Lucas“I manipulated you. I manipulated your feelings and emotions.”The words leave my mouth and hang there like something physical. Something with mass. I can almost imagine it shifting the air between us, tilting it, bending it, forcing it to change shape. Her eyes flicker, the smallest movement, but my mind catches it before it is even fully formed. She breathes in a little sharper, like her lungs need a second to understand what they are supposed to do next.Her fingers curl slightly at her sides. Not a fist. Not tension. More like her body is trying to find a place to put the feeling that hit her.She blinks once. Slowly. Her lashes touch her cheeks and lift again, as if her brain needed the moment between to recalibrate. Her chest rises on a long inhale, and I watch the expansion, the quiet lift, the slow fall. She does not move back. She does not move forward. She stays exactly where she is, which tells me more than any reaction she could have thrown at me.Her reaction is not
Last Updated : 2025-11-28 Read more