Chapter 514
Chapter 513:
“But why?” She looked up at him, searching his face. “Why would I say those things? Why would I leave you like that? It doesn’t make sense. When I look at you now, I feel—” She stopped. “I feel like I’ve been drowning for seven years and only just realized I was underwater p>
Something shifted in Justin’s expression. A flicker in his eyes — something that looked almost like guilt — quickly suppressed.
“You were young,” he said carefully. “We both were. People change. They make mistakes p>
“That wasn’t a mistake.” Carmen pulled back and wrapped her arms around herself. “That was deliberate. Calculated. I hurt you on purpose, and I can still feel how much it cost me — like I was tearing out my own heart to save something more important.” She shook her head, the fragments of the dream still sharp. “What was I saving, Justin? What was so important that I would destroy us both p>
He didn’t answer. The silence stretched between them, filled with everything he wasn’t saying, all the secrets he was still keeping.
“Tell me,” she whispered. “Please. If you ever loved me — if any of it was real — tell me what happened. Tell me why I left p>
Justin reached out and brushed a strand of hair from her face with a tenderness that made her chest ache.
“I can’t,” he said. “Because I don’t know. You never told me. You just disappeared. And I spent seven years trying to find you again.” He took her hand and pressed it to his chest, where his heart beat steady and strong. “But I’m here now. We’re here. And whatever happened then, whatever you’re still carrying, we can face it together. When you’re ready p>
Carmen wanted to believe him. Wanted to sink into the comfort he was offering, to let him carry the weight as he seemed so determined to do.
But the dream lingered. The sensation of forced cruelty, of words that hadn’t felt like her own, of a choice that had been made for her rather than by her.
She lay back down. Turned away from him. Stared at the wall.
𝖭е𝘄 w𝖾e𝗄𝘭y сh𝖺рt𝘦𝗿𝗌 𝘰n ѕ.c𝘰𝘮
“Just a dream,” she whispered.
But the words tasted like a lie.
The greenhouse was warm and humid, filled with the scent of orchids and wet earth. Carmen sat in the wicker chair Justin had shown her the day before, a cup of coffee cooling in her hands, trying to piece together the fragments of her memory.
The dream had faded with morning, but not completely. It left behind impressions, emotions, a persistent sense of wrongness she couldn’t shake. She had been cruel to Justin — she knew that now, in her bones. But she had also been desperate. The memory of tears mixing with rain, of a heart breaking even as she broke his, felt too visceral and specific to be a simple youthful mistake.
She closed her eyes and let her mind drift back to the campus, the rain, the moment before the cruel words. There had been something else. Something that had triggered all of it.
A phone. She had been looking at her phone.
The image sharpened. A BlackBerry — ancient by modern standards, but state-of-the-art seven years ago. A message on the screen. Anonymous. Terrifying.