14. Camille
Camille
I stay awake for a long while after Ryan falls asleep. The library has gone completely dark around us.
Ryan’s breathing has evened into the deep, unguarded rhythm of someone who has finally surrendered to exhaustion, his body molded against mine beneath the blanket, one hand tucked loosely beneath his cheek while the other rests against my forearm.
He trusts me.
The realization should feel like success. Even a week ago, it would have.
When Ryan first arrived, trust had been a problem to solve. He was suspicious of generosity, resistant to help, and stubborn to an almost pathological degree whenever I attempted to make his life easier.
And since trust wasn’t being freely given, I changed tactics and used our obvious attraction for one another as a way to draw him nearer.
It had worked remarkably well.
Ryan came to me—or for me—again and again.
He entered my home willingly, my bed willingly, my laboratory willingly. He gave me his body in ways that required a degree of trust I had not expected to earn so quickly, especially since all other ways of garnering it had failed.
This evening, he came downstairs because he could not sleep.
He sat beside me because he was angry, then told me the worst thing anyone had ever done to him, and in turn, I promised him no more lies, no more secrets.
I have never felt more ashamed.
Ryan shifts in his sleep, his forehead brushing beneath my jaw, and I lower my gaze toward him.
I’m not sure how to move forward from here.
On one hand, I continue on the path I’m on now, find whatever Alberte has hidden, and put a rest to the past 23 years. My mother and father will finally be granted their justice. Ryan will return to the States, and we will become nothing more than something that used to be.
On the other hand, I wake him, tell him everything, and…
what? There are too many possibilities. Perhaps he’d forgive me, maybe even assist in my efforts, or he could despise me, find the evidence himself, and destroy it in anger.
But what if Henri is already involved? Making Ryan my accomplice would put him in danger.
Right now, he knows nothing, and it’s possible the mere fact that he’s Alberte’s blood is shielding him.
My stomach turns, and my gaze falls to Ryan again.
I imagine waking him. Imagine those green eyes opening slowly, confused by sleep. I imagine telling him that the man holding him now approached him with an agenda.
That the casual conversations were calculated.
That when my attempts to make myself indispensable failed, I recognized his attraction and deliberately encouraged it.
I imagine watching comprehension spread across his face, then disgust, and it scares me.
It scares me because I feel things for Ryan that I have never felt before. And I’m not sure where exactly this strange relationship of ours is headed, but I want to find out.
But are feelings I can’t even put names to really worth forgoing a lifelong obsession to avenge my family?
I rest my chin on Ryan’s hair and squeeze my eyes shut, as if I can will the answer to form behind my eyelids. But the darkness here is full of nothing—no wisdom, no ghosts of my parents, not even the clarity of my own conscience.
In this moment, I am not a man on a mission, nor the keeper of my parents’ memory, just a body holding another, our edges blurring into one heap of human frailty.
I do not sleep. I listen to the hissing of the radiators and the periodic creaking of ancient timber. At some point, Ryan’s hand finds mine beneath the blanket, fingers curling reflexively around my thumb. I try to imagine myself as deserving of that touch.
I try not to think about what it will mean—when I finally have to choose.
Ryan wakes first, which I find in itself remarkable.
I am used to being the one on high alert, scouring every half-waking moment for sabotage, disappointment, or the simple, boring arrival of morning.
Instead, sleep takes me at some point—no memory of surrendering, just a slow fuzzing of the world into muffled nothingness—and now I wake to the feel of Ryan shifting against me, sunlight broad and buttery-white across the library carpet.
He stretches, pushing his face into my neck, making a small noise that is almost a sigh but softer. Then, blinking rapidly, he comes to—emerald eyes, lashes clumping at their roots, an ambiguous expression like surprise flavored with suspicion.
I say, “Good morning,” and he tenses, as if the words are foreign.
It takes him a second to process being cradled, and another to decide whether it is acceptable. He does not pull away, but the thought is definitely there.
“Did you sleep?” he asks, voice fogged by sleep.
“A little,” I say, which is the truth.
He radiates unease. It has become his default setting, but I can sense how hard he is working not to ruin this tentative peace.
