They Read My Secret Crush Story Out Loud At The Party Chapter 10

Sloane had been growing restless, too.

Blake no longer went to the gatherings she organized. He wouldn’t answer her calls.

He even sent her race car back from the team’s garage without having it repaired.

She went to his house and cornered him, her eyes red.

“Weren’t you always complaining about Raina hanging around you?”

“Now she doesn’t want you anymore, and suddenly you’re in love with her?”

Leaning against the doorframe, Blake closed his eyes wearily:

“I didn’t understand how I felt. Now I do.”

Sloane went pale and threw her arms around him.

“What about me? You don’t want me anymore? We’re the ones who belong together.”

He slowly pried her hands away.

*Sloane, I’ve only ever thought of you as a friend.”

Those words stripped away the last of her dignity.

A few days later, someone exposed me as the author of the story.

Photos taken without my knowledge and recordings from the party spread online overnight.

The posts accused me of obsessively chasing Blake while throwing myself at the founder of Avelmont

Capital.

They claimed Julian had built his fortune on my family’s money. Now he’d come back to latch on to his

father’s former employers.

The comments were vicious,

Julian stayed calm,

“Who had your phone that night at the party?”

I immediately thought of Sloane.

When I told him, he kept it quiet. He had someone look into the account that had first posted the

allegations.

That afternoon, Sloane asked to meet me.

In a private room at a café, she slid a printout of a bank transfer across the table.

“Take a good look. Your father gave Julian fifteen thousand dollars.”

“He took the money and left. Now he’s made something of himself, and he’s back pretending he’s been in

love with you all along.”

“You two really are perfect for each other. You used Blake as a stand-in, and he used your family to climb

his way up.”

My fingertips went cold.

Before I could speak, the door behind me opened. Julian walked in and placed another bank statement on

the table.

“I sent the fifteen thousand back that same day.”

Sloane’s face went pale.

Then Blake came in.

He’d lost a lot of weight. His cheeks were hollow, and he looked ill. His old swagger was gone.

His expression darkened at the sight of Julian and me, but he forced himself to look away.

He pulled out his phone and tossed it onto the table in front of Sloane. A recording was playing.

On it, Sloane was discussing her plan to smear me.

She scrambled to her feet.

“Blake, I was just afraid she’d fool you.”

“It’s not like any of it’s a lie. She did use you as a stand-in.”

I’d never seen such coldness in his eyes.

“That’s between me and her. What gives you the right to interfere?”

Tears spilled down Sloane’s face as she reached for him.

“I did it for you, Blake.”

He stepped away, his voice filled with disgust.

“Don’t use me as an excuse,”

“The biggest regret of my life is that every time she needed me, I listened to you instead.”

That evening, Julian released all the evidence,

Public opinion swung in our favor.

The Parkers came to our house that night to apologize. Furious at the backlash online, Sloane’s father cut

off her access to the family’s money on the spot.

He decided she’d be moving abroad, where she could fend for herself.

After that, Blake gave up the most dangerous underground races. He stopped drinking all night, too.

Our friends said he’d finally become the man I’d once wanted him to be.

But that no longer had anything to do with me.

Six months later, Avelmont Capital opened its headquarters in Briarhaven.

Dad attended the opening ceremony.

He watched in silence for a long time as Julian spoke confidently onstage. Finally, he turned to me.

“He really hasn’t had it easy.”

Only later did I learn that when Julian first arrived in Port Avelin, he and his parents shared a basement

apartment of less than two hundred square feet.

He went to class during the day and did data work for people at night. When he was too exhausted to keep going, he’d sleep for a while on a bench outside the stock exchange.

He recorded every scholarship payment and paycheck in a ledger.

On the first page, he’d carefully drawn raindrops in blue ink.

After reading that ledger, Dad called Julian into his study himself.

Nobody knew what they talked about,

Julian’s eyes were red when he came out, but he was holding the letter Dad had kept for eight years.

Dad stood behind him, speaking awkwardly.

“I acted rashly back then. I’m trusting you to take care of Raina now.”

Julian nodded sotemply. Twill.”

That evening, he took me back to my family’s old house.

My desk was still there. The tree outside the window had grown much taller.

He handed me the letter, eight years late.

I started crying at the first line.

[Raina, when I met you, my world was dry and barren. You came into it like rain.]

[I still have so little to offer, and you deserve so much more. But now that there’s rain in my world,

something has to bloom. Will you give me time-wait for me until I can grow those flowers and bring them

to you myself?]

I was crying too hard to read the words.

Julian knelt on one knee in front of me and wiped away my tears.

“Don’t cry. I’m sorry I left you looking for me for so long.

I held his hand.

“Then how are you going to make it up to me?”

He reached beneath his collar and drew out another silver chain.

It held a matching raindrop. Mine had “Julian” engraved on the back.

His said “Raina.”

“I’ll spend every day making it up to you.”

He leaned down and gently rested his forehead against mine.

“Raina Bennett, I’ve loved you since I was fifteen.”

“Longer than you thought.”

A light rain began to fall outside.

I rose onto my toes and kissed him.

This time, I didn’t have to look for the boy I loved in someone else’s face.

The boy who’d left me waiting for eight years had finally found his way back to me.

And at last, I understood. Real love didn’t ask me to prove myself over and over.

It would find its way to me, through everything that stood between us.