FreeNovel
Chapter 0143
Abby
At the mention of the email and the rare ingredients, Karl’s face turns pale. Seeing him like this
instantly fills me with an odd sense of dread as my mind begins to whirl with unending questions: why
did Adam send him that email? Why did Karl give him rare ingredients? When did Karl give him rare
ingredients?
“Karl, please tell me what’s wrong,” I say again, more urgently this time.
He takes a deep breath, then finally speaks. “I bought a ton of ingredients for Adam,” he admits, his
voice barely above a whisper. “Rare ones. For his restaurant.”
My heart is in my throat. “For Adam’s restaurant? But why?” I ask, genuinely confused.
“He asked, and I just figured I would help him out,” he murmured. But as he speaks, his eyes dart away
from me, indicating that he’s lying. I’ve always been able to tell when he’s pulling my leg.
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇt“You’d better not be trying to lie to me right now,” I warn, my voice brittle. “I know you too well for that.”
His shoulders slump, and he looks down at his hands, gripping the edge of the bed with white knuckles.
“Alright, fine,” he finally says, his voice low. “It wasn’t that.”
“Then what was it?” I press, but deep down, judging from Karl’s appearance I’m not sure whether I
want to know the answer or not.
Karl hesitates, then takes another ragged breath as though trying to steady himself. “I gave the
ingredients to Adam to bribe him into… into breaking up with you.”
The room spins. My head is swimming with thoughts, feelings, questions. I can’t fathom why Karl would
do such a thing, and I jump up to my feet, my voice rising an octave. “You what? You bribed him to
break up with me? But why?”
“Because, Abby,” Karl’s voice is shaky, “I knew he was ga y, and that he wasn’t being honest with you.
The ingredients were a way to convince him to be just that: honest. To come clean about his
orientation, so you wouldn’t waste your time on something that wasn’t real.”
His words hit me like a sledgehammer, demolishing everything I thought I knew. I look at him, stunned.
“And since when is that any of your concern?” I find myself asking. “I don’t recall ever asking you to be
my knight in shining armor.”
Karl pauses, his face still as pale as before. He can’t meet my gaze, and instead keeps his eyes
averted to the floor in front of him. “I care about you, Abby,” he says. “I love you. It pained me to see
you being tangled up in a relationship with someone who didn’t feel the same way about you.”
His words give me pause. I can understand his reasoning a little bit, but it doesn’t make it right. “You
never should have gotten involved. It wasn’t your place.”
There’s a heavy silence. Karl still can’t meet my gaze, and it infuriates me even more. I find myself
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏm
pacing the room, clutching at my hair. To think that all this time I thought that Karl was changing,
becoming a better person, only for this to happen, makes me sick.
“Listen, Abby,” he says, standing in my way. “I could see how he looked at you, how he looked at other
men. I just wanted to help.”
“You could have talked to me instead.”
“Yeah, I know I could have,” he says, his eyes darting around in that telltale manner once more. “But I
—”
It’s then that it hits me. I hold my hand up to make Karl stop, and pinch the bridge of my nose, letting
out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “You never knew,” I murmur. “Not before you bought those
ingredients, at least.”
“What?” he murmurs. “Abby, I—”
“Be honest,” I hiss. “I know you, Karl. I can tell when you’re lying. You didn’t know about his orientation
before you fabricated this whole plan, did you? It just so happened to work out in your favor, didn’t it?”
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