From Best Friend To Fiancé (Savannah and Roman) novel Chapter 239

**TITLE: Dreams Folding Into Broken Time**
**Chapter 142: Where To Begin**

The incessant dripping of the tap echoed behind us in the kitchen, a rhythmic reminder of my oversight. I must have neglected to turn it off properly, and now the sound punctuated the heavy silence that enveloped us, acting like a metronome for the unspoken thoughts swirling between us. Roman had fallen silent after revealing the weighty truth about the curse, and oddly enough, I found myself not wanting him to speak again. I wanted him to take as much time as he needed, to sift through the chaos of his thoughts without any urgency. There was no rush, no pressure—just the two of us suspended in this moment.

Because, if I were to be honest, I was utterly at a loss for where to even begin unraveling this tangled web.

A curse? The very word felt like something conjured from the pages of an ancient fairy tale or perhaps a sensational documentary about families plagued by the supernatural. It was absurd, really. I had never subscribed to the notion of curses. They were the stuff of folklore, not reality. Surely, there had to be a rational explanation lurking beneath the surface—something logical, something tangible. Curses didn’t just materialize out of thin air, selecting a single lineage to torment, only to reveal a loophole later on.

If this so-called curse held any truth, then Emily, my sweet little girl, should not even exist. At just five years old, she laughed with a joy that rang like a bell, cried with all her heart, and lived blissfully unaware that darkness ever existed in the world. Her most significant misfortune to date had been accidentally tumbling into the pool while unsupervised—and even that she had survived. So, how could she possibly be here, alive and thriving, if a curse was meant to eradicate the Blackwood bloodline before it could continue?

It simply didn’t add up. None of this nonsense made sense.

There was a flaw in the narrative, a missing piece that needed to be uncovered. Perhaps there was someone orchestrating this, pulling the strings from behind the curtain, crafting an illusion of the supernatural when, in reality, it was just calculated cruelty disguised as fate.

My gaze shifted to Roman, who sat at the edge of the chair, his elbows resting on his knees, fingers intertwined with mine in a grip that felt both desperate and fragile. He appeared hollow, as if haunted by the specters of his past—like a man who had traversed too many nightmares only to awaken and find the monsters still lurking in the shadows.

His knuckles turned white as he clutched my hand, and I instinctively moved closer, careful and quiet, wrapping my arms around his head.

He didn’t pull away.

Instead, he melted into me, as if he had been waiting for an invitation to surrender. His forehead pressed against my chest, and his arms encircled my waist, seeking solace. I could feel the uneven rhythm of his breath against my body, a slow cadence that mirrored the tumult within. I let my fingers weave through his hair, gently stroking it, allowing the silence to stretch and envelop us like a warm blanket.

The tap continued its relentless dripping. Drip. Drip. Drip. And with each drop, time seemed to march forward, indifferent to our shared moment of vulnerability.

We remained that way for what felt like an eternity. He held onto me as if I were the only anchor in a stormy sea, while I stood there, grounding him with my presence, my fingers moving softly through his hair. Each gentle stroke seemed to ease the tension in his grip, loosening the hold of his pain, if only slightly.

Yet, my mind was anything but still. It wandered back to the Blackwoods, to the series of strange and tragic deaths that had shadowed their family for generations. The concept of a curse was foreign to me, but so was the idea of mere coincidence. There had to be a puppet master behind this, a reason why Emily was the sole survivor, why Roman—of all people—had escaped whatever curse had befallen everyone else.

“There’s got to be a reason,” I murmured, almost to myself. “There has to be.”

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify