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Home / Romance / One Night Stand With My Hubby's Cousin / Chapter 201 - Chapter 210

All Chapters of One Night Stand With My Hubby's Cousin: Chapter 201 - Chapter 210

211 Chapters

Chapter 201

Evelyn's POVMy throat tightened.“But caring about someone and loving them aren't the same thing.”The sentence settled heavily between us.“Julian has always been someone who wants to win.”I laughed weakly.“He's the kind of person who spends his entire life getting exactly what he wants, and if something stands in his way, he simply finds another route around it until eventually it belongs to him.”The image felt painfully accurate.Too accurate.“Which means there are days when I honestly don't know whether he loves me or whether he simply can't tolerate the idea that Sebastian got there first.”The fire blurred through my tears.The forest beyond the campsite had become nothing more than dark shapes and shadows moving in the wind.“And if that's what this is, then everything changes.”My fingers tightened around the cooling mug.“Because if he actually loves me, then at least all of this means something. At least all this pain and confusion and longing are attached to something

Chapter 202

Evelyn's POVThose things had become addictive.Those things had become the emotional equivalent of a slow poison that tasted sweet enough to make you forget it was killing you.Because if I kept accepting them, if I kept letting myself enjoy them, if I kept collecting them one after another and storing them away like treasured memories, eventually I would start expecting them, and there was something unbearably cruel about expecting devotion from someone who might never truly belong to you.The realization settled over me so heavily that it felt almost impossible to breathe through it.Because expecting something from a person who loved somebody else wasn't romantic, and it wasn't hopeful, and it certainly wasn't brave; it was simply a slower way of breaking your own heart while pretending you still had time to stop.The fire shifted in front of me, sending a shower of sparks upward into the darkness, and I stared into the flames as though they might somehow provide an answer, but al

Chapter 203

Evelyn's POVMaddie and I looked up at the same time.At some point, a group of slightly drunk guys from the neighboring campsite had wandered over, their laughter carrying ahead of them through the cold night air. One of them, a man in a hiking jacket with a beer bottle dangling loosely from his hand, stopped near our fire and let his gaze travel openly over me.“Why are you crying?”He flashed a grin.“Who made a pretty girl like you cry?”The look in his eyes made something in my stomach tighten immediately.Yet he either didn't notice or simply didn't care, because he took another step closer, the smell of beer drifting toward us with the wind.“If he doesn't know how to appreciate you,” he said with an easy smile, “maybe I should get a chance instead.”When the words reached me, I didn't even realize at first that he was talking to me.The conversation with Maddie had drained me completely, leaving my thoughts tangled in places far away from this campsite, far away from the fire,

Chapter 204

Evelyn's POVHis eyes lingered on my face before drifting lower for a fraction of a second.That was all it took.A wave of disgust rose immediately in my stomach.Not fear.Not even anger.Something colder than either of those.It was the feeling of being assessed rather than seen, of realizing that the person across from you wasn't actually interested in who you were, what you felt, or what you wanted, but was instead evaluating you the way someone might evaluate a car, a house, or anything else they believed could potentially belong to them.Maddie had clearly noticed it too.“Okay.”She set her mug down on the table with deliberate care before leaning forward slightly in her chair, her expression settling into the particular look she reserved for people who were seconds away from exhausting her patience.“Now I'm genuinely starting to wonder if you don't understand English,” she said, her voice calm but sharp enough to cut glass, “because she already told you no.”The guy laughed.

Chapter 205

Evelyn's POV“Whoa, relax.”He immediately threw both hands into the air and adopted the expression of a man who had somehow convinced himself he was the victim in this situation.“I didn't do anything.”“That's because she moved away.”Maddie's response arrived without a second of hesitation.“If you take one more step toward her, I'm pouring this hot chocolate directly into your pants and giving you a firsthand demonstration of what an actual victim looks like.”A burst of laughter erupted from somewhere nearby.A few young women at another campsite actually started clapping.The guy finally seemed to realize the atmosphere had shifted.Because the most uncomfortable thing about public embarrassment in America isn't being rejected by a woman.It's the moment everyone else notices you've been rejected and decides you're the problem.The second that happens, you stop being the unlucky guy whose flirting didn't work and immediately become the creep who's making everybody uncomfortable.

