Breed Me, Daddy Alpha-Chapter 103

Lyra

"Spare me the shaky voice and the tears, Tasha. I’m not ready to be comforted by the same hands that held him while I was crying about him to you. I’m not ready to hear your sad little redemption story about how it was a mistake and you’ve hated yourself ever since. You hated yourself in silence. Privately. While I hated myself out loud. While I drowned in it. While I doubted everything about me."

Tears streamed down her cheeks.

"Do you even know what it did to me?" I demanded, standing slowly like my legs were powered by rage and heartbreak and Red Bull. "Do you even fucking know what it felt like? Sitting in my room, sobbing over a boy who broke me, while you sat next to me — nodding like you cared, acting like my pain was safe with you — and you were the reason I was in pain the whole time?"

She tried to speak. I cut her off with a raised hand.

"No. No, you don’t get to talk yet. I need to say this. I need to get this out or I’m going to explode, and I swear to God if I die right now it will be because my heart literally set fire to my bloodstream."

She nodded silently, biting her lip.

I started pacing. My words came fast. Too fast. But I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t breathe unless I said it all.

"You were supposed to be my safe space. You were supposed to be my emergency contact, my back-up plan, my platonic soulmate. You weren’t just my best friend, Tasha — you were my person. My one constant. The person I saw in every future. I pictured you at my wedding. At my baby shower. Holding my hand when I got my first book published. We planned to name our cats after Harry Potter characters. We talked about matching tattoos."

I stopped pacing and looked her dead in the eyes.

"And you threw it away. For him. For Marcus Adesina, of all people. The boy who made me feel like a broken toy because I didn’t want to ride him like a porn star at seventeen. The boy who shamed me for keeping my virginity like it was something disgusting. You knew what he did to me. You saw what he did to me. And you still fucked him."

"I didn’t mean to," she whispered again, voice cracking. "I was drunk. I was stupid. It wasn’t planned.."

"And yet you planned to hide it," I snapped, stepping closer. "You planned to sit next to me day after day while I fell apart. You planned to lie. You planned to let me carry the pain alone while you protected him. You planned to gaslight me into thinking I was dramatic. You said ’he’s not worth your tears’ after swallowing his kids, Tasha. Are you hearing yourself?"

She covered her face and sobbed into her hands.

And for a second, I just stood there.

Watching her fall apart.

And even in all of it, even with the way my chest ached and my stomach turned and my soul felt like it had been ripped out through my mouth — I still loved her. That was the worst part. That even now, watching her cry over the grave of our friendship, part of me still wanted to reach out. To hold her.

But I couldn’t.

"You know what hurts the most?" I whispered, voice shaking but steady. "It’s not even that you slept with him. It’s not even that you lied. It’s that you knew. You knew how broken I was. You knew how deeply I loved you. And you still chose you."

She looked up at me, eyes red, cheeks stained, mouth trembling.

"I was scared," she said. "I thought if I told you... I’d lose you."

She said it so softly, like it was supposed to explain everything, like fear was a good enough excuse for betrayal. But then her voice broke again, and she didn’t stop. She kept talking, kept sobbing through the words like the truth was clawing its way out of her.

"I thought if I told you, you’d never look at me the same. That you’d hate me. That I’d ruin everything. And I didn’t want to ruin everything, Lyra. I didn’t want to lose us. You were the only thing in my life that ever made sense. You were always there for me. Always. Even when I didn’t deserve it. And I was stupid, I was selfish, and I didn’t stop it when I should’ve, and it happened so fast, and I thought if I just pretended it didn’t, it would go away. I thought maybe I could forget it, maybe I could carry it for the both of us. But it didn’t go away. It’s been eating me alive."

She was crying so hard now I could barely understand her, but I heard every word.

"And I watched you cry, and I wanted to confess a million times," she kept going, hands over her face, voice wrecked. "I wanted to fall on my knees and beg you to forgive me, but every time I tried, I’d see your face, and I’d remember how much you trusted me. How much you loved me. And I couldn’t do it. Because I knew the moment I said it... you’d never hug me again. You’d never laugh with me again. You’d never call me your soulmate again. And I—I couldn’t live with that. So I lied. And that makes me a terrible person. I know that. I fucking know that."

And God... it hurt.