Chapter 64 The One I Let Go

Cayden’s POV That was never part of the plan. When I first saw Katelyn, everything in me was sharpened to a single point called revenge. Every word I spoke, every smile I flashed, every warm brush of fingertips across her knuckles, calculated. I never meant to fall in love with her. A performance. My assignment was simple: make her trust me, make her need me, and then snap her heart in half the way mine had been snapped when my mother died I told myself it was justice. I told myself she was the quickest route to the people who had ruined my life. I told myself emotion would be a liability. But somewhere along the way the lines blurred. I started laughing for real, deep, chest-shaking laughs that cracked the armor I’d spent years forging. I started looking forward to her good-morning texts, the way she sent three sun emojis because one never felt “sunny enough.” I memorized the cadence of her voice reading news copies aloud. I began counting the freckles on the bridge of her nose when s