Chapter 62
Author: Purplescent
last update2025-10-21 21:55:50
Ari sat huddled against a faded yellow wall in the corner of the small reading room. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them. The air smelled of disinfectant, and the faint, sweet scent of warm milk,the comforting, immutable smell of the only place that had ever felt truly like home.

This was one of the days she volunteered at the orphanage that raised her after her mother's death. The familiar environment, filled with the cheerful, chaotic noise of children playing games down the hall, did little to distract her thoughts.

Her phone, resting precariously on the worn wooden floor beside her, vibrated again.

Xavier.

It had been ringing consistently since she arrived, a steady, desperate clamor she was determined to ignore.

She wasn't ready to face him. She couldn't.

The shame of her clumsy, drunken desperate kiss and the subsequent, rapid-fire confession was still burning on her skin. She felt like a total fool.

“What the hell came over me?” It hadn’t
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    After a long terrifying day,Ari finally stumbled into her apartment. She didn't turn on the lights, letting the street lamps cast weak patterns on the floor. In the kitchen, she reached deep into the fridge for a cold can of hard cider, needing something stronger. Once she grabbed the drink,she returned to the living room and sank onto the floor, she opened the can, the hiss loud in the silence. As she took a burning gulp, the liquid settled her nausea but did nothing for the cold dread. Fueled by a need to understand the monster she'd fallen for, she opened her laptop and typed Xavier Stewart into the search bar. The results were a sterile monument to corporate success, with nothing about his second lifestyle. “He really did so well to erase the information about himself from the internet” she mumbled to herself as she stretched. Then she tried again, typing Alessia, his late wife. The search yielded hundreds of results and she was ready to check them all, but one profile ima

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