Chapter 20
Céline
I waited until I reached my car before the shaking started.
My hands trembled when I fitted the key into the ignition, and the engine turned over with a low, obedient hum.
Rain still misted the windshield, turning Bellamont into soft grey shapes behind the glass.
Students moved beneath black umbrellas, laughing and complaining about midterms, completely unaware that my life had been split open inside Professor Moreau’s office while they carried coffees and ordinary worries.
I sat there with both hands on the steering wheel and stared straight ahead.
Break up with Thad. Tonight.
The words kept returning with the same quiet violence.
My throat tightened so hard I had to swallow twice before I could breathe properly again. The passenger seat looked empty without my bag there, so I moved it from the floor and placed it beside me. Then I reached inside and found my phone. Thad had texted three times while I was in the lab.
Thad: Hope your day’s going okay.
Thad: Dinner tonight?
Thad: Mom asked about you. She wants to send flowers to the Montgomerys again but doesn’t want to overdo it. Thoughts?
I stared at the messages until the words blurred. Even now, even with Vincent’s threat pressed against the back of my skull like a blade, part of me wanted to answer normally.
Dinner sounds good.
Your mother is very kind.
I’ll wear the purple dress.
There were versions of myself that knew exactly how to continue.
I could meet Thad at the harbour restaurant.
I could smile through wine and let him touch my waist as we walked to his car.
I could go back to his apartment afterwards and let him kiss me with that earnest, practiced tenderness that made me feel less desired than approved of.
I could fake my pleasure when we had sex. I could still choose safety.
Except Vincent had taken my door and locked it from the outside.
My phone buzzed again.
Thad.
I almost let it ring out, then answered before I could lose courage entirely.
“Hey,” he said, his voice warm and easy. “You alive?”
I watched rainwater slide slowly down the windshield. “Barely.”
“Long lab?”
“Something like that.”
“You sound awful.”
“I’m just tired.”
“Come over tonight. I’ll order food. We don’t have to go out.”
The offer would have comforted me if not for Vincent’s demands. I pressed my thumb against the edge of the steering wheel until it hurt.
“I can come by tonight, I think.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes,” I say more firmly.
“Good. I miss you.”
The words landed gently and did nothing.
That was when I knew I was more tired than sad.
Thad deserved cruelty. He didn’t. He had been careless, shallow, occasionally self-absorbed, and far too comfortable with the version of me that made sense inside his world, but he had never been deliberately cruel. Not like Vincent. Not like me.
He was a nice man with beautiful hands and expensive sheets who loved the girl I had built because he had never been asked to see the girl underneath.
And maybe that was the most damning thing about us.
“I’ll be there in an hour,” I said.
“Perfect. I’ll get that Thai place you like.”
“You hate Thai food.”
“I can suffer for love.”
He said it lightly. I closed my eyes. Love. The word should have done something. Anything. Instead, all I felt was Vincent’s voice in my head, low and certain.
Thad only loves the version of you that makes sense beside him at dinner tables.
“I’ll see you soon,” I said, and ended the call before Thad could say anything else.
For several minutes, I did not move. Then I drove back to the dorm.
Sophia was in the living room when I arrived, sitting on the floor with her laptop open while Miss Astoria slept beside her like a small white cloud with trust issues. Anya was stretched across the sofa, reading something on her phone, one leg dangling over the armrest.
Both of them looked up when I walked in.
Sophia’s face changed first. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” I hated how quickly she saw it.
Anya sat up immediately.
“That was the worst nothing I’ve ever heard.”
Miss Astoria lifted her head, saw me, and gave a soft questioning cry before hopping down from the cushion and trotting toward me.
I crouched automatically. The cat pushed her face into my hand with enough force to make my fingers bend back.
“Hi,” I whispered.
Sophia closed her laptop slowly.
“Céline. Speak.”
“I’m breaking up with Thad tonight.” I say dryly.
Silence filled the room.
“Wait, what? Finally!” Anya exclaimed.
Sophia stood suspiciously. “Why?”
I kept my eyes on Miss Astoria because it was easier than looking at either of them. The cat rubbed against my knee, tail high, completely unaware that I had just announced the collapse of one of the safest structures in my life.
“It’s time.”
“That is not an answer,” Sophia said.
“It’s the only one I have, Sophia.”
