Page 89 of Blind Devotion

“And after this, I never want to hear from you again.”

“Shut up!”

“There’s the immature teenager I know.”

“Adrien, you’re being an asshole.”

“Maybe I should have shown you this side of me sooner. Then you’d understand.”

“What?” My voice cracked.

“How meaningless you were to me.”

“I’m not. I know I’m not. I’m your butterfly. You’re…you’re my—”

“I’m your nothing. I never was. They were words, and you ate them up.”

“No.” Tears ran down my face.

“Words I said to keep the compliance of a stupid little girl in over her head. I’m my brother’s brother after all.”

“You and Yannick were nothing alike.”

“You don’t know who the fuck I really am.”

“I do. We tell each other everything.”

“I lied. I despised my visits to see you. I hated spending my time with a kid when I could be out partying with people my own age.”

“You hate partying.”

“That what I told you?”

“But you…you smiled with me. You laughed with me. You talked to me. You…you let me hug you.”

“You think that makes you special? I always knew exactly what to say, and it was so easy. For the sake of my family, I’d do anything.”

“Why are you being this way?”

“Get it through your head! The ‘me’ you knew was a figment of your imagination.”

“Adrien, don’t do this. I love you.”

He barked out laughter. “You’re a child. You don’t know what the hell love is.”

“No. You’re wrong,” I whispered.

“We were nothing more than a contract! We don’t even have that anymore. You built what we were in your head. In what demented reality did you really believe I wanted to be shackled to you?”

I bit my lips and gazed out over the pond, wiping my eyes with my sleeve. My phone stuck to my clammy hands. I wanted to scream. I wanted to fall to pieces. I wanted him to pick them up and glue them back together, but I wasn’t delusional. Nothing I said was going to stop his hateful words. Not today, at least.

“What? No fit?” he sneered.

God, he was breaking my heart. “I’m not an idiot. I know what I feel, and I know you were at least my friend. But if you need this right now. If this is how you have to deal with your brother’s death, then okay. I’ll take it, because I love you. I do. You don’t get to tell me I don’t. But you listen. You can be an asshole all you want, Adrien De Villier, but when I’m eighteen, I’ll walk down that aisle, and you’ll be the one at the end of it. We’ll say our ‘I do’s’, and this, whatever this is, will be just a bad dream.”

He snorted. “You just don’t get it. Good luck, Persy. You’re going to need it.”

“We’re meant to be. Us against the world, remember? It was always us.”