All Chapters of CRAWLING TO YOU: Chapter 51 - Chapter 57

Gabby’s POVI looked up, already exasperated, and waved both hands like I could physically erase the implication hanging in the air.“Guys…. It’s not like that. It’s not what you think.”Stacy’s boyfriend slapped his thigh hard enough to make the nearest person jump as he laughed out loud. “I knew it. There was no way you two could’ve been best friends since childhood without getting at least a little freaky at some point.”Stacy smacked his chest without even looking at him. “Read the room, moron.”Fiona’s eyes had gone shiny and wet within seconds. She looked one blink away from actually crying. “Did you… did you guys really…?” she stuttered.Before either Ethan or I could get a word out, Liam raised both hands in a calm-down gesture. “Everyone just chill…okay? Even if something like that did happen, it was when she was seventeen. It’s not like Ethan cheated on you, Fiona. It was before he even met you. It’s in the past, right?”Can he stop trying to salvage this? He’s making every

Gabby’s POVIt was Yuna.“Not yet, Yuna. But soon though.”“Ugh. I came by your place to drop off the stuff my mom made for you. The kimchi and bulgogi are still warm in the thermal bag.”I smiled genuinely. Yuna and I had been attached at the hip since freshman year…same lectures, same panic over midterms, same late-night study sessions. She lived in the dorms while I lived off-campus in one of those aggressively secure buildings full of trust-fund kids and twenty-four-hour doormen. I hated how exclusionary it felt, but after what happened the one semester I tried dorm life, I never went back. People got weirdly aggressive once they realized my last name. Fake friendships, strange “coincidences,” especially that one incident that still made my stomach turn if I thought about it too long. Never again. I’d tried more than once to get Yuna to just move in with me, but she always refused, even though she crashed at my place for weeks during exam periods when she needed real quiet. He

Aiden’s POVI have been hurt and furious since last night.The second Ethan opened his mouth to narrate Gabby’s first kiss, something ugly and possessive had cracked open inside my chest. I thought I was her first in every way that mattered. I thought the way she looked at me, the way she had taken me, even the day she confessed to having feelings for me… I thought it meant she had always been mine. Finding out someone else had touched her mouth before I did felt like theft. And it didn’t stop there. Watching her laugh with that Australian boy, Liam and seeing her hold his hand earlier…every second of it had scraped me raw. I wanted her locked away somewhere no other man could reach. At one point during the night I had actually pictured chaining her in a basement so she would never speak to another male again. The thought should have disgusted me but it didn’t.I didn't sleep at all last night. I rolled from one side of the thin camp mattress to the other, mouth full of the bitte

Aiden’s POV“This is a hard pill to swallow. Why… would Abel do that? Could he have?” Daisy’s voice was barely above a whisper as we got into the car.I didn’t answer her. I couldn't bring myself to. My skull felt too small for everything crashing around inside it…old memories colliding with new accusations, none of them willing to fit together.A single image of Abel rose up, sharp and uninvited.He had been the softest person I had ever known. When we were still small, a stray dog had sunk its teeth deep into his ankle. The director reacted the only way she knew how…one vicious swing of a heavy stick and the dog’s leg snapped instantly. Abel cried the entire night, but not from his own pain. I had slipped out of my bed after lights-out, following the wet, broken sounds he was trying to smother into his pillow, and asked if it still hurt. He shook his head and whispered that it must have hurt the dog to bite into his skin…what if its teeth cracked? And cried about how it was rain