Three Years Later, He Came Back Begging novel Chapter 463

[My cousins' kids.]

Bonnie zoomed in on the picture and replied, [Aren't you an only child?]

Lawrence: [Yeah, I am. These are my older cousins' kids. They're going crazy, refusing to go inside.]

After hitting send, he walked over to a quiet corner of the courtyard, quickly packed two handfuls of snow into spheres, and stacked them. He snapped two thin twigs for arms and pushed two tiny pebbles into the snow for eyes.

He snapped a picture and sent it to her: [A simple snowman, just for you.]

Bonnie couldn't suppress her smile. She saved the photo to her camera roll. When she glanced up, her eyes locked with Shirley's glaring reflection in the rearview mirror.

Guilt struck her like a physical blow. The smile vanished instantly, leaving her face feeling frozen and stiff.

Shirley's expression was unreadable. "Who are you texting that's making you so happy?"

Bonnie's chest tightened in panic, her eyes darting away. "Just... Zoey Hudson. We're not talking about anything special."

Shirley didn't press the issue, but Bonnie didn't dare meet her mother's sharp gaze again. She felt completely exposed. Without realizing it, she stiffened, sitting perfectly rigid in her seat.

Her mind raced, frantically analyzing everything she had said to Lawrence. No matter how she looked at it, they were just talking like normal friends.

But a quiet voice in the back of her mind told her it wasn't the same.

She could lie to herself, but she could never fool a woman who had spent over a decade interrogating teenagers for a living.

A cold sweat broke out down Bonnie's spine.

After what felt like an eternity, she looked back down at her screen. Her heart aching with reluctance, she fought a brutal internal battle before finally deleting the entire chat history with Lawrence.

At least she had saved the picture of the snowman.

The paranoia ruined the rest of her day. She was terrified that at any moment, Shirley would demand to inspect her phone.

Lawrence: [We're about to have a massive snowball fight. I'll take a video for you later.]

Bonnie bit her lip and typed: [Okay.]

A few minutes passed before his reply came through: [What's wrong? Are you upset?]

Bonnie froze. She hadn't expected him to be so incredibly perceptive. How could he read her mood from a single word? A sudden tightness gripped her throat.

She *was* upset. She had been upset since dinner, when her grandmother had deliberately shoved the plate of mangled, burnt Festive Pies in front of her, reserving the perfect ones for Nash.

But she didn't want to show her hurt, because it would only stress out her mother, who had been exhausted from cooking all day.

Yet here, in the middle of a holiday designed to make her feel entirely alone, Lawrence's simple question dismantled her defenses.

For the first time in her life, she felt a desperate, overwhelming urge to open up. She wanted to tell him everything.