Page 84 of Saint Céline
“She helped everyone.”
“No,” he said quietly. “She carried you.”
For years, Katherine had corrected my work, rewritten my phrasing, and explained concepts until she grew exhausted and sharp. She had made me sound smarter than I was, and I had let her because Bellamont rewarded the finished version, not the hands that assembled it behind the scenes.
But this was different. This had been her work. Her proposal. Her chance. And I had taken it because I didn’t want to feelstupid.
I looked up slowly. “If you know, then why did you accept me?”
His eyes held mine. “Because the work is too good to waste.”
Something inside me twisted. He didn’t want me. He wantedit. The proposal. The idea. Katherine’s brilliance was preserved through my lie.
“You’re sick,” I whispered.
“Yes,” he said. “But I am also practical.”
I laughed then, quietly and without humour.
“So what is this? Are you going to report me? Is that why you dragged me in here?”
“No.”
“No?”
“If I intended to report you, you would already be gone,Selena.”
I looked at him, really looked, and saw no uncertainty in his face. No moral struggle. No professor weighing institutional duty against sympathy. He had already decided. Maybe he had decided days ago. Maybe the moment he first read the proposal.
“What do you want?”
His gaze moved over my face slowly. There it was. The real question. The one everything in this room had been circling from the beginning.
“You know what I want.”
“No,” I said, though my voice sounded thinner than before. “I really don’t.”
“Break up with Chad.”
For a moment, I thought I had misheard him. Then the absurdity of the meaning settled while I stared at him.
“You’re blackmailing me to end my relationship?”
“I’m giving you a choice.”
“That is not a choice.”
“It is. You simply dislike the available outcomes.”
My grip tightened around Katherine’s photocopied notes.
“You’re insane.”
“Frequently, according to you.”
“If I refuse?”
“Then I give Dean Waverly what I have.”
