Page 172 of Saint Céline
I pointed at her. “Absolutely not, you little turncoat.”
“She seems settled here. I think we may be best friends now.”
“She is a traitor. She is dead to me.”
Vincent opened a drawer, took out a packet of treats, and placed one on the counter.
Miss Astoria ate it delicately.
My mouth fell open. “You bought her treats.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“The first night you came over.”
“You ordered cat treats before I even agreed to stay?”
“Well, she lives here now, doesn’t she?”
My hand tightened around the coffee cup. Vincent noticed, and the amusement faded from his face.
“Céline.”
“Do not make this sound permanent.”
“I did not.”
“You did.”
His eyes held mine. “All right.”
His retreats were becoming another kind of possession. He gave ground so easily that I sometimes forgot he had chosen the battlefield.
“I need to show you something. I bought something for you, too.” He said casually. He leaves me alone in the kitchen.
I stood at the counter, coffee cup warm in my hands, when Vincent walked in from the study carrying a large flat box. He set it down between us without ceremony, like it was nothing more than the mail. The box was matte black, heavy-looking, with a simple silver logo stamped on the lid. I knew the brand. I had seen it once in a magazine at the Montgomery estate years ago and told myself I would never need something that expensive.
He leaned against the counter, sleeves still rolled up from earlier. “Open it.”
I set my coffee down. My fingers felt clumsy on the lid.
Inside lay a full set of art supplies, the kind that people who actually made a living from it owned. Thick sketchbooks with heavy cream pages. A wooden box of graphite pencils graded from soft to hard. Charcoal sticks wrapped in paper. Tubes of oil paint in every shade I had ever secretly wanted. A set of fine brushes with bristles that looked too soft to be real. Even a small portable easel folded at the bottom.
I stared at it all and did not speak right away.
Vincent watched me. “I know you have no real interest in biology,” he said, voice low and matter-of-fact. “You never did. You are good at it the way you are good at most things you decideto master, but it is not you. Your sketches are. The ones you hide in the bottom of your suitcase. The ones you draw when you think no one is looking. You are too talented to let it go to waste.”
I ran my thumb over the edge of a sketchbook. The paper felt expensive under my skin, thick and smooth. For years, I had told myself art was something poor girls like Selena could not afford to chase. It did not pay bills. It did not buy Chanel skirts or dorm suites or the kind of life where people remembered your name the right way. I had traded it for biology because biology got me into Bellamont, into the lab, into the version of myself that kept the privilege I had collected piece by careful piece.
Now Vincent stood here offering it back to me like it was simple.
I looked up at him. My throat felt tight in a way I did not like.
“Why are you doing this?”
He shrugged one shoulder, but his eyes stayed on my face. “Because I see you, Selena. The real Céline. The one who draws when she thinks the world is not watching. You do not have to keep pretending biology is the only thing that fits. You can have the life you built and still be the person you actually are.”
