Chapter 20
20
Even with makeup smeared on her puffy face and shivering beneath his blazer, Celeste still tried to convince them that she was ready to work on Sebastian’s case file once they returned to the safe house.
“No, you’re not going to do anything tonight. Tomorrow, however, is a different story.” Magnus gingerly pulled the folder from her death grip and handed it over to a concerned Beatrice. “Hold on to this and see what you make of it.”
“Sure,” she said, staring at her friend.
“We all could use some rest,” Lawrence said from his seat in the den. “I think things will make a lot more sense in the morning.”
Magnus approached Celeste like the skittish prey she was. She was all exposed nerve right now, and any sudden movement seemed like it might make her bolt. He gently took her by the shoulders and spoke softly to her. “We’re going upstairs so that you can go to sleep.”
“I’m not sleepy,” she protested, on the verge of tears.
This was certainly not the woman he had tried seducing in Deux Monde. She looked shockingly younger than her forty-one years, like a frightened girl who had lost her way. He hadn’t expected Fond du Lac’s observations to have rocked her so hard, but here he was, comforting a woman who was finally coming to terms with Doris’s death.
“I’m putting you to bed,” Magnus said with a firmer voice.
Her large brown eyes darted up to him and soon, resignation colored her expression. Her shoulders, which were at her ears, eased downward. “Okay,” she whispered.
That was the permission he needed to guide her upstairs to his room. Once inside, he shut the door and led her to the four-poster bed. As he eased her to sit down, he knelt before her, prepared to unstrap the shoes from her feet.
“She’s gone, Magnus.” Her voice shook as she uttered the words. As if the idea had only just come to her.
He paused, fingers on the tiny buckle at her ankle. “She is,” he replied, looking up at the fresh tears spilling down her cheeks.
“And I’m just like her... I ran from you.”
Oh, this wouldn’t do. Magnus didn’t need her doubting herself at this stage of their journey. He needed her to be ready to steal a Fabergé egg, so they could be ready for whatever other wild shit Doris had waiting for them. Frankly, he’d never met this version of Celeste. In the time he knew her, she’d never been this vulnerable around him.
“You...” He paused, trying to find the right words. “You are your own woman, Celeste. Doris didn’t mold you by herself.” He lifted her foot, resting it against his thigh to unclasp her shoe. Once he slipped it off her, he moved on to the other. “You fought your way out of your situation and became the woman you are today.”
“Like her,” she replied. “He made it sound like it was a bad thing. Like she hadn’t earned her spot in the world.”
When her other shoe was off, he set them both off to the side and pulled her from the bed. “She did,” he said. “And it’s not a bad thing. Turn around.”
She dutifully turned around so he could unzip the back of her dress. He made quick work of the zipper at the small of her back and slipped the garment down her body. When she stood before him, in her panties, he quickly searched for a T-shirt for her to wear.
“Turn,” he repeated.
Celeste turned, seemingly unaware that she was bearing her breasts to him. He slipped the baggy shirt over her head and let her shove her arms through. “Good girl. Are you ready for bed?”
“I’m not a child,” she said sullenly.
He sighed, unsure of what to do. “Of course not.”
She shoved past him and stormed into his bathroom. When she slammed the door behind her, Magnus collapsed onto his bed and dragged his fingers through his hair. “Goddammit, Sebastian,” he muttered to the empty room. He unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it aside before sliding his pants down. In his underwear, he searched the floor for his pajama bottoms to wear.
The sound of water running in the bathroom pulled his thoughts back to Celeste. He’d gotten her in his bed, but the cost was far too high. He flipped back the covers and moved some of his pillows to her side. From what he remembered, she liked to sleep with a dozen pillows, all uniquely positioned around her body.
When Celeste returned to his room, her face was clear of makeup and her eyes looked a little less puffy. “I’m sorry,” she said in a tight voice.
