Chapter 8 #2
He smirked. “Consulted. Traveled. Fell from Heaven. The usual.”
She laughed, reaching for the bread basket. “So dramatic.”
“You have no idea.”
He meant it. Every word.
The wine arrived. They toasted—to research, Delphine suggested with mock solemnity. To mysteries and their solutions. The wine was good, better than good. Crisp and bright with just enough body to stand up to the butter and spice they were about to consume.
Dinner came and the scent of butter and thyme wound between them, grounding and human. Bastien closed his eyes for a second. Let himself feel it. Not the ache. Not the weight. Just the moment.
“You look tired,” Delphine said.
“I am.”
“Because of the case?”
“Because of what comes next.”
She was quiet, then said, “You don’t have to do this alone.”
He looked at her, really looked. “I’ve done it alone for longer than you know.”
Delphine’s brow furrowed, but she didn’t ask.
Instead, she shifted the conversation, telling him about a college professor who thought ghosts were electromagnetic fields, spirits were just residual energy trapped in walls, consciousness nothing more than electrical patterns that dissipated at death.
“He was very proud of his rational explanations,” she said, forking up grits thick with cream and cheese. “Very convinced that everything supernatural had a scientific explanation. I asked him if he’d ever actually seen a ghost.”
“And?”
“He said no. That absence of evidence wasn’t evidence of absence. That the scientific method required we not assume phenomena existed until proven.” She smiled. “I told him that sounded like a very comfortable position for someone who’d never had their worldview challenged by direct experience.”
Bastien laughed, low and genuine. “What did he say to that?”
“Nothing. He just looked uncomfortable and changed the subject.” She took a sip of wine. “People don’t like having their certainties questioned. Even academics who claim to value inquiry above belief.”
“Especially academics who claim to value inquiry above belief.”
“Exactly.” Her eyes sparkled in the candlelight. “They’ve built their entire identity around rationality. Admitting that reality might be stranger than their models allow—that’s not just intellectual revision. It’s existential threat.”
He wanted to tell her that reality was stranger than any model could contain. That consciousness transcended death, that love bound souls across centuries, that the woman sitting across from him had loved him in forms she couldn’t remember and would love him again if given the chance.
But he couldn’t. Not yet. Not when she was finally relaxed, laughing, treating him like a man instead of a mystery.
At one point, she reached across the table, brushing a crumb from his sleeve.
A moment. Nothing more. But it lit him up from the inside.
He remembered the night Delia first told him she loved him—in a storm, soaked to the bone, kissing him like it was the only language she spoke. And the night Charlotte had stitched his wounds in silence, her hands trembling, love unspoken but known.
He wanted to reach across the table. He longed to say the words. You loved me first. You always did. But it wasn’t time.
So he just said, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For this. For making space for me, even when I don’t deserve it.”
“You’re wrong about that.”
They finished dessert—vanilla custard and burned sugar, the caramel bitter-sweet and perfect—and stepped out into the humid dark.
The Quarter had shifted into its evening personality: louder, looser, jazz bleeding from doorways, tourists moving in laughing clusters, the street performers setting up for their night shifts.
Bastien caught a glint in a storefront mirror as they passed. Just a flicker.
His own reflection . . . lingered. One heartbeat too long.
He turned away.
Delphine didn’t notice.
He slipped his hand to the small of her back, guiding her gently as they walked toward her apartment. She leaned into the touch, just slightly, and he felt the warmth of her even through the layers of clothing between them.
For tonight, he would pretend he was just a man. Not a fallen thing. Not haunted. Just someone lucky enough to walk beside her before everything unraveled again.
They walked in comfortable silence, the kind that didn’t need filling. The kind that came from people who felt at ease with each other, even when secrets lay between them like land mines waiting to be triggered.
At her building, Delphine paused at the door. Turned to face him. In the streetlight, her eyes were dark and serious.
“Thank you,” she said. “For tonight. For being honest about being dishonest. That’s . . . more than most people manage.”
“I don’t want to lie to you.”
“I know. That’s why I’m not pushing.” She reached out, squeezed his hand once. “But when you’re ready to tell me the rest—and you will be, eventually—I’ll be here.”
Then she was inside, door closing softly behind her, leaving him on the stoop with the weight of centuries pressing down and the knowledge that every moment of happiness was borrowed time.
He turned toward home. And in every shop window he passed, his reflection watched him with eyes that knew too much.