From Best Friend To Fiancé (Savannah and Roman) novel Chapter 288

**TITLE: Dreams Folding Into Broken Time**

**Chapter 288**

She looked up at me, her eyes glistening with unshed tears, streaks of sorrow marking her cheeks like a painter’s brush on a canvas. “Then you’ll lose me another way,” she said, her voice trembling with a mix of fear and resignation.

In that moment, I gazed at her—the woman I would lay down my life for—and a painful realization washed over me. I was already losing her, inch by agonizing inch. “I can’t believe you did this,” I murmured, my voice barely above a whisper, the rawness in my throat making each word feel like a jagged stone. “You lied to me.”

“I did,” she confessed, her voice breaking like fragile glass. “But I did it because I believed in your love for me more than anything else. I thought our love could conquer all.”

Defeated, I sank onto the bed, my elbows resting heavily on my knees, my head cradled in my hands. My chest felt constricted, as if it were a cage too small to contain the chaotic storm raging within me. Love. Fear. Rage. Desperation. Each emotion twisted together, pulling at my insides, threatening to tear me apart.

Silence enveloped us for what felt like an eternity. When I finally dared to look up, I found her watching me—her eyes puffy and red, her face marred by tears, yet still so achingly beautiful it stole my breath away.

“What if I lose you, Sav?” I whispered, the words spilling from my lips like a prayer. “What if I wake up one morning and you’re just… gone? What do I do then? Bury you beside every other woman this family has lost? I can’t, Savannah. I just can’t.”

She shook her head, her sobs soft yet piercing. “Then maybe you should stop seeing death where there could be life.”

Her words shattered something deep within me—something fragile, something I had kept hidden away. For a fleeting moment, I yearned to believe her. I wanted to cling to the hope that maybe, just maybe, she was right. That love could be stronger than the shadows that loomed over us. That if anyone could survive this relentless curse, it would be her.

But hope is a cruel mistress for a man who has buried enough of it to fill a graveyard. I stood up abruptly and walked toward the window, gripping the frame so tightly that my knuckles turned white, the wood pressing into my palms. “Do you even understand what you’ve done?”

“I know exactly what I’ve done,” she replied, her voice steady despite the storm of emotions swirling around us. “I’ve chosen to believe in us. Even if you won’t.”

I turned to face her slowly, the words clawing their way up my throat, desperate to escape. “You’ve deceived me, Savannah.”

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