Chapter 17
Vincent
The preferential treatment I showed Céline had become impossible for the others to ignore.
It did not bother me in the slightest. If anything, I found a quiet satisfaction in watching the slow realization spread across the lab like ink bleeding through paper.
The students had grown accustomed to a certain order in my seminars, one where competence was rewarded quietly and publicly only when it served the greater point.
But with her, the rules had shifted, and they felt it in every small adjustment I made.
The afternoon seminar unfolded in the usual way at first. Julian Price answered a question incorrectly for the third time that week, his voice trailing off as he realized his mistake too late.
He sat three seats away from Céline, who kept her eyes fixed on her notes with the strained composure of someone trying very hard not to correct him.
“Not quite,” I said, allowing Julian to sit with the error long enough for it to sting but not long enough for it to drown him.
His face fell anyway. Céline’s fingers tightened around her pen.
I leaned back against the seminar table and looked directly at her. “Miss Martin, you seem to have an opinion.”
Her eyes lifted with careful reluctance. “I wasn’t aware my face was participating in the discussion.”
A few students smiled, more from nerves than genuine amusement. She always knew exactly how to tilt a room back toward comfort the moment it began to sharpen around her. It was a skill she had perfected long before she ever stepped foot in my lab.
“It has been more useful than Mr. Price’s answer so far,” I replied.
Julian looked wounded enough that Céline’s expression shifted almost immediately.
That was the part I found most inconvenient about her.
She could be ruthless in theory and perhaps in practice too, but small cruelties bothered her when they happened directly in front of her.
She noticed embarrassment. She noticed discomfort.
She noticed the exact second someone started feeling too exposed, because she had built her entire life around avoiding that feeling herself.
Julian cleared his throat. “I probably misunderstood the paper.”
“You did,” I said simply.
Céline looked at me then, and there was real irritation in her eyes now, clean and immediate.
I gestured toward the article on the table. “Go on.”
She exhaled through her nose, then finally looked down at the page in front of her.
“The issue isn’t the conclusion,” she said, her voice steady but edged with reluctance.
“It’s the sample interpretation. The stress markers aren’t reliable because the environmental controls weren’t stable, so they can’t prove the adaptation occurred naturally.
The data could be showing contamination response instead of genuine repair pathway plasticity. ”
The room went quiet.
Julian frowned, reread the section, and then his mouth parted slightly with recognition. “Oh,” he said, much softer this time.
Céline immediately looked uncomfortable with the attention, which interested me more than the answer itself. She enjoyed admiration when it came dressed as affection, when it made people move toward her with warmth, desire and social hunger. But academic attention made her uneasy.
“Exactly,” I said.
Her eyes flickered to mine for barely a second. The approval landed.
Across the room, Christina Bell shifted in her seat, her expression tight with something that looked like academic envy more than simple jealousy.
Wendy glanced at Céline and then away too quickly, her notebook suddenly very interesting.
Julian, still stinging from the correction, offered Céline a small, awkward nod of thanks, but the discomfort in the air remained thick enough to feel.
They had all begun to sense the shift. I had given her direct supervision on proposal refinement while the others received standard group tasks.
I had pulled her into discussions with a frequency that bordered on favouritism.
And now, in front of everyone, I had invited her to speak when she had not volunteered.
After the seminar, the students gathered their things slowly while rain struck the windows hard enough to make the room feel sealed away from the rest of campus. Julian approached Céline first, laptop half-closed against his chest.
“That was actually helpful,” he said awkwardly.
Her face softened at once. “You weren’t completely wrong.”
“I was very wrong.”
“A little,” she corrected, and somehow he laughed instead of shrinking.
I watched her slide her notebook into her bag, dark hair falling over one shoulder, face lowered just enough to look modest without appearing weak. She was dressed in brown today, soft trousers and a pale blue blouse beneath a fitted cardigan.
Christina remained by my desk after the others began filing out.
“Professor Moreau?”
I looked up. “Yes?”
She hesitated, which meant she had rehearsed this and was now deciding whether courage would be worth the consequences. “She seems to get a lot of one-on-one attention from you.”
The room shifted.
Céline slowed near the door while pretending to check her phone. Wendy glanced up and then away too quickly. Julian suddenly became very interested in zipping his bag.
I looked at Christina for a moment, giving her the full weight of my attention because she had asked for it, whether she understood that or not. “Miss Martin earned her placement here.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“No,” I said calmly. “It isn’t.”
Christina’s face flushed, but she held my gaze. That, at least, I respected.
“People are talking.”
“Bellamont students have survived centuries without hobbies. I suggest you find a new one that’s not gossip if you want to stay,” I replied.
Her mouth tightened. “That’s unfair.”
She folded her arms, and for a second, I saw the deep insecurity beneath the accusation.
“You think she’s better than the rest of us,” Christina said.
Across the room, Céline went very still.
I could have softened the moment. A kinder professor would have. I could have given Christina a sentence about different strengths or varying research pathways, something gentle enough to preserve morale and useless enough to mean nothing. Instead, I said, “Then outperform her.”
