Chapter 13
Vincent
Blackwater had surrendered completely to the storm by seven in the evening.
Rain hammered against the tall windows of my office with a relentless rhythm that blurred the cliffs beyond Westgrave Hall into long streaks of dark grey and churning white foam.
Most of the students had already retreated indoors hours earlier, leaving the campus pathways below empty and glistening beneath the storm lamps, their slick stone surfaces reflecting broken fragments of gold light.
I liked Bellamont best in weather like this.
Storms had a way of stripping away the careful performances people maintained during fairer days.
Umbrellas collapsed. Mascara ran. Conversations shortened into something closer to instinct.
Under enough pressure, everyone eventually became honest, even if only for a moment.
I sat alone at my desk, grading the latest round of lab evaluations while the building settled quietly around me.
The radiator hissed intermittently beneath the windows, and somewhere down the hallway, a door shut with dull finality, followed by fading footsteps that echoed along the empty corridor.
My coffee had gone cold nearly an hour ago, but I drank it anyway, the bitterness grounding me in the present while my mind wandered.
Julian Price’s reflection sat open in front of me, his analysis technically competent but emotionally exhausting in the way ambitious undergraduates often were. He had written several paragraphs about how today’s contamination event had reminded him that scientific excellence required humility.
Jesus Christ.
I crossed them out with a slow, deliberate stroke of my pen. The boy meant well. He always did. But good intentions rarely survived the kind of precision this work demanded.
Outside, thunder rolled low and heavy over the ocean. My thoughts drifted back toward the courtyard conversation from earlier that afternoon despite my best efforts to keep them focused on the evaluations.
Miss Astoria. Of course, the cat mattered to her. It should not have surprised me as much as it had, yet until today, I had unconsciously sorted Céline Martin into categories that left no room for uncomplicated tenderness: Performance. Survival. Manipulation. Intelligence. Hunger. Adaptation.
Not love. Certainly not the sort that attached itself quietly to an anxious white cat.
And yet the second she spoke the name aloud in the courtyard, everything in her had shifted.
Her posture softened. Her voice lost its careful calculation.
Even her anger became cleaner somehow, less guarded, as if the animal represented the last remaining piece of her life that had never required her to perform.
It fascinated me more than it should have.
I came from one of the founding families that had helped shape this stretch of coast generations ago, old money layered so thick it had become invisible to most people who encountered it.
I had published my first significant paper at seventeen, earned my doctorate before most of my peers finished their undergraduate degrees, and became the youngest professor ever appointed at Bellamont University.
I was twenty-nine and already accomplished more than what peers three decades older than me had.
The funding followed naturally after that, grants and private endowments pouring in because my work promised results that could be monetized, patented, and turned into something useful for the right people.
Wealth and intellect had given me every advantage.
Yet, I had never encountered anyone quite like Céline, who could reinvent herself so completely while still carrying small, honest attachments like a cat that loved her.
The memory of the other night surfaced uninvited, sharp and vivid.
I had let myself into Thad’s apartment with the kind of quiet efficiency that came from years of observing how people secured their lives without ever truly protecting them.
The lock had yielded easily. The bedroom had been dark except for the faint glow of marina lights through rain-streaked windows.
Thad slept heavily beside her, oblivious as always, while I knelt between her thighs and tasted the truth she spent so much energy hiding from everyone else.
She had fought me at first, silent and fierce, her fingers twisting in my hair as she tried to push me away.
But her body had betrayed her completely.
The way she had clenched around my tongue and fingers, the shudder that ran through her when she finally came, had been raw and unscripted in a way nothing else about her ever was.
I had wanted more than that single moment.
I still did. Not just the physical release but the honesty that followed it, the brief crack in her armour where Selena bled through before Céline could seal it again.
I wanted to see how far that honesty could stretch if I kept pressing.
The office door opened without a knock. Dean Waverly stepped inside, carrying an umbrella that dripped rainwater onto the hardwood floor. “You know,” she said dryly as she closed the door behind her, “most people react to storms by going home at a reasonable hour.”
“Most people lack discipline,” I replied, setting Julian’s evaluation aside and leaning back in my chair.
“Most people also lack your deeply concerning relationship with fluorescent lighting at all hours.” She set the umbrella beside the door and sat across from me without waiting for an invitation.
The dean had earned that privilege years ago through a combination of sharp intelligence and the kind of institutional patience that kept places like Bellamont University running smoothly.
Her eyes moved briefly across the papers scattered over my desk.
“Still grading?”
“Pretending to.”
“You’re distracted.”
I shrugged.
“Ah,” she said softly. “So it’s that student again.”
I folded my hands loosely across my stomach.
“You’re becoming too repetitive.”
“And you’re becoming too obvious.”
“I sincerely doubt that.”
“Vincent.” Her tone sharpened slightly, the way it did when she moved from colleague to administrator. “You assigned an undergraduate direct proposal refinement under your personal supervision after she tried to withdraw from the program entirely. Half the department is already discussing it.”
“That sounds like a departmental failure, not mine.”
She ignored the deflection.
“Is there something happening I should know about?”
No. Many things. Possibly catastrophic things. I thought again of that night in Thad’s apartment, of the way Céline had trembled under my mouth while her boyfriend slept inches away, of how badly I had wanted to keep going until she stopped pretending entirely.
Instead, I said, “She’s intelligent.”
“That has never historically been your only criterion.”
I raised an eyebrow.
Dean Waverly sighed quietly. “You know what I mean.”
I did. Unfortunately. People often mistook my professional favouritism for simple attraction because attraction was simpler for them to understand.
