Chapter 27 Celeste
Celeste
He swears again, the sound raw, then reaches into his wallet with deliberate slowness.
He doesn’t hand it to me, and instead slides his license across the dirt, the plastic catching the sunlight for a second before it rests against my boot.
“Take a picture,” he says, voice low and steady.
“If you want proof I’m who I say I am, take it. Keep it. I won’t touch you.”
Every nerve in my body is still set to fight, and he sees it. He takes two careful steps back and sits down, placing his palms flat on his knees where I can see them.
“My phone’s in the car,” he adds, his eyes never leaving mine. “Let’s go back to the playground next to the parking lot. When we get there, we can call someone for you, and I’m going to call the police. I’ll grab my phone and show you the messages, the ad, everything. You can read it yourself.”
I don’t move as I stare between him and his ID, trying to catalogue every inch of it just in case he’s not being honest with me.
The first thing I notice is his name: Alex.
He watches me as my eyes flick between him and his ID as if waiting for me to decide if he’s a threat or not.
The stillness stretches, and my heart feels like it’s about to beat out of my chest. “Are you hurt?” he asks. “Can I… help you up?”
I nod once, stiffly. Alex grabs his ID and hands it to me.
When I take it from him, he leaves his arm outstretched and opens his shaking hand.
When I take it, my legs wobble as I rise.
His grip is tentative, like he’s afraid I’ll flinch.
I feel hollowed out, like a puppet strung tight on adrenaline.
“We need to call the police,” he repeats, his voice low and urgent now. “Someone’s putting your name and photo out there for a rape fantasy you clearly didn’t ask for. That’s some serious shit.”
No kidding.
I follow him toward a bench near the trailhead, right in the open where the parking lot and the morning crowd are visible.
“Do you have your phone? You should call someone. A friend. Family. Someone you trust who can be with you when you talk to the police.”
Nodding, I reach for my phone, my fingers fumble, and it tumbles from my hand. He picks it up gently and waits for me to tell him who to call. He scrolls, finds his name, and hits call. His voice is steady at first, then cracks from the anxiety.
“Hey,” he says after a beat. “No, you don’t know me. My name is Alex, but I’m with Celeste. Something happened on the trail; we’re calling the police next. She’s physically okay, but you need to get here as soon as you can. We’re at the park off Riverside Trail. Near the north lot.”
There’s a pause. He listens, jaw working. “She has a few scrapes and might be a little bruised and sore tomorrow. But like I said, we’re calling the police, and they’ll be here soon. She’s a little shaken up, but you need to be here.”
Another pause. “She’s safe. I swear, I’m not going anywhere. Please—just hurry.”
He hangs up and calls 911 before he hands me the phone like it’s a lifeline. I can’t help but stare at it like it belongs to someone else.
“I swear, Celeste, I am so sorry. I’ll cooperate with the police. I’ll give them everything so they can find who’s pretending to be you. I’m going to grab my phone, and I have bottled water in my truck. I’m going to get us some. I’ll be right back.”
Left alone on the bench, the world presses in. My arms won’t stop shaking, so I wrap them around my waist, trying to comfort myself. I watch Alex walk back as I think about what he said: he’d been talking to someone who was pretending to be me.
The idea is a splinter. It slides under my skin and lodges there.
Who would want to hurt me like this?
The realization slides in slowly and cold: maybe James was the perfect answer for the vandalism of my rig because he fit the pieces we had, he was the convenient villain.
But convenient doesn’t always mean correct.
Maybe the person who ran the ads and the person who trashed my rig are the same person.
Maybe they were after me, and not Korbyn, like we all assumed.
“This could be the same person who trashed my rig,” I say, mostly to myself.
Alex looks over. “Your what?”
“My RV. Someone broke into it a few weeks ago and destroyed everything I owned.” The words come out flat. Alex is hovering a few feet away, arms crossed tight, rocking on the balls of his feet like he has so much extra energy he’s trying to bounce it away.
“I’m not sure if this helps you at all, but here are my messages to the person who posted the ad.”
I take his phone from him and scroll through the messages. I stop when I see the pictures he was sent. They are all recent photos I’ve posted or been tagged in from the last few months, on my private accounts.
A sharp screech splits the morning open, and my head snaps up just in time to see Lucian’s black SUV tear into the lot like the universe hit fast-forward. The doors fly open before the engine even settles.
