Riley’s gaze sharpened the instant the decision settled in my bones.
“You’re not going to,” he said quietly.
It wasn’t mocking.
It wasn’t disappointed.
It was something worse.
It was knowing.
“No,” I whispered, the single word scraped out of a throat gone raw.
He nodded once, slow and almost thoughtful, as if cataloging the shape of my refusal, the exact second my courage snapped.
Then he lifted my phone.
“Alright.”
“Riley,” I choked out, lurching half forward in the water, sending ripples slapping against the tub.
He didn’t look away from me as his thumb moved.
Not with triumph.
Not with pity.
Just calm certainty.
The certainty of someone who understood exactly how to break me.
Click.
He hit send.
The sound might as well have been a detonator.
My stomach plunged. My breath collapsed. Heat flooded my face in a brutal wave of humiliation.
“No,” I whispered again, too late, too soft, too everything.
The message, his message, was gone.
Out there.
In their hands.
In their chat.
I didn’t need to see it to feel the blow land.
Riley held the phone loosely between his fingers, his expression unreadable except for that small curl at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. Something quieter. Darker. Almost contemplative.
“You had your chance,” he murmured. “You don’t get to be shy now.”
A tremor rolled through me, unstoppable.
“How could you?” My voice cracked, small and furious and helpless.