Anya looked between us, her expression losing its usual theatrical brightness.
“Did Professor Moreau say something?”
My hand stilled in Miss Astoria’s fur.
“Did he?” Sophia’s voice sharpened.
I stood quickly. “I don’t want to talk about him.”
“That sounds like yes.”
“It sounds like I’m tired, okay?”
I looked at them. Both of them stood in the soft light of our apartment, worried and beautiful and too good at loving me in ways that made lying feel like dragging a knife through expensive silk.
For one terrible second, I almost told them everything.
The proposal. Katherine’s handwriting. Vincent’s threat.
The fact that my life at Bellamont could disappear if a single file found its way to Dean Waverly’s desk.
But I saw the consequences too clearly. Even if they could get past the betrayal of my lies, Sophia would want a strategy. Anya would want blood. Both of them would want to protect me, and protection had a way of turning people into collateral damage.
So I smiled faintly.
“I should have done it weeks ago. You both said he and I had no chemistry.”
“Not like this.” Anya’s face twisted.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I wanted you to dump him because you were bored, not because you look like someone is holding a gun to your head.”
I laughed, but it came out wrong.
Sophia stepped closer. “Let us come with you.”
“No.”
“Céline.”
“No,” I said, firmer this time. “I need to do this myself.”
Miss Astoria meowed sharply at my feet, as if disagreeing on principle.
Anya looked down at her. “Even the cat thinks this is a bad idea.”
“The cat thinks everything is a bad idea unless it involves wet food.”
Sophia did not smile. I wished she would. Instead, she touched my arm lightly. “Text us when you get there. Text us when you leave. If you don’t, we’ll come find you.”
“You’re very dramatic.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“And if Professor Moreau is involved in this somehow—”
“He isn’t,” I lied.
Sophia stared at me in quiet disbelief.
Then she said, very quietly, “You’re getting worse at that.”
I looked away first.
Before leaving, I changed into a black and white knit Chanel dress and brushed my hair until it looked soft instead of storm-tangled.
I applied concealer under my eyes and lipstick just dark enough to make my face look intentional.
If I were going to end one of the most useful relationships of my life, I could at least look like someone who had chosen it freely.
Miss Astoria sat on my bed watching the process with grave disapproval.
“You cannot come,” I told her.
She blinked slowly.
“You would only make things worse.”
Another blink.
“And Thad is allergic.”
She sneezed.
I loved her to death.
* * *
At Thad’s building, the doorman recognized me immediately and let me up without calling first. That small luxury hurt in a way I did not expect.
Access. Ease. Belonging by association. The things I had worked so hard to collect, all of them slipping through my fingers because Vincent Moreau had decided to mess with my life.
Thad opened the apartment door barefoot, wearing dark trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms. For one stupid second, I thought about how beautiful he was.
Not in a way that moved me. Just objectively.
A man built for engagement photos and vineyard dinners and the kind of life where children wore linen in summer and learned early that money could soften every hard edge.
“Hey,” he said, smiling. “You look amazing.”
I stepped inside.
The apartment smelled like lemongrass, rain, and the expensive candle I had bought him after he complained that his place felt too much like a hotel. The living room looked exactly as it had that night. Leather sofa. Marina lights beyond the windows. Bar cart. The armchair near the glass.
My stomach clenched at the sight of it all.
Thad followed my gaze. “You okay?”
I forced myself to look away from the chair. “Yeah, I am.”
He touched my waist lightly as he closed the door.
I stepped out of reach.
The movement was small but he noticed anyway.
His smile faded a little. “Céline?”
I walked farther into the apartment because standing near the door made me feel like I might run before I spoke.
The Thai food sat unopened on the coffee table, steam fogging the inside of the containers. He had ordered the dishes I liked, not the ones he tolerated, which made the whole thing worse. A bottle of his wine rested beside two glasses.
I looked at all of it and felt something inside me fold in on itself.
“You didn’t have to order so much.”
“You barely ate last time.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“All right.” His voice turned careful. “What’s going on?”
I turned toward him. There were so many things I could say. I’m sorry. I’m not who you think I am. You were kind to a girl who never truly existed. Another man knows the truth about me, and now I have to destroy the life I built beside you before he destroys the rest.
Instead, I said, “I think we should end this.”
Thad stared at me. Then he let out a short, confused laugh.
“End what?”
“Us.”