Chapter 18
Choosing Sides
Caught between love and loyalty, Hallie and Liam face an impossible choice. Their families' demands pull them apart, testing the strength of their forbidden connection.
The air in the courtyard hung thick and heavy, a tangible weight pressing down on my chest. Moonlight, usually a comforting veil, felt like an interrogation lamp, exposing every tremor in my hands, every lie I’d woven into the fabric of my life. Two years. Two years I’d hidden, two years I’d been Hallie Ford, a ghost in my own skin. And now, it was all unraveling, thread by agonizing thread.
Lexi’s hand, cool and steady, found mine. Her eyes, usually so bright with life, were clouded with concern. “Hallie, you can’t keep doing this to yourself. You’re barely eating, barely sleeping. What is it? What’s really going on?”
I wanted to tell her. Oh, how I wanted to spill every secret, every fear that clawed at my throat. But the words caught, like shards of glass, in my throat. Andrea. The name itself felt like a brand, a betrayal of the fragile peace I’d painstakingly built. Hallie Ford was a carefully constructed wall, and Andrea Good Man was the inferno raging behind it.
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