Page 148 of Saint Céline
She had me.
She had me.
I looked up at her through rain and terror, and for that one second, everything else vanished. The proposal. Thad. The passport. The years of love and resentment tangled too tightly to separate. She was crying now, openly, hair falling around her face, arms shaking as she tried to pull me up.
“Don’t let go,” I said.
“I won’t.”
She meant it. I know she meant it then. That is the part that matters.
For one brief, shining second, Selena loved me enough to save me.
Then she looked at me.Really looked.And I saw the thought arrive.
A small shift first. Her eyes moved from my face to the terrace behind her, where my phone lay somewhere in the rain. Then back to me. Her breathing changed. Her grip tightened once, painfully, her body and mind fighting over a decision to make.
If I lived, I would ruin her.
Not maybe. Not someday.Immediately.
I saw her see it.
The horrifying clarity of it passed between us without either of us speaking. My life meant the end of hers as she knew it. My death meant silence. Sympathy. More attention from grief. Another tragedy, Bellamont would soften with flowers and official statements. Katherine Montgomery, brilliant and lonely, gone before anyone knew how much she carried.
And Céline would survive. She had always been good at that.
“No,” I whispered.
Her face broke, but not into cruelty. That would have been easier.
It broke into sorrow. Into apology. Into something so tender and terrible that I understood before her fingers moved.
“Selena,”I said.
Her mouth trembled. The rain blurred her face. Or maybe I was crying. I could not tell anymore. For a moment, I thought she might still pull me up. Then her grip loosened.
Terror tore through me.
“No!”
She was sobbing now, but silently, which was somehow worse. Her lips formed words I could barely hear over the rain and wind.
I’m sorry.
Then she let go, and the world dropped away.
For one second, I saw her above me, pale against the storm, one hand still reaching over the ledge as if some part of her had changed its mind too late.
Then there was only rain, air, and stone rushing up from below.
And the last thing I understood before everything ended was that even in death, I had not been chosen.
I had only become the thing she could not afford to keep.
29
Céline
