Breed Me. Daddy Alpha novel Chapter 56

Tainted Trust

40 Poetto

Tainted Trust

~Lyra

“Spare me the shaky voice and the tears, Tasha. I’m not ready to be comforted by the same hands that held him while I was crying about him to you. I’m not ready to hear your sad little redemption story about how it was a mistake and you’ve hated yourself ever since. You hated yourself in silence. Privately. While I hated myself out loud. While I drowned in it. While I doubted everything about me.”

Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Do you even know what it did to me?” I demanded, standing slowly like my legs were powered by rage and heartbreak and Red Bull. “Do you even f*****g know what it felt like? Sitting in my room, sobbing over a boy who broke me, while you sat next to me – nodding like you cared, acting like my pain was safe with you – and you were the reason I was in pain the whole time?”

She tried to speak. I cut her off with a raised hand.

“No. No, you don’t get to talk yet. I need to say this. I need to get this out or I’m going to explode, and I swear to God if I die right now it will be because my heart literally set fire to my bloodstream.”

She nodded silently, biting her lip.

I started pacing. My words came fast. Too fast. But I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t breathe unless I said it all.

“You were supposed to be my safe space. You were supposed to be my emergency contact, my back–up plan, my platonic soulmate. You weren’t just my best friend, Tasha – you were my person. My one constant. The person I saw in every future. I pictured you at my wedding. At my baby shower. Holding my hand when I got my first book published. We planned to name our cats after Harry Potter characters. We talked about matching tattoos.”

I stopped pacing and looked her dead in the eyes,

“And you threw it away. For him. For Marcus Adesina, of all people. The boy who made me feel like a broken toy because I didn’t want to ride him like a porn star at seventeen. The boy who shamed me for keeping my virginity like it was something disgusting. You knew what he did to me. You saw what he did to me. And you

still f****d him.”

“I didn’t mean to,” she whispered again, voice cracking. “I was drunk. I was stupid. It wasn’t planned..”

“And yet you planned to hide it,” I snapped, stepping closer. “You planned to sit next to me day after day while I fell apart. You planned to lie. You planned to let me carry the pain alone while you protected him. You planned to gaslight me into thinking was dramatic. You said ‘he’s not worth your tears‘ after swallowing his kids, Tasha. Are you hearing yourself?”

She covered her face and sobbed into her hands.

And for a second, I just stood there.

Watching her fall apart.

And even in all of it, even with the way my chest ached and my stomach turned and my soul felt like it had been ripped out through my mouth – I still loved her. That was the worst part. That even now, watching her

cry over the grave of our friendship, part of me still wanted to reach out. To hold her.

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But I couldn’t.

“You know what hurts the most?” I whispered, voice shaking but steady. “It’s not even that you slept with him. It’s not even that you lied. It’s that you knew. You knew how broken I was. You knew how deeply I loved you.

And you still chose you.”

She looked up at me, eyes red, cheeks stained, mouth trembling.

“I was scared,” she said. “I thought if I told you… I’d lose you.”

She said it so softly, like it was supposed to explain everything, like fear was a good enough excuse for betrayal. But then her voice broke again, and she didn’t stop. She kept talking, kept sobbing through the words like the truth was clawing its way out of her.

“I thought if I told you, you’d never look at me the same. That you’d hate me. That I’d ruin everything. And I didn’t want to ruin everything, Lyra. I didn’t want to lose us. You were the only thing in my life that ever made sense. You were always there for me. Always. Even when I didn’t deserve it. And I was stupid, I was selfish, and I didn’t stop it when I should’ve, and it happened so fast, and I thought if I just pretended it didn’t, it would go away. I thought maybe I could forget it, maybe I could carry it for the both of us. But it didn’t go away. It’s been eating me alive.”

She was crying so hard now I could barely understand her, but I heard every word.