Christina stared at me.
Céline’s head lifted sharply.
“That isn’t what I said.”
“No,” I replied. “But it is what you were afraid to say.”
She gathered her laptop with shaking hands and left the room without another word. The door closed harder than necessary behind her, and the sound echoed briefly through the seminar room before the rain swallowed it.
Céline was still standing near the door. Her phone was dark in her hand.
“You handled that badly. It’s very unlike you,” she said.
I looked at her. There was no careful sweetness in her voice now, no polished softness, no attempt to charm me out of the moment. She was angry, and not for herself.
Interesting.
“There are easier ways to thank me for defending your intelligence.”
“I didn’t ask you to defend me.”
“No,” I said. “You rarely ask for anything directly.”
Her mouth tightened. “You were so cruel to her.”
“She accused you publicly.”
“She was insecure.”
“She was challenging you.”
“She was hurt,” Céline said, and the quiet certainty in her voice irritated me because it was not wrong. “You didn’t have to humiliate her for it.”
I moved around the desk slowly, watching the way her fingers curled more tightly around the strap of her bag. “You corrected Mr. Price in front of everyone.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“I was explaining the paper. You were proving a point.”
I almost smiled. “And what point was that?”
“That people should be careful when they question your choices.”
She was closer than she knew.
I stepped nearer, not enough to crowd her, just enough that she had to decide whether to hold her ground.
“You dislike being owned,” I said softly, my voice low enough that it carried an edge of something darker, something that lingered on the memory of her thighs trembling around my shoulders in the dark of Thad’s bedroom.
Her eyes sharpened. “Most people do.”
“No. Most people dislike admitting how badly they want to belong to something.”
“I belong to myself,” she said.
It was a beautiful lie. It wasn’t false in the simple sense. She wanted it to be true so badly that, for a moment, even I almost respected the effort.
I let my gaze drop briefly to the empty place on her wrist where Thad’s bracelet used to be. “And yet you keep testing how much of yourself you’re willing to give away.”
Her face hardened at once.
“I didn’t say anything wrong.”
“You never have to. That’s what makes you unbearable.”
I laughed quietly, and something in her expression shifted at the sound. She liked it.
“Miss Astoria settling in?” I asked, letting the conversation drift while my mind lingered on the image of her spread open and gasping beneath me.
The change in subject caught her off guard. Her guard slipped for half a second, and there she was again, softer before she could stop herself. “She screamed for breakfast at seven and then sneezed into my mouth. It’s been fun.”
I laughed properly this time, and her face changed with what looked almost like surprise.
“That sounds like a successful adjustment.”
“She’s a nightmare.”
“You adore her.”
Céline looked away toward the windows.
“Yeah, I do,” she said, quietly.
For a moment, I imagined her in the dorm that morning with the cat curled against her chest, hair unpinned, face softened by sleep, before she remembered who she was supposed to be.
The thought made the desire I had been holding at bay surge sharper.
I wanted to see her like that again, unguarded, undone, the way she had been when my tongue had driven her over the edge while her boyfriend slept obliviously beside her.
I wanted to take her further, to have her in ways that left no room for pretense.
“What?” she asked.
“You look different when you talk about her.”
Her expression closed immediately.
She turned toward the door, but she did not leave.
I lowered my voice, letting it drop into something quieter, more intimate.
“Your friends know.”
Her hand stilled on the strap of her bag. For the first time all afternoon, her expression truly changed. “What?”
“Sophia and Anya,” I said. “They know something happened between us.”
Her face went pale enough that the anger left it.
“How would you know that?”
“They would have to be idiots not to notice. I know they care a lot about you.”
She swallowed. “They don’t know anything.”
Céline looked at me then with a mixture of fear and fury that made the room feel suddenly smaller. “You stay away from them.”
“I have no interest in your friends.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I.”
She studied my face, searching for the trap.
There wasn’t one. Not there, at least. Whatever else I was becoming where Céline Martin was concerned, I had no desire to frighten the girls who had somehow made her feel safe enough to confess anything.
If anything, I found myself unexpectedly grateful to them for the fact that she had not carried the incident alone.
Céline’s voice dropped. “You don’t get to make my life smaller.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t, and I won’t let anybody else either.”
The answer unsettled her because she had expected resistance.
Then I added, my voice lower now, carrying the weight of everything I had not yet said aloud, “But I do think you’re going to outgrow parts of it right now. And when you do, I intend to be there to watch.”
Her jaw tightened. “You mean Thad.”
“I often do.”
“You don’t know anything about him.”
“I know enough.”
“I love him, I’m going to get married to him.”
“Go,” I said abruptly.
Her brows drew together. “What?”
“Leave before one of us says something unwise. Mentioning Chad’s name just ruined my mood.”
Céline looked at me, and for a second I thought she might step closer just to prove she could.
She opened the door and stepped into the hallway without another word. When it closed behind her, I remained still for several seconds, listening to her footsteps fade beneath the sound of rain.