My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 506

Chapter 506

The familiar pressure started behind my ribs. It climbed into my throat. My fingers curled tighter around the pen.

A voice I had spent years trying to silence whispered exactly what it always whispered.

You’re too slow.

You’ll never catch up.

You’ll never be enough.

I stared at the edge of the table. My nails dug into my palm until little crescents formed in my skin. The pressure wanted somewhere to go.

It wanted out.

It wanted anything that would drown out the frustration for just a second.

My breathing became uneven. I closed my eyes.

Mom.

I saw her sitting in her wheelchair only two nights ago. She had smiled when I showed her my notes.

She couldn’t lift her arms the way she used to anymore, but she’d still managed to touch my cheek, “So proud of you.”

Three quiet words, that’s all she’d said. Three words that somehow weighed more than every textbook in front of

I opened my hand.

Tiny red marks covered my palm where my nails had pressed into my skin. They would fade, mom wouldn’t.

I picked up my pen again, one line, just one. If I understood one line, I could understand the next. The app read the paragraph again, slower this time. I listened, stopped fighting the words, started following them.

The idea finally clicked, not because I was smarter because I stayed.

I wrote the answer underneath, the letters leaned in different directions. Some were too big, some too small. One looked like a number. Another looked like it belonged to another alphabet entirely.

I kept going, hours passed. The sunlight disappeared behind the library windows, someone brought pizza, someone else cried over calculus.

I highlighted another page, then another, then another. By midnight my head hurt so badly I could barely think.

I packed everything away and walked back to the estate with Capone security trailing behind me silently.

Then three.

By question seven, I had crossed out half the page because I’d mixed up two terms.

When I finally handed my paper to the professor, my wrist ached.

My brain felt hollow. I walked out into the hallway and leaned against the wall. For a second I simply stood there, then my phone buzzed.

A reminder from the app flashed across my screen.

“Drink some water. Your brain works better when you do.”

My fingers paused over the phone. A small, tired smile pulled at my mouth before I could stop it. We hadn’t really spoken since that night. Since the night he’d almost kissed me.

I’d made sure of that.

I kept my distance because I didn’t trust my own heart around him anymore.

I missed him more than I wanted to admit but missing someone didn’t make them yours.

And Raphael Capone had never been mine to begin with.