Birthday Present

-Corrine-

His sudden presence paralyzed all my senses. I could only stand there at the doorway, my breath caught.

“You?” My voice felt strange as if it didn’t come from me. “What are you doing here?”

It was just a casual question to conceal the jumble of emotions in my heart. It felt like someone had just burst a balloon and poured a bucket of icy water over my head. I was paralyzed but felt relieved. My anger towards Jerome was extinguished as easily as a candle blown by the cool night wind. The night wind in the form of Andrew.

“Are you crying?” He repeated his question, ignoring mine. The tension in his jaw and the sharpness in his eyes showed that the question had only one purpose: that he cared about what happened to me.

Or maybe I hoped so.

One second, that’s all I had to decide whether to lie or tell the truth.

“Yes.”

“Who made you cry? Your ex?”

He gave me the idea to lie. Although I had been honest with my first answer, I didn’t want to explain about Jerome and his obsession