Page 190 of Saint Céline

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“Of what?”

His gaze held mine without flinching.

“Of the first time I chose to see you.”

The words moved through me so violently I almost dropped the box. Some ruined, hungry, unforgivable part of me understood them exactly as he meant them. He had chosen me before I even knew a choice remained. He had looked at Katherine—alive, pleading—and chosen the girl who had let go over the girl who had fallen.

It was monstrous. It was devotion. It was both.

I closed the box slowly.

“Why are you showing me this?” I asked, voice strange in my own ears.

“Because you said I held too much over you.”

“You do.”

“Yes.” He looked at the box in my hands. “Now you have something over me.”

I stared at him.

The meaning settled like slow poison.

“No. No way.”

“Yes, Selena.”

“You’re giving it to me?”

“I am.”

I looked down at the box again. My fingers tightened around the edges until the wood creaked.

“This could ruin you.”

“Yes.”

“If I gave this to the police—”

“You won’t.”

I laughed once, sharp and breathless. “Still so arrogant.”

“No,” he said quietly. “I’m trusting you.”

That landed harder than anything else. I hated the word in his mouth. Trust had no business there—not after Daniel, not after Katherine, not after the phone and the proposal and every door he had opened inside my life without permission.

“You do not trust people,” I said.

“No.”

“But you trust me?”

His expression changed to amusement.

“I trust your self-preservation.”

The honesty should have insulted me. Instead, it felt like the first clean thing we had ever shared.

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