“And I watched you cry, and I wanted to confess a million times,” she kept going, hands over her face, voice wrecked. “I wanted to fall on my knees and beg you to forgive me, but every time I tried, I’d see your face, and I’d remember how much you trusted me. How much you loved me. And I couldn’t do it. Because I knew the moment I said it… you’d never hug me again. You’d never laugh with me again. You’d never call me your soulmate again. And I–I couldn’t live with that. So I lied. And that makes me a terrible person. I know that. I f*****g know that.”

And God… it hurt.

It hurt because I knew she meant it. Because it wasn’t just guilt on her face – it was grief. She wasn’t just sad because she got caught. She was mourning me. Mourning us. Mourning the version of herself that I loved before she turned into someone I couldn’t recognize.

But I couldn’t let that stop me from saying what I needed to say.

I shook my head slowly, voice low but firm. “No. You wouldn’t have lost me.”

She looked up at me, eyes wide, lips parted.

“Yes, I would’ve been pissed. Yes, I would’ve screamed. I probably would’ve blocked you, cursed you out, ignored your texts, ripped up our photos, maybe even burned that stupid matching journal we made – but t would’ve forgiven you eventually.”

Her lips quivered.

“Because I loved you more than I hated what you did,” I said, breath shaking. “And the difference is, if you had told me if you had trusted me we could’ve crawled through it together. I would’ve gotten over it. I really,

–

truly believe I would’ve. Because our friendship was that deep. That real.”

I sniffed, the lump in my throat growing again.

“But now? I don’t know anymore. I don’t know if I’ll ever trust you again. And do you know the craziest part?

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The most insane part of all this?”

She blinked at me, face soaked with tears.

“I’m going to have to see your nasty face all year.”

She froze. “What?”

I took a deep, bitter breath.

“Yeah. Surprise. My mum made a last–minute decision over the summer. She and my dad think I need a change. A better environment. Less distractions. And since I only have one more year left before graduation and you’ve always been the perfect little good–girl bestie, they figured, hey, why not transfer me to your school. You know – to be close to my ‘responsible friend‘ with the rich dad and the stable home.”

Tasha’s face went pale.

“Lyra… what are you saying?”

I laughed. It was dry and cracked and sounded like it’d been filtered through broken glass.

“I’m saying,” I growled, taking a step toward her, “that I’m stuck with you. That starting next month, I’ll be walking the same damn hallways as the girl who f****d my ex. Who sucked his d**k. Who lied to my face while his c*m was probably still drying in her panties. That’s what I’m saying.”

She gasped.

“And I swear, Tasha, if I have to sit next to you in homeroom or see you giggling at some teacher’s joke while I’m trying not to vomit at the memory of you gagging on him..I might just lose it all over again.”

I was panting now. My fists were clenched. My head was pounding. My soul was on fire.

“You were supposed to be the one person I never had to guard myself from. And now I don’t even know who the f**k you are.”

“Now leave.”

She blinked, confused, like she hadn’t heard me right.

So I stepped closer, just enough for her to feel it – the heat, the rage, the heartbreak that was seconds away from turning into something unholy.

“I said leave, Tasha.”

Her mouth opened again. I could see it – the desperation, the apology sitting on the tip of her tongue, the hope that maybe, maybe there was still a sliver of softness left in me for her to hold on to.

There wasn’t.

And when she didn’t move fast enough, when she stood there looking like she still had something left to say, I tilted my head, gave her the kind of smile that only comes from being completely f*****g done, and I said it: “Before I drag those fake ass extensions off your f*****g head.”

She froze.

The words hit her like a slap. Like a brick. Like divine retribution from the girl whose soul she fractured. “I’m not kidding,” I whispered, voice low and shaking but more dangerous than anything I’d ever said in my

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life.

“I’ll yank those synthetic spaghetti strands straight off your scalp and staple them to the ‘b***h of the Year‘ award you clearly think you deserve. I’ll rip them out one by one like petals from a flower while I chant ‘he

loves me, he loves me not,‘ except the answer’s always gonna be not, because the only thing that boy ever

loved was himself.”

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