Chapter 206

Evelyn's POVFor a few seconds, neither of us spoke.Then she sighed.“You know, this whole thing proves at least one thing.”I glanced at her.“What's that?”“Julian may have an alarming number of issues.”The flames reflected in her eyes as she spoke.“Psychological issues. Control issues. Boundary issues. Rich-people issues. Probably several issues science hasn't even identified yet.”Despite myself, I felt the corner of my mouth twitch.Maddie pointed at the fire.“But.”She paused dramatically.“At least he's never looked at a woman who was actively crying and thought, you know what would really improve this situation? Asking her if she'd like to go back to my tent.”A laugh escaped me before I could stop it.Maddie immediately noticed.“See? That one was real.”I rolled my eyes.“That's an incredibly low standard.”“True.”She took another sip.“But it's still a standard.”The fire crackled softly between us.“And let's be honest,” she added, sounding far too pleased with hersel

Chapter 207

Evelyn's POVA cool gust of wind swept through the campground, carrying with it a burst of laughter and cheering from somewhere farther down the hill, and a moment later somebody apparently connected a Bluetooth speaker because faint music began drifting between the trees, rising and falling with the wind while the sky overhead remained impossibly clear, crowded with so many stars that it almost felt unreal, as though the entire city of Los Angeles had been pushed dozens of miles away and left beyond the horizon.“What about you?”I turned toward Maddie and tucked my blanket more tightly around my shoulders.“Have you been seeing anyone lately?”“God, no.”The look of immediate disgust on her face was so dramatic that I started laughing before she'd even finished answering.“Recently it's been nothing but guys exactly like that one.”She gestured vaguely toward the woods where our unwanted visitor had disappeared.“Models?”“Young models.”She emphasized the word young as though it we

Chapter 208

Evelyn's POVThe farther I walked, the quieter everything became.The laughter.The music.The conversations.One by one they disappeared into the distance until only the forest remained.The restroom itself was brightly lit in the least flattering way imaginable, flooded with harsh white light that made everyone look exhausted, and after washing my face and staring at my reflection for longer than necessary, I finally pushed the door open and stepped back outside.The night had grown quieter while I was inside.The air felt colder.The wind had picked up.For a brief moment, I simply stood there beneath the glow of the exterior light, taking a breath before making my way back toward camp.And then a tremendous force crashed into me from behind.My mind never even had the opportunity to understand what was happening before my body reacted on pure instinct, every muscle locking tight as a large hand clamped brutally over my mouth while another arm hooked around my shoulders and upper body,

Chapter 209

Evelyn'POV“I knew you'd come out here alone.”The man let out a low laugh, and the sound sent a wave of revulsion crawling across my skin because there was something deeply wrong about how pleased he sounded, as though this entire situation had unfolded exactly the way he'd hoped it would.“Girls like you are always the same,” he continued, his breath hot against my ear while he effortlessly countered every attempt I made to break free. “You think you're smart. You think you can handle everything yourself.”As he spoke, he absorbed my resistance with infuriating ease, the way an adult might restrain a child throwing a tantrum, and the casualness of it terrified me far more than if he had seemed angry. I drove my elbow backward again, harder this time, putting my full weight behind the strike, and when the point of my elbow finally connected with his ribs, I felt him flinch and heard a sharp grunt escape his throat.For one brief second, hope surged through me.It vanished immediately

Chapter 210

Evelyn's POVAt that exact moment, a dark figure burst out from the side.Before I could even react, before I could fully process what was happening, a sickening impact split through the darkness, the kind of heavy, violent collision that seemed to shake the air itself, and the man holding me was suddenly ripped away with such overwhelming force that it looked as though he'd been struck by a speeding truck.His grip disappeared instantly.His body left the ground.And then he crashed into the wooden fence beside the trail so hard that the entire structure rattled from the impact, while his scream arrived a fraction of a second too late, delayed by pure shock.I stumbled backward, nearly losing my footing as I sucked in a desperate breath, my lungs burning from panic and exertion, my pulse hammering wildly against my ribs while adrenaline flooded through every nerve in my body.For a moment, everything seemed unreal.And then I saw him.The figure had already stepped between us, placing

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