They’re out immediately.
Rowan reaches me first, his shoulders tight, eyes burning with a kind of fear that looks a lot like fury. He doesn’t slow. He just wraps me up in a bear hug, one arm locking around my shoulders, the other cupping the back of my head like he’s bracing me against impact.
“What happened?” His voice is low, shredded at the edges. “The guy said he was calling the police. Are you hurt?”
“It wasn’t James.” The words scrape out of me, raw. “He didn’t break into my rig. Someone else did.” Heat coils under my skin as I explain everything that’s happened since I left Linkin’s rig this morning. “And they’re escalating.”
His face drains of color, as his breath leaves him in a harsh exhale. When he breathes in, the sound is ragged. He drags a palm over his mouth, pacing a tight, frantic line in front of me like he’s trying to keep from exploding.
He pulls out his phone with a jerk so sharp it’s almost violent. His thumb flies across the screen.
“Contact legal,” he snaps the second someone answers. “I need NDAs sent to the Kansas City police department immediately. No, not later—now. There’s been an incident involving Umbra.”
He ends the call and turns back to me, chest rising and falling too fast, eyes bright with something raw and terrified.
I look for Lucian to find him and Alex are squared off, with a tense heat radiating off them in waves.
Alex’s hands are up, palms out, trying to explain something.
Lucian towers over him, his shoulders rigid.
Their voices are low but sharp, slicing through the air. Whatever Alex is saying isn’t helping.
Rowan follows my gaze, jaw clenching so hard I hear the grind of his teeth.
A siren wails in the distance, growing louder, then cuts off as a cruiser rolls into the lot. Red and blue lights wash over everything, reminding me just how close I was to being—
But I wasn’t. And I focus on that.
Lucian turns toward the officer, gives a curt nod, then glances back at me. For a heartbeat, his eyes soften. A flicker of something warm, protective, devastatingly gentle.
Then it’s gone as I watch his whole body shift into the quiet, immovable force he becomes when the world threatens something he cares about.
And I know with absolute certainty that once this is over, he’s not letting me out of his sight again.
* * *
I’m vibrating in the seat, but not with the same fear that crawled up my spine back at the park.
This is something different. This is rage crawling its way up my throat like it wants out.
My knee won’t stop bouncing in a jittery and uneven tempo, like my body is trying to outrun memory.
My jaw aches from clenching it. One hand is curled into a fist so tight my nails bite into my palm.
The other is trapped in Lucian’s grip—or maybe I’m the one trapping his.
I honestly can’t tell. I just know I haven’t let go since we walked away from the police.
And he hasn’t let go either.
“When we find who did this, I want—no, I need—them to pay,” I say, the words slicing out of me before I can soften them.
“They will.”
“I’m not some fucking prop to play with,” I snap, turning toward him. My voice cracks from fury. “Someone told him I wanted it to be real, and he thought I was into it. He laughed when I fought back. What would have happened if, instead of Alex, it were someone else and they didn’t stop?”
The memory slams into me, and I feel sick. I spit the words out like poison, because keeping them in feels worse.
Lucian doesn’t flinch; he just absorbs every word. I secretly love how steady and immovable he is in this moment, like he’s bracing himself so I don’t have to. He’s allowing me to experience all my feelings, knowing he will be there to catch me when I’m done.
“You did everything right,” he says, voice low. “You fought like hell, and you made it out.”
He squeezes my hand, and I wish I could squeeze back. I’ve been holding on to him so tightly my fingers feel numb, but I still can’t make myself let go. It’s the only thing keeping me tethered and keeping me from floating off into the panic and rage battling at the edges of my mind.
When we’re settled in his SUV, he presses the call button on the steering wheel. “Call Orion.”
My stomach tightens so fast it feels like someone hooked a fist under my ribs. I am so unbelievably screwed. When Orion finds out, the fallout is going to be nuclear. My body braces before I even realize I’m doing it. My shoulders are locked, my breath caught halfway up my throat.
The phone rings twice before Orion answers with a tone so casual it makes my skin crawl. “Lucy, are you calling to finally explain what’s going on between you and my little sister, or are you still hiding like a little—”
Lucian cuts him off, his voice razor-sharp. “Not now. We’ll fight about that later.”
“Later?” Orion scoffs. “Oh, so you admit there’s something to fight ab—”