Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 116759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
She wouldn’t, though.
She trusted me.
I knew she had a history with men that made it hard for her, but she trusted me.
A loud banging on my bedroom door had me growling in renewed fury. If Gisele was back … I crossed the room and yanked it open.
Zac stood on the other side, his expression dark and sullen.
“What? What’s happened now?”
“I saw Gisele coming out of here.”
His accusatory tone had my panic rising to the fore. “It’s not what you think.”
“Really? Because I think you’re Sebastian Thorne, the biggest player I’ve ever met in my life.”
“I didn’t cheat on Lily. Gisele broke in here and tried to assault me.”
Zac scoffed. “Right. Well, I’m sure that was hard for you.”
“Zac—”
“You’re going to hurt her.” His face twisted with anger. “You don’t deserve Lily and eventually you will hurt her. So do us all a favor and break it off now before you mess up her life.” My friend turned on his heel and stormed off before I could respond.
My gut twisted with fear and dread.
I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong.
And yet, that insidious voice that had kept me away from Lily in the first place reawakened at Zac’s words. He was my friend, after all. He knew me well.
What if he was right?
What if I ended up hurting the one person it would kill me to hurt?
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
LILY
When I woke up, something crinkled beneath my face.
“What the …” I grumbled, reluctantly lifting my head. Forcing my eyes open, my bleary sleepy vision cleared, and I was suddenly very aware of the ache in my neck.
Oh, bloody hell.
I’d fallen asleep studying last night.
I was still fully dressed. My iPad screen and laptop were black, having probably lost charge, and I’d fallen asleep on an open textbook. Said page was now wrinkled and covered in spots of drool.
“Lovely.” I wiped my mouth as I hesitantly arched my neck from side to side to work out an aching kink.
Sounds from downstairs filtered up to my childhood bedroom. My family was awake, and I could smell bacon. My stomach grumbled because I hadn’t eaten much in the last thirty-six hours. I’d been too worried about January, even though she assured me she was fine. She’d been in a black cab when a white van ran a red light and smashed into the side of them. Unfortunately, because the cab was going to pull over once it was through the lights, Jan had removed her seat belt. When the van smashed into them, she went flying off the bench seat and broke her wrist upon trying to catch her fall. It could have been way worse.
The thought of anything happening to her had plagued me and my parents. Eventually, assured by her grumpy insistence that she was fine, I tried to get some studying in and spent most of last evening doing just that.
I reached for my phone. It thankfully was charging on my bedside table. I swiped the screen to check the time.
It was after nine in the morning.
Noting a couple of text notifications, I frowned when I saw one of them was from Zac. Since we rarely texted, I clicked on it.
You need to know who he really is.
The words were attached to an image that caused the room to start spinning wildly.
My heart raced in this fluttery panicked way that made me jittery and nauseated. It also made it hard for me to think clearly. I watched my sister study the image on my phone and tried not to hyperventilate as I revisited the photo in my mind. After all, it was burned on my brain now.
It was a photo of a half-naked woman straddling Sebastian while they kissed on the bed we’d made love in, in his family’s villa.
Poor Jan, with her broken wrist and bruised ribs, had come into my room to wake me up for breakfast only to find me near to passing out at the evidence Zac had sent that the man I loved was cheating on me.
“Did you look at this properly?” Jan asked, expression dead serious for once.
“It’s imprinted on my bloody brain,” I gritted out, nausea rolling in my gut. “I feel sick.”
“Okay, let’s take a minute. Before you saw this photo, would you believe Sebastian would cheat on you?”
No! I believed if Sebastian no longer wanted to be in a relationship with me, he’d break things off first. He might have been a player, but he wasn’t some horndog, as my mum would say, who couldn’t keep it in his pants. The man had self-control and decency. He was more honorable than that!
Oh.
Jan gave me a toothless, grim smile. “That’s what I thought. Look at it again. Really look at it.”
I shakily and reluctantly took the phone from her. Jan had zoomed in on a portion of the photo. The strange female with her mouth on Sebastian. My pulse increased. Suddenly, the photo told a completely different story. It looked like she was kissing him, and he was screwing his face up, his hands pushing her away, not pulling her close.