Page 119 of Saint Céline
Her face changed in a way I did not expect. The anger shifted, unsettled by the nakedness of the admission. She preferred my manipulation because it gave her something to fight. Honesty made the room less stable.
“You don’t get to have me because you’re restless,” she said.
“I know.”
“You don’t get to make me dependent on you just because you don’t like that I have people who love me.”
I said nothing. Her eyes widened slightly. She had found another seam.
“Oh my God.”
“Careful.”
“No.” She stepped back as if seeing the room properly for the first time.
“That’s what this is. Sophia, Anya, Miss Astoria, my mother, even Thad. You don’t just want me away from them because they’re my hiding places. You want to be the only place.”
The words landed between us with astonishing accuracy. I felt something cold shift beneath my ribs.
“You should stop,” I said.
She laughed, and this time there was no humour in it at all.
“Why? Because I’m right?”
“Because you are making yourself sound more intelligent than your choices suggest.”
She flinched.
There. Cruel and deliberate, I hit a nerve. Necessary, perhaps, because she had come too close to something I was not ready to have named by her mouth. But the instant the words landed, I regretted them. Céline’s face closed completely. Not anger now. Armor. It was remarkable how quickly she could vanish while still standing in front of me.
She gathered her laptop with careful hands.
“I’m leaving.”
“Céline.”
“No.” Her voice was calm now, which was worse.
“You don’t get to wound me because I found the truth before you were ready to admit it.”
I said nothing. She picked up her coat from beside the door and put it on without looking at me. The wet fabric darkened her dress where it touched.
At the elevator, she finally turned back.
“I will finish the proposal. I will stay in your lab. I will do the work because apparently that is the only way to keep what little life I have left from falling apart.” Her voice stayed even, but her eyes were bright. “But I will not move in here. I will not choose a prettier cage because you’re lonely inside yours.”
Then the elevator doors opened. She stepped inside. I watched until the doors closed between us.
The apartment felt worse afterwards. I stood there for several minutes, listening to the rain and the faint hum of the elevator descending through the building. On the table, her glass of water remained untouched. Her chair sat angled slightly away from the table, one leg half an inch from where it belonged. Her presence had altered the room so briefly and so completely that the absence of it became offensive.
She was right. I wanted her to be dependent on me. I wanted to be the door she ran toward when everything else closed. I wanted her safe, but only if safety had my name on it. I wanted her affection freely given, and yet kept arranging the world so freedom had fewer options. It was crude. And still, there it was.
I walked to the sideboard and poured a drink I did not want. I did not taste it while I took sips to calm my nerves.
Céline would not come because I demanded it. She would not stay because I offered her a room, not even if I sweetened the offer with privacy, work, or that ridiculous cat. She had built herself too carefully to accept a cage simply because I lined it invelvet. No. If she came here, she would need to believe the choice belonged to her. She would need to arrive furious, frightened and proud, carrying conditions in both hands. Her room. Her cat. Her right to leave. Her insistence that this was temporary. Her belief that she had negotiated the terms. She would need to choose me under pressure without seeing my hand on it.
I set the glass down and went to the locked drawer in my study. The file sat beneath a stack of correspondence from the university board, plain manila, unmarked except for the date my investigator had delivered it. I had not intended to use it so soon. At first, it had been a precaution. Céline Martin had built herself from omissions, and I did not like being the man in any room who knew less than someone else.
