Chapter 27
Céline
Sophia did not ask questions immediately.
That was how I knew she understood enough to be afraid.
She moved around the apartment with a calmness that felt almost unreal, locking the suite door, checking the chain, closing the curtains even though we were on the third floor and no one outside could see through the rain-dark windows unless they were deeply committed to being unsettling.
Anya stood beside the kitchen counter with her phone in one hand and a mug in the other.
Miss Astoria remained pressed against my ankle like a warm, breathing alarm system.
I sat on the sofa. My hands were folded in my lap. They looked normal if I did not stare too long at the slight tremor in my fingers.
“My father called,” I said again, because apparently the first time had not made it real enough.
Anya’s theatricality disappeared whenever something truly frightened her, which made her look younger and more dangerous at the same time.
“Your father as in…” She stopped, glanced at Sophia, then looked back at me. “Your actual father? The one who…?”
I nodded.
Sophia sat across from me, spine straight, expression controlled.
“How did he get your number?”
“I don’t know.”
The lie tasted familiar. I didn’t know for certain, but I knew enough to feel Vincent’s shadow in the question, even if I had no proof, even if the rational part of me kept insisting he would not go that far. Except rationality had become almost useless where Vincent was concerned.
“He asked for money,” I added.
Anya’s mouth tightened. “Of course he did.”
“Did he threaten you?” Sophia’s eyes moved over my face carefully.
I looked down at Miss Astoria. She had climbed halfway onto my foot now, pinning me in place as if I might vanish if not physically restrained. “He said it would be a shame if people found out where I came from.”
Silence settled over the room.
Anya looked furious before she looked hurt.
“That’s what he led with? After all these years?”
“He asked about Mom too.”
Sophia’s face changed. “What exactly did he say?”
I repeated what I could remember, which was, unfortunately, almost everything.
Daniel’s voice had lodged itself in me with the unpleasant permanence of a bad smell, every word replaying too clearly no matter how much I wanted to forget.
By the time I finished, Anya had set the mug down hard enough that tea sloshed over the rim.
“I want to kill him.”
Sophia glanced at her. “What? I’m expressing a feeling, not drafting a plan.”
I almost laughed. It came out wrong, too close to a sob, and all three of us pretended not to notice.
Sophia’s voice softened. “Have you told your mother?”
“No.”
“Céline.”
“No.” The word came sharper than I intended, but panic was already rising again, slow and hot beneath my ribs. “She cannot know. Not yet.”
“She deserves to know if he might contact her.”
“I know what she deserves.”
Sophia’s face gentled in a way I hated because it made me feel unreasonable and loved at the same time.
“Then why not tell her?”
Because my mother had already rebuilt her life once from the wreckage he left behind.
Because every time she looked at the Montgomery house, I knew she still remembered arriving there with nothing but me and a few bags and the relief of a door Daniel did not have a key to.
Because if I told her he had found me, she would stop sleeping.
She would start looking over her shoulder again.
She would hear his voice in every strange man’s footsteps, and I would have dragged her backwards into a life she had worked too hard to escape.
Because some selfish, childish part of me did not want to see fear return to her face and know I had put it there.
“I’ll tell her if he contacts her,” I said.
“That’s not good enough.”
“It has to be.”
Anya crossed the room and sat beside me, close enough that her knee pressed against mine. She did not touch me otherwise. I appreciated that. I felt too full of nerves to be held properly.
“Okay,” she said, with forced calm. “Then we make a plan.”
“A plan?”
“Yes. Rich girl crisis management. Sophia and I were born for this.”
Sophia did not smile, but something in her expression softened.
“First, you do not answer unknown numbers.”
“I know that.”
“Second, you send us screenshots of everything he says.”
“I can handle—”
“No,” Sophia interrupted, still gentle but immovable.
“You are not handling this alone.”
The words hit strangely. I could not remember the last time someone had said something like that to me without wanting ownership in return.
Miss Astoria jumped into my lap suddenly, all soft weight and offended dignity, and curled against my stomach as if she had decided I was done moving for the evening.
Anya looked down at her. “Even the cat agrees.”
“She agrees with whoever has the warmest lap.”
“That is a valid political ideology.”
Sophia stood and picked up my phone from the coffee table. “Third, tomorrow morning you are going to the university health centre.”
