My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 378

Chapter 378

I sat frozen in the chair, my breath catching in my throat as I looked up at him.

“We made a deal,” Raphael continued, “And both of us will mutually decide when this arrangement finally ends. Neither of us can singlehandedly just walk away and break this thing between us. We started it together, and we will finish it together. Do you understand me?”

A sudden, sharp pain sliced right through the middle of my chest. It felt like he was pushing my heart away and rejecting my feelings, even though I knew the truth… he couldn’t actually reject them because he had no idea how I truly felt about him.

I stared up at him through my eyelashes, my eyes stinging as a wave of deep hurt washed over me so fast it made me feel physically sick to my stomach.

A deal.

He was still calling it a deal. He was still talking about it like it was just a cold piece of paper, an arrangement with rules and a specific end date.

The realization hit me so hard I could barely keep my spine straight under my crop top.

But he was right, wasn’t he? I was just imagining things. I was letting my foolish heart dream up a beautiful story that didn’t exist.

He was my stepbrother.

We were just each other’s dirty little secret, hiding in the dark corners of his house. This was exactly how it was always going to end… as a secret that would eventually be buried and forgotten when the time ran out. Right?

It couldn’t change. It could never become anything real.

If we ever dared to step out into the light, everything around us would completely explode.

“I corrected him softly.

Raphael just gave his head a rough shake, as he dismissed the man entirely, “I don’t care. Whatever his name is, he doesn’t exist to you.”

I nodded with a small, soft smile. A dark, rare smile actually broke across his face in return before he finally stepped back, giving me some space. He reached down and tapped the glowing screen of the tablet, drawing my attention back to the work we had been doing.

“Make yourself familiar with the app,” he said, “Look through everything. Tell me if anything needs fixing, onit you want me to add something. Whatever feature you want, if it matters to you, I’ll make it happen.”

I nodded again, forcing myself to look at the screen even though the heavy ache in my chest was making it hard to focus, “Yeah. I’ll check it out.”

He looked completely satisfied with himself, proud of the system he had built for me, while I felt like I was/ completely dying inside.