His heart dropped when he saw her. The exhaustion she wore in her body was evident. The way her brows pinched in the middle of her forehead as she spoke... Oh, jeez . “You don’t have to apologize, sweetheart.” When they were together, they rarely apologized to one another, so this felt odd.
She tried to give him a tremulous smile. “You don’t mind sleeping with a weepy woman?”
It wasn’t the evening he had hoped for, but the impulse to cross the room and gather her into his arms was still powerful. He wanted to comfort her so badly. To make her forget about her pain, if only for a moment. “You’re not weepy. You’re in pain.”
She pursed her lips and nodded as she crawled into bed. He got in beside her and turned out the light, blanketing them in absolute darkness. In the silence, he listened for her shifting, her breathing. “Magnus?”
“Yes?”
“Could you hold me?”
He hesitated for a beat before shifting to her side of the bed. He gathered her in his arms, buried his face into her hair and breathed in. “Just rest,” he whispered. “I’m here.”
A minute passed before she spoke again. “Thank you, Mags.”
The gratitude in her tone made him hold her closer. As she relaxed in his arms, he felt his own blood pressure dip. Apparently, this was what he needed. “Of course, my love.”
“I usually like sleeping alone,” she said. “But tonight, I need someone to hold me.”
He suspected that, like him, she actually needed someone to hold her most nights. “I’m here.”
She sniffled. “When I was a kid, I was okay with sleeping alone when I knew my Granny was just down the hall. But in Harrison Home, everything just seemed darker. The room I stayed in was too large...too cavernous. And in the black, inky night, I tried to hold myself tight so I wouldn’t spin out.”
This wasn’t the first Magnus had heard about the Harrison Home for the Youth, but in the past, Celeste usually glossed over that period of her life. So he kept quiet, not wanting to interrupt her with questions, fearing she might stop talking.
“I was really quiet back then and the girls hated me. God, I feel like I was fighting for my life every time I woke up in that place. That was where I learned how to use my fists. I didn’t want to, but those older girls were the worst.” She let out a shuddered breath. “I don’t know why they hated me, but I learned to shut myself off, keep my head down and stay busy.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said.
“I’m glad that I got out when I did,” she continued. “I graduated, got a job at a fancy Italian restaurant and tried to make money. I moved out of the Harrison Home a week after my eighteenth birthday.”
“Where did you go?”
She sighed heavily. “I spent a couple months in a homeless shelter before I was able to move into an apartment with two other girls. I went to school full-time and took all the classes I could to make that two-year degree go by fast. Later, I had saved up enough money to get myself to Long Island.”
“Where you met Doris.”
She nodded. “She was incredible, Magnus. You should have seen her in the classroom. Sebastian wasn’t kidding when he said she was enchanting. I’d already had an interest in art history, but she made history come alive. I was addicted to learning from her, and her, I guess.”
“Dr. Grant was very charming,” he admitted. “It’s hard not to be drawn to the sun when it’s shining right in your eyes.”
“And when her light shined on you...”
Magnus knew exactly what she described. He felt it in the first seconds upon meeting Doris. She teased and flirted with everyone, making them feel like they were the most special person in her sight line.
Once her sniffling died down and her shuddering breaths had subsided, Magnus felt Celeste’s body relax in his arms. He began to relax with her, the tension in his muscles fading.
“How are you feeling?” he whispered against the top of her curls.
Celeste stretched against him and yawned. “Better. Not quite as tight. Thank you.”
“Good.”
In the darkness, her face turned upward to meet his gaze. “If you would have told me, at the top of the night, that I would have fallen into your arms just to cry like a little bitch... I would have laughed at you.”
Magnus chuckled. “And look at you now, crying like a little bitch.”
Celeste punched him in the arm. Not hard, but just enough to let him know she was going to be okay. “Shut up.”
“Tell me the truth. Before Sebastian interrupted us, I was very close to seducing you, wasn’t I?”
“Were you really working in earnest to fuck me?”
