Page 173 of Saint Céline
I closed the box slowly, but I did not push it away. Something warm and dangerous moved through my chest. For the first time, I let myself picture it. Mornings where I sat at the window with these pencils instead of Katherine’s stolen notes. Afternoons where I drew without looking over my shoulder. Evenings where I came back to this apartment, to the privilege and safety and money I had fought so hard to keep, and still got to be the girl who once filled margins with sketches instead of formulas.
I could keep the dresses. The name. The safety. And still have this.
I looked at him again. My voice came out quieter than I meant it to.
“No one has ever given me something like this before.”
Vincent’s mouth curved, small and real. “Then keep it. Use it. You do not have to choose between the life you stole and the one you actually want. Not anymore.”
I ran my fingers over the box one more time. The guilt about Katherine still sat there, heavy and quiet in the back of my mind. But right now, standing in this kitchen with expensive art supplies and a man who saw the parts of me I had buried, I let myself imagine something new. A version of my life where I did not have to keep performing every single day. Where I could be both the girl who thrived and the girl who drew.
For the first time in years, it did not feel impossible.
His phone rang on the counter.
He glanced at the screen, then silenced it.
“Take it,” I said.
“It can wait.”
“Do not perform attentiveness for me. Just do your thing.”
His eyes lifted. Then he picked up the phone.
“I’ll be in the study.” He left with a smile.
“Try to eat something.”
“Try to stop giving orders.”
“Unlikely. I love taking care of your wellbeing too much.”
He walked down the hall and shut the study door behind him.
The apartment softened in his absence.
I should have gone back to my room. I should have opened Katherine’s proposal and forced myself through another paragraph.
Instead, I looked around the apartment and felt the familiar cold settle in my chest.
I stood at the counter with the coffee warm between my hands. Miss Astoria licked crumbs from the edge like a disgraced aristocrat who had decided the floor was beneath her. The studydoor stayed closed and muffled Vincent’s voice into something low and controlled that I could not quite make out.
You do not know the worst thing I am capable of.
I had said those words to him. He had looked at me like he almost did.
I set the coffee down.
Miss Astoria lifted her head.
“I am just looking,” I whispered.
She blinked at me, unimpressed.
I moved through the living room first, slowly, touching nothing. The shelves held books arranged by size. The side table held nothing but a single lamp. The cabinet near the fireplace was closed and neat. Everything was too clean, too deliberate. Secrets could hide best in places where nothing looked hidden at all. Vincent was not careless. If I found something, it was either because he wanted me to or because even monsters got tired enough to slip.
The study door remained closed. His voice continued behind it.
