I Pretended To Be His Crush For Three Years Chapter 17

I Pretended To Be His Crush For Three Years Chapter 17

A place suddenly came to mind.

She hailed a taxi and gave the driver an address.

It was a short-term rental she’d stumbled across on a gossip account-Reid’s address in Milan. Not a hotel,

but a rental apartment in the Navigli canal district.

At the time, she’d assumed he was going to stay there with Nyssa, so she’d made a point of memorizing the

address, thinking she’d need to avoid it later.

The taxi drove for twenty minutes and stopped in front of an old apartment building.

She paid the fare, got out, and looked up at the building.

The third-floor window facing the street was lit.

Nora took a deep breath and walked inside. The stairwell was narrow, the lights sound-activated-with every

step she took, another light flickered on overhead, as if laying down a path just for her.

She stood before room 301.

The door was unlocked, slightly ajar. Through the gap came the sound of a guitar.

Not a full song. Just someone playing the same fragment over and over. The melody was familiar, but she

couldn’t remember where she’d heard it.

She pushed the door open.

The living room had no main lights on-only a single desk lamp, its glow pooled around the sofa. Reid sat there, guitar cradled in his arms, head bent low, fingers moving across the strings.

He didn’t look up at her.

“I told you, I’m not doing that variety show. It doesn’t matter how many times you call.” His voice was cold, carrying a kind of distance she’d never heard from him before.

Nora stood in the doorway, silent.

He played the loop one more time. Then stopped.

Finally, he lifted his head.

The lamplight fell across his face. His eyes were still empty.

But the moment she saw him, her heart clenched as if a fist were squeezing it. He’d lost weight-even thinner

than three days ago.

His cheekbones jutted slightly. His lips were dry and cracked. Dark stubble shadowed his jaw. His black hoodie was rumpled, the collar marked with dried water stains.

“Who are you?” he asked.

The same as three days ago.

Calm. Polite. Distant.

But this time, Nora didn’t stand there crying.

She walked into the room, closed the door behind her, went up to him, and crouched down so that her eyes

were level with his.

“My name is Nora.”

“Nora…” He frowned, as if the name had triggered something in his mind but he couldn’t grasp it. “I don’t

know you.”

“I know.” She said. “But you wrote a notebook. Every page is about me. Do you want to read it?”

She pulled the brown-covered notebook out of her bag and placed it on the coffee table in front of him.

He looked down at the cover. At those two words-her name.

“Did I write this?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He reached out, his fingers pausing on the cover for a moment before opening it.

First page. Second page. Third page.

He turned them one by one, his frown deepening with each page.

Halfway through, his hand stopped.

“Everything written here…” His voice came out rough. “I wrote all of it down?”

“Yes.”

“But I don’t remember any of it.”

“I know.”

He looked up at her. His eyes held something complicated. Not recognition. Not familiarity. Something

nameless and undefined-confusion.

As if his body was telling him he should trust her, but his mind was telling him she was a stranger.

“Why did you come looking for me?” he asked.

“Because you said,” Nora held his gaze, “if I found you, I’d take you back.”

“Take me back… where?”

“To me.”

His fingers tightened on the edge of the notebook.

A long silence.

The lamplight cast his shadow on the wall, overlapping with hers as she crouched on the floor-like an

embrace.

Finally, he spoke.

I don’t know who you are.” He paused, pressing his hand to his chest, right where his heart was. “But here-it

urts.”