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Chapter 17: Fractured Allegiances

Autor: Raven
last update Data de publicação: 2025-07-03 19:01:58

Allie Brooks hesitated, her cheeks flushing with a deep crimson. The words lingered at the tip of her tongue, too unfamiliar to voice aloud.

Calling Liam Hart her husband felt surreal, even though it was their reality now. Their relationship, an intricate weave of chance and emotion, had unfolded in ways she could never have anticipated.

"Allie," Liam’s voice broke the silence, his tone soft but probing. "Is something on your mind?"

Allie swallowed, pushing past the awkwardness. “Our school’s n
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    She hangs up first.She doesn't want to — she wants to stay on the line until he says something that sounds like him, until the voice on the other end matches the man who came home early and pressed his lips to her hair and told her to sleep — but she can hear the distance in his silence, vast and deliberate, and holding on to it only makes the ache worse."Goodnight," she says.He's already gone.Allie sets her phone on the nightstand and lies back against the pillow and stares at the ceiling in the specific dark of a room where everything is wrong in a way she can't prove.He was in a meeting. She says it to herself like a rope she's trying to hold onto. People have meetings. People are short on the phone when they're working. It doesn't mean anything.But her chest knows the difference between busy and ice.And what she heard tonight was ice.She lies awake for a long

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    Allie Brooks sat at her usual corner table in the bustling cafeteria with Chloe West. They were halfway through their trays when trouble walked in wearing designer heels and a sharp smile.“Look who it is,” Felicity Montgomery’s voice rang out as she approached, her entourage flanking her like vult

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