THIS BOOK IS RATED MATURE, READ THE TRIGGER WARNINGS BEFORE READING.
"You've made a deal with the devil, chica. And you're going to suffer the consequences."
Esmeralda Hernandez likes to play pretend. She likes to pretend her life is perfect, that...
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CHAPTER NINETEEN
I just told Esmeralda I loved her.
I have no fucking idea what came through me, and it just...got out.
I should feel ashamed, but I am definitely not. I am more relieved than anything, even if saying it out loud seems to make it even more real, and it just made me realize how weak I've become.
And me telling her not to leave...I don't know what happened either, and I'd rather not try to understand, because everything is so confusing, and annoying, and sad at the moment.
As I sit on the couch across from her, I see her fidget with the hem of her shirt. I don't even know why she came here in the first place, all I know is that the woman she thought I brought to my bed is my coach's girlfriend, who's pregnant - by the way, and asked to crash at my place because they had a fight. She saw that I was shirtless and immediately assumed I was hooking up with her, when I cannot even look at someone else than her. Danielle wasn't even annoyed, when I apologized to her and told her I had things to handle, she only shrugged, saying that she needed to have a talk with Darcy as well. I called a cab for her, then proceeded to call Darcy as well, and asked her to text me, so I know that she got home safely.
I didn't correct Esmeralda about her because I was blind-sided by anger.
I still am.
The only reason I accepted that deal in the first place was because my family's reputation is the most important thing for me. All through the years I did everything to give the media what they want, let them hear whatever the fuck they wanted to hear me say.
All of that so they wouldn't dig too deep in my family's history.
So they don't find out that Milo Chase is not the real son of the Chase family.
That Milo Chase was adopted.
And that he was abandoned by his biological parents because he had stage 1 blood cancer when he was born.
As cliché as that might seem, Nora and Christopher Chase found me on their doorstep. A one year old sick baby, who's fate was already doomed from the very beginning.
20 years later, and I am fully healed, thanks to the medical care my family provided me. A miracle the doctors said, because it is extremely rare that cancer fully heals, and that leukemia in children is one of the few exceptions.
I've always felt like I owe my parents a debt for saving my life and for making me feel loved in every possible way, that is why, since I've been a little boy, I've always done my very best to impress them, and to make them proud of me. From being the best student in my class, to a successful actor and business man.
God knows how mad people can get, this kind of scandal could make all of our careers end.
I couldn't ruin their lives when they saved mine, so I did what I had to do and accepted the deal, even if it meant getting my heart shattered again.