They preferred believing men like me compromised their judgment for beauty rather than admitting we sometimes became fascinated by damage.
The truth was worse. Beauty alone bored me quickly.
But Céline Martin lied like breathing, adapted like evolution, performed like religion, and beneath all of that, something frightened and starving still existed stubbornly enough to love a cat honestly.
I looked toward the rain-dark windows. “She’s just grieving.”
“That sounds dangerously close to sympathy.” Dean Waverly watched me carefully.
“Don’t be dramatic.”
“You broke into a faculty review meeting last year because a professor implied emotional context mattered more than academic rigour.”
“He was incompetent.”
“And now?”
I thought of Selena standing in the courtyard with the wind tearing through her hair while she admitted quietly that she missed her cat. Not Katherine. The cat.
“She’s stabilizing, I’ll make sure she gets better,” I said finally.
Dean Waverly blinked once. “Oh.”
There it was. Recognition. Not of romance. Of obsession. Her expression cooled immediately.
“Vincent.”
I stood before she could continue.
“Would you like more coffee?”
“No, I would like you to stop sounding like a man describing a lab specimen.”
I moved toward the small espresso machine near the bookshelf anyway. Rain lashed violently against the windows behind us.
“You’re overreacting.”
“I know you.” Her voice remained calm, which was always the case when she was most serious. “And I know what happens when something captures your attention too completely. It’s why I hired you. You can never let go of things once you set your eyes on them.”
I placed a clean cup beneath the machine.
“Should I be flattered you think I’m capable of the same passion with women that I find with my research?”
“You know perfectly well that isn’t what concerns me. I know about your occasional flings with women, but nobody has ever held your attention for more than one night.”
The espresso machine hissed loudly between us. For several seconds neither of us spoke. Then Dean Waverly asked quietly, “Did she do something?”
I looked down at the dark coffee pouring slowly into porcelain.
Yes. Something catastrophic had happened between her and Katherine Montgomery, and whatever truth existed beneath the official story, Céline Martin had walked away from it altered but intact.
She built herself from someone else’s life with terrifying elegance.
She stood in my lab pretending not to understand why I looked at her differently while her nervous system practically vibrated from the strain of maintaining control.
And somehow, despite all of that, she still worried about her cat being lonely.
“No,” I said softly.
“Be careful. There’s not much that can ruin your reputation at this point, but still.”
There it was again. The warning everyone eventually gave me once they sensed something shifting beneath my composure. I handed her the coffee. “You make me sound dangerous.”
“You are dangerous.”
The honesty almost made me laugh. Instead, I leaned against the edge of my desk and watched rain crawl down the windows.
“Do you know the fascinating thing about Bellamont students?”
“Should I?” Dean Waverly looked tired already.
“They all believe reinvention is something money can purchase. New wardrobes. New accents. New internships. New versions of themselves are polished enough to survive inheritance.”
“And?”
“And most of them fail because they never truly become anything different.” I looked toward the storm outside. “They remain fundamentally recognizable beneath the performance.”
Dean Waverly’s expression sharpened slightly.
“And Miss Martin?”
“She became her invention completely.” I smiled faintly.
Silence settled heavily through the office. The dean studied me. “That sounds less like academic admiration and more like a man standing too close to a fire.”
“Everything worth studying burns eventually.”
“Jesus Christ.”
I laughed softly at that. Dean Waverly looked deeply unimpressed. “You know,” she said while collecting her umbrella again, “most people experiencing inappropriate attachment simply start sleeping with someone else.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It’s healthier than whatever this is.”
“Debatable.”
She paused at the door. “For what it’s worth,” she said quietly, “grief can distort fascination into intimacy very quickly.”
I met her gaze evenly. “Who said anything about intimacy?”
“That answer alone is concerning.” Her expression did not change.
Then she left. The office fell quiet again after the door shut behind her.
Only rain remained. I stood motionless, coffee cooling slowly in my hand.
Then eventually, I crossed back toward my desk and opened the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet beside it.
The black box sat exactly where I had left it.
Inside lay the memorial card from Katherine’s funeral, the silver button from years ago, the torn notebook fragment, and Céline’s forgotten pen.
I turned the pen slowly between my fingers.
Cheap psychology would call this desire. It wasn’t. Desire was simple. Biological. Predictable. This felt closer to intellectual possession. Not wanting to consume her. Wanting to understand her completely.
Thunder cracked violently over the cliffs. I thought of her driving toward the Montgomery estate right now through storm-dark roads, rehearsing composure before entering a house filled with ghosts.
Miss Astoria mattered because the cat represented the last relationship in Selena Martin’s life untouched by performance.
The animal loved her before Céline existed.
And some deeply buried part of Selena still desperately needed proof that something would choose her without requiring elegance first.
I slid the pen back into the box.
A memory surfaced abruptly, and I felt my jaw tighten.
Hector was sleeping beside my bed during thunderstorms when I was sixteen.
My father was shouting downstairs. The dog lifted his head before I even reacted, already alert, already listening for danger before I consciously recognized it myself.
Animals understood instability instinctively.
Perhaps that was why they attached themselves so fiercely to damaged people.
Or perhaps damaged people simply recognized unconditional loyalty faster because they encountered it so rarely.
The rain intensified against the windows. Without thinking, I reached for my phone. My thumb hovered briefly over her contact information, then stopped.
No. Not tonight. Tonight belonged to the dead girl’s house. The grieving mother. The cat that was waiting outside the wrong bedroom door. Not me.