“Of course.” Jeez, he thought he had sounded pretty earnest. “I whispered so many filthy nothings in your ear. You weren’t picking up on what I was putting down?”
Celeste snorted against his chest. “Filthy nothings?”
“I doubt you would accept my sweet nothings.”
“Oh, God, no,” she said. “I didn’t know you were capable of being sweet.”
That was what he suspected. Not that he had any effusive overtures to shower her with. She’d never responded to that in the past. Before they fell out, Celeste’s style of intimacy ran a bit...rough and fast. “You don’t know the depths of my soul,” he said carefully. He’d gotten her to laugh and didn’t want to upset their tenuous balance of jokes and gravity.
“I don’t,” she said somberly. “I hadn’t expected to talk to you about Harrison Home. Maybe one day we can talk about your past.”
His past...
As he closed his eyes, images of the hospital’s fluorescent lights filled his mind. It occurred to Magnus that he’d dreamed of this scene quite recently. The night he’d lost his parents, his friend’s mother had driven to the hospital. Uncle Anders, a man he barely knew, was on his way from a city two hours away. In the meantime, he’d felt so alone that he’d sunk into himself. Unseen and unheard. People spoke around him in hushed tones, almost forgetting he was there.
“What was the first thing you ever stole?” he asked her.
Celeste was silent for a few seconds before replying. “A can of sour-cream-and-onion Pringles from a bodega.”
“How did you feel when you took it?”
She snorted. “Hungry.”
He smiled. “Understandable. The first thing I ever stole was the costume jewelry used in one of my uncle’s productions. After my parents died, I was sent to live with him. He often brought me to his playhouse and let me wander backstage. I took a diamond-looking necklace that was meant for an actress, and when I took it, I felt...nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“I didn’t have any qualms while taking it. I simply put it in my pocket and walked off. I think I only felt a little guilty afterward when everyone was scrambling before the dress rehearsal.”
“Mmm, no one suspected you?” Celeste asked.
Magnus shook his head. “No one accused, no one asked. No one really noticed that I was there...”
Celeste shifted in bed and suddenly the bedroom was bathed in a soft glow from the nightstand lamp. “Did you want to be caught?”
He met her piercing stare with a sad smile. “Maybe.” He wanted someone to see him. He wanted his uncle to take him by the shoulders and chastise him. Remind him that his parents are looking down on him and that they might be disappointed in him. But that never happened. Uncle Anders didn’t speak of his brother, Magnus’s father. He simply did what was expected of a guardian. He fed and clothed him, helped him navigate his finances and the trust fund his parents left him.
“Your parents—”
“No,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about them just yet. One day, but not tonight.”
Celeste opened her mouth to protest but seemed to change her mind. “Okay.”
“I told you that story to explain why I’m here. I know you think I steal because I can, and that’s kind of true. But when I was a boy, I wanted someone to notice me. No one seemed to for the longest time. Uncle Anders had his life that I had interrupted, and then I was to make my own life. And I did...until I met Doris.”
Celeste frowned as she leaned against the headboard. “What do you mean?”
“Doris was the first person in decades who seemed to see me,” Magnus chuckled mirthlessly, “rather, through me. She found me one evening and then she challenged me. I couldn’t resist her.”
Much like he couldn’t resist Celeste.
Her eyes softened through his confession. “Thanks for telling me that.”
“That’s all you’re getting from me tonight. I only told you that because—”
“Just shut up, Mags,” she said, turning out the light. In the dark, she scooted back to his side, burrowing her body deep beneath the blankets. “Just take my thanks.”
He let out a small breath and wrapped his arm around her. “Fine...you’re welcome.”
Magnus didn’t like how uncomfortable it felt to be vulnerable to another person, but he was immediately lighter. Someone finally knew something about those early years of his desperate appetite. Celeste felt real hunger for those Pringles, trying her best to survive the day.
He was just hungry for someone to love him.