I had value beyond being your fucking doppelgänger?”

The profanity landed like a slap. I’d never heard Lily swear before-she’d always been so careful with her words, so polished in her speech.

But now, watching her face contort with years of suppressed rage, I realized I’d never really known her at all.

“You were too bright,” Lily said, her voice breaking. “And I- when I reminded them of you.”

”

She stopped, swallowing hard. “I was invisible. The only time anyone saw me was

My chest tightened, a dull ache spreading through my ribs.

I knew-logically, rationally-that none of this was my fault.

But knowing that didn’t make the weight any lighter.

“I started watching you, Lily said, her voice steadier now. Clinical, almost. “Observing. At first, I told myself it was just curiosity–trying to figure out what made you so special. What you had that I didn’t.”

She tilted her head, studying me with an intensity that made my skin crawl.

9:50 am P

Chapter 202

“I noticed everything. The way you braided your hair. The Madewell canvas bag you carried everywhere. The specific shade of trench coat you

wore in the fall.”

My breath caught.

“I bought the same bag,” she continued matter-of-factly. “Saved up for three months to afford it. Learned how to do that braid by watching YouTube tutorials until my arms ached. I even-” She laughed, sharp and bitter. “I even switched from Spanish to French as my language

elective because I heard you were taking it.”

“Lily, you didn’t have to-”

“I know I didn’t have to,” she snapped. “But I wanted to see if it would work. If I could… become you, somehow. If I studied what you studied, wore what you wore, walked where you walked-maybe I could have what you had.”

The confession hung in the air between us, raw and painful.

“And then,” Lily’s voice dropped to barely above a whisper, “I heard you’d been accepted to BU’s journalism program. The same program I’d been dreaming about since freshman year of high school.”

She looked down at her hands, her expression unreadable.

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