Old Dreams No Return (Serena) novel Chapter 3

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After I got out of the hospital, the class organized a graduation party.

I really didn’t want to go, but my friends talked me into it.

The moment I walked into the private room, I saw Liam and Tiffany sitting glued to each other. Tiffany was smiling, feeding him a piece of fruit. He didn’t refuse.

When my classmates saw me, they all looked a bit awkward. They quickly gathered around, whispering, “Serena, what’s going on? You and Liam… fighting again?”

I calmly shook my head. My voice wasn’t loud, but it was clear enough. “Not fighting. We broke up.”

“What? Broke up?!”

Everyone looked stunned. “Why? Liam was always so good to you!”

“Yeah, seriously! When you got sick in senior year, he almost fought the dean just to get you a long medical leave!”

“Oh, and! The surprises he’d plan for you every holiday? We were all so jealous!”

“You two were the couple everyone thought would go from school uniforms to wedding gowns! How could you break up now, right before graduation?”

Listening to them rattle off all his past ‘greatness,’ my heart felt like it was shriveling up in a pool of acid, bloated and throbbing.

Yeah, he was that good to me once. Good enough that I genuinely believed he was my forever.

But that’s precisely why his later coldness and favoritism felt so utterly brutal.

I paused for a beat, then said softly, “We weren’t a match, so we broke up. Nobody’s indispensable. Besides,”

My gaze flickered to him across the room, pouring Tiffany a drink. “He and Tiffany seem to be doing just fine now,

He happened to catch what I said, frowning as he looked my way, his eyes unreadable.

don’t they?”

For the rest of the night, it was like he was deliberately trying to spite me. He went out of his way to be even more overtly affectionate with Tiffany, super attentive, practically glued to her side.

He probably expected me to get jealous, to get mad, maybe even storm over and break them up like I used to.

But I didn’t.

I just sat quietly in my corner, chatting occasionally with whoever was nearby, my gaze calm and unruffled. As if he genuinely was just some random stranger, completely irrelevant to me now.

But that utter silence, my complete dismissal, seemed to spark a kind of panic in him he’d never felt before.

He instinctively started to move toward me, but Tiffany, right there beside him, grabbed his arm.

Tiffany stood on her tiptoes, whispering something in his ear. He stopped cold, a deep frown creasing his forehead, and finally, just sat back down.

Soon enough, someone suggested a round of Truth or Dare.

A few rounds later, Tiffany lost. Her dare? Kiss the tallest guy in the room for three minutes.

All eyes instantly snapped to him.

Tiffany’s face flushed, but her eyes held a challenging glint as she walked straight up to him.

The other classmates gasped, whispering, “Whoa… this is totally messed up, right? Serena’s literally right here!”

Tiffany, though, shot a glance at me in the corner, her voice sickeningly sweet. “Serena, you and Liam are totally over. So, you’re cool with us playing a game and kissing, right?”

Her best friend immediately chimed in, “Seriously! She’s his ex now, what right does she have to tell Liam who he can kiss?”

Instantly, every eye in the room, including his, was on me like a spotlight.

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His gaze was intense, holding an unspoken pressure, as if he was waiting for my reaction.

I lowered my head, my long lashes veiling any emotion in my eyes. My voice was barely a whisper, yet it cut through the silence, clear to everyone. “…Yeah, it has nothing to do with me.”

Those words drew a definitive line.

His face instantly darkened, his eyes blazing with fury and a simmering rage from being defied.

He let out a sharp, cold scoff, then abruptly pulled Tiffany by the waist. To everyone’s shocked gasps, he slammed his lips onto hers!

A wave of suppressed gasps and sharp intakes of breath swept through the private room, only to be swallowed by an eerie, deathly silence.

I just watched as they full-on made out under the lights, practically glued to each other. Tiffany’s hand even snaked up around his neck.

My heart felt like it was caught in a vice, a sharp, cramping pain that nearly buckled me. I dug my nails into my palms, digging in so hard it hurt, desperately trying to keep the crushing bitterness and despair from totally drowning me, from making me lose it right then and there.

It felt like an eternity, but that agonizingly long kiss finally broke.

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Tiffany’s best friend practically yelled, “So, Liam, how was that? Kissing our Tiffany… gotta be a whole lot more exciting than with some other girls,

huh?”

His gaze swept over my pale face, a cold, cruel smirk playing on his lips. His voice was low, but every word cut deep: “No comparison. Tiffany… total knockout.”

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