Sitting in the study, my chest felt unbearably tight, as though an invisible hand was gripping my heart and squeezing relentlessly. The room, once a haven filled with books and memories of quiet evenings spent together, now felt suffocating.
I yanked open the desk drawer, hoping to distract myself by revisiting Alexa's book, Confessions of Love. My fingers brushed past a stack of papers and my breath hitched when I noticed a different manuscript.
The title glared at me like an accusation: A Thousand and One Confessions. Beneath it was a name I had never seen her use before—Nate.
My hands trembled as I flipped through the pages. Each line I read sent a chill down my spine. These weren't academic musings or romantic anecdotes. They were raw, unfiltered declarations of passion. The words bled across the page, dripping with yearning and desire—desire for a young man's body, for his touch, for his essence.
Tears blurred my vision and one fell, smudging the ink on the manuscript. How could this have happened?