Chapter 70

Lily POV

I stared at my phone screen, my thumb hovering over Lucas’s latest message. It has become a familiar scene over the past few weeks.

At first, the messages would come twice a week, but these days, they were becoming more insistent. Waking up with a text from him was fast becoming normal and scary.

“Saw someone wearing that perfume you used to love. Made me think of all those nights at our secret hideouts in the forest. Remember?”

I did remember and that was the problem. I remembered everything: the good times we shared and then the ugly ending that had left me piecing myself back together. Now, here I was, finally happy with Kai and Lucas’s messages kept appearing like ghosts in my inbox.

My phone buzzed again:

“I know you’re reading these, Lily. The little read receipts don’t lie.”

I cursed under my breath, trembling as I tried to turn off my read receipts in the chat’s settings. This had been his pattern lately – starting with nostalgia, then getting increasingly pushy when