I looked up sharply. “No.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not sick.”
“You had a panic response.”
“I had a normal response to a bad phone call.”
“That may be true,” Sophia said. “You still need help sleeping and calming your nervous system before you try to overthink this while exhausted.”
“I do not need a doctor because my deadbeat father made a phone call.”
“No,” Anya said, quieter now. “You need a doctor because your hands haven’t stopped shaking in twenty minutes.”
I looked down. They were right. The tremor was small but constant, running through my fingers like a current. I curled my hands into Miss Astoria’s fur to hide it. The cat accepted this with the solemn generosity of an animal who believed suffering existed mostly to provide her affection.
Sophia sat again, my phone still in her hand. “We can go with you.”
“I don’t want the whole campus knowing I’m having some breakdown.”
“You’re not having a breakdown,” she said. “You’re having a response. A lot has happened in the last few days, and we worry. You lost your best friend. You broke up with your boyfriend of three years… and your professor broke into your boyfriend’s house and ate you out.”
Anya leaned her head back against the sofa, ignoring the last concern. “I once had a panic attack before an economics presentation because I convinced myself my professor hated me, and my mother told me to chant mantras and stop being dramatic. A doctor would have been better.”
Sophia looked at her. “Your professor did hate you.”
“Yes, but I survived.”
Despite myself, a laugh escaped properly this time, small and weak. Miss Astoria lifted her head in offense at being disturbed.
Sophia handed me my phone.
“Tomorrow morning. I’ll book the appointment if you won’t.”
I wanted to refuse. I wanted to say I was fine, that I could manage this, that I had survived Daniel Martin as a child and could certainly survive him as an adult with a locked dorm room and two terrifying friends and Vincent Moreau sitting somewhere in Blackwater like a loaded weapon pretending to be a man.
But I was so tired. Tired in my bones, in my eyes, in the space behind my teeth.
Tired of holding doors shut from the inside while pretending the room was empty.
So I nodded once.
“Fine.”
Anya exhaled like she had been holding her breath.
“Good. Excellent. Love that. We are making healthy choices against our will.”
Sophia reached for her laptop.
“I’ll find the earliest slot.”
* * *
The health centre smelled like antiseptic and rain-damp coats.
Sophia came with me because she did not trust me not to cancel on the way there.
Anya wanted to come too, but Sophia told her three people entering a clinic for one appointment would make us look like we were staging an intervention, so Anya stayed behind with Miss Astoria and sent me seventeen messages in forty minutes.
Anya: if the doctor is condescending tell me immediately
Anya: also ask if caffeine counts as a food group
Anya: actually don’t ask that
Anya: miss astoria is judging me even while she sleeps
Anya: i think she knows i am not you
I read them in the waiting room while Sophia filled out forms with terrifying efficiency beside me.
“Do you need to know my blood type too?” I asked.
She did not look up. “If the form asks, yes.”
“You’re enjoying this.”
“I enjoy managing your wellbeing.”
“You and Vincent would get along.”
Her pen stopped. The silence was immediate. I regretted saying that.
Sophia looked at me slowly. “Do not compare me to him.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant.”
No, she didn’t. Not fully. No one did.
The nurse called my name before I could apologize properly.
Céline Martin.
I stood. The name followed me into the consultation room like perfume.
The doctor was a soft-spoken woman in her forties with tired eyes and a calm voice. She asked questions I answered carefully. Sleep. Appetite. Panic symptoms. Recent stressors. Family history. Current safety. Whether I had thoughts of harming myself.
“No,” I said immediately.
She did not react. Good doctors, apparently, knew how not to punish speed.
Then she asked about my father. The room seemed to cool around the word.
I told her enough to be believed and not enough to be known.
Estranged. History of alcohol abuse. Unstable. Recent unwanted contact. Fear of harassment. No immediate physical threat on campus, as far as I knew.
The doctor listened. Took notes. Asked whether campus security had been informed.
“No.”
Sophia, sitting beside me, looked like she wanted to answer for me. The doctor’s gaze was gentle but direct.
“Would you consider making a report, even if only to document the contact?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
Because paperwork made things real. Because if I said Daniel Martin’s name to campus security, someone might ask why Selena Martin had become Céline.
Someone might ask too many questions. Someone might look somewhere they should not.
Because every official record felt like a door that could open in both directions.