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I shrink back. “Please, listen—”

“To more of your bullshit? No thanks.”

“It’s not bullshit! Jason and I—”

“Don’t.” Heholds up a hand, his expression twisted with disgust. “I don’t want to hear his fucking name. Not from your lips.”

Silence descends, thick and suffocating. Sebastian’s chest heaves with controlled breaths.

I search his face, desperate for a shred of the man I thought I knew. The man I lov—

No. I can’t even think it. Not anymore.

I try again, my voice small and broken. “Sebastian?”

Something flickers in his eyes. Something raw and wounded. But it’s gone in an instant, shuttered behind an impenetrable wall of ice.

“We’re done here.” His tone is flat. Final.

He turns to go, and panic seizes me.

I lurch forward, grasping at his shirt. “Wait.”

He whirls around, grabbing my wrists in a vice-like grip and pulling me hard against him, his face just inches from mine. “Don’t touch me. Don’t ever fucking touch me again.”

Then he shoves me away, sending me stumbling back into the bookshelf, and I collapse onto my knees.

This is a nightmare. I stare at him in shocked silence, cradling my throbbing wrist. There is no other explanation. I will wake up any second in Sebastian’s arms, safe and sound, with everything back to normal.

His hand lifts for a moment before it forms a tight fist and falls to his side. “You were nothing but a distraction. An amusement to pass the time.” He laughs, a cruel mocking sound. “Didyou really think I fell for you? That I could ever care for someone as pathetic as you when I can have Blake?”

I can’t breathe. It’s like my lungs have collapsed, crushed under the weight of his cruel words.

“No. No, that’s not true.” I shake my head in denial even as tears fall. “You’re lying.”

“Believe whatever you want.” He shrugs. “Goodbye, Lil.”

He walks away without a backward glance, leaving me shattered in his wake.

Numbness spreads through me as I sit on the floor. Nothing makes sense anymore.

This can’t be happening. It has to be a nightmare. Please let it be a nightmare.

But the pain is too real, too visceral.

He’s gone. Replaced by a monster wearing his face. A monster who used me, manipulated me, made me believe he cared.

How could I have been so stupid? So naive? I let him in and trusted him with my heart, my body, and my soul. And he threw it all back in my face like it meant nothing.

It didn’t. I’m nothing to him. A distraction, an amusement. A pathetic little girl he could toy with until he got bored. Blake was wrong.

He doesn’t love me.

Humiliation burns through me as I recall every intimate moment we shared. Every whispered promise, every tender touch. It was all a lie. A cruel, twisted game.

Uncle Marc was right.

I want to scream, to rage, to break something. But I can’t move. I can barely breathe through the sobs that tear at my throat.

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