I reach a hand to his face and brush hair from his forehead. It’s a stupid, unplanned movement, almost paternal, and I hate how natural it feels. He closes his eyes, only for a second, as if the sensation is physically overwhelming.
“Do you think the police will follow up today? Or would that be too soon?” he asks, dragging me into the present.
“I imagine they will contact you if they discover anything useful.”
“That just sounds like a polite way of saying no.”
“It is a realistic way of saying that someone entered an old house without being seen, stole nothing of obvious value, and left behind no conveniently labeled calling card.”
Ryan lifts his head from my shoulder far enough to glare at me. “You’re very comforting first thing in the morning.”
He looks different immediately after waking.
Softer in ways he would resent having described aloud, his hair a mess and his eyes still heavy with sleep, defenses not yet fully assembled.
There is a faint crease along one cheek from where it rested against my shirt, and when he notices me looking at him, suspicion gradually replaces the last of his drowsiness.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re staring.”
“So are you.”
His face scrunches up in annoyance. “Because you were staring!”
I suppress a smile as Ryan pushes himself upright, taking the blanket with him until it pools around his hips. Cold morning air immediately finds the space where his body had been pressed against mine.
“I need caffeine,” Ryan mutters.
“I had gathered.”
“And food,” he adds.
“Also gathered.”
“And probably a shower.”
“You have so many needs,” I say, chuckling when that earns me a frigid glare.
I stand and stretch the stiffness out of my shoulders, my body protesting the position I spent most of the night in.
“Come,” I say. “I’ll make coffee.”
Ryan follows me into the kitchen wearing the blanket around his shoulders like a cloak.
The house is still cool from the night, but sunlight has begun pouring through the eastern windows, warming the floor in broad rectangles. Ryan settles onto one of the stools at the island while I start the coffee, then folds forward until his forehead rests on the countertop.
There is something dangerously domestic about the scene. It would be easy to imagine this happening again.
That is precisely why I should not.
I turn away before the thought can finish constructing an entire life from one morning.
My phone vibrates against the counter, and Ryan sits up instantly, eyes lasered in on the screen. The number displayed is local.
I answer in French.
The older officer who attended yesterday identifies himself, and within the first several sentences it becomes apparent that the update will disappoint Ryan.
There were no useful fingerprints recovered from the exterior door beyond Ryan’s and several incomplete impressions that could belong to contractors, previous visitors, or anyone else who had legitimate contact with the property.
Nothing in the cottage appears to have been taken, at least according to Ryan’s initial inventory, and there were no witnesses nearby who reported anything unusual.
The damage to the lock is consistent with forced entry. That, at least, confirms Ryan did not imagine it.
I ask about the papers that Ryan said were rifled through.
The officer agrees that the circumstances suggest the intruder may have been searching rather than stealing, though he is careful not to attach motive to what remains conjecture.
Then he asks whether Ryan has remembered anything else since yesterday.
I glance up, noting the reflection of my face in his eyes as he studies my every subtle expression and the handful of French phrases he knows, trying to piece together the full conversation.
I press my lips together, then switch to English.
“Non,” I say, my voice low. “Nothing yet. But I forgot to mention yesterday that I have security cameras covering part of the road on my property. I haven’t checked the footage, but it’s possible we might find something relevant.”
Ryan’s eyebrows shoot upward, the skin at his temples tightening.
The officer on the other end of the line rattles off an email address to send the video files to. We end the call. Silence settles between us like dusk behind a forest canopy.
“Well?” Ryan demands, tapping his fingers against the tabletop.
I exhale slowly. “They found nothing especially useful.”
“Fantastic,” he groans, the word drawn out.
Then I add, “But the lock was definitely forced open.”
His jaw relaxes slightly—relief burrowing beneath his lingering fear. Yesterday he’d wavered, doubting his own memory; unpleasant certainty feels better than endless wondering.
“What about the cameras? Why didn’t you check them yesterday?” he asks.
I tilt my head. “I was a bit busy, was I not?”
He frowns. “Why?”
“Because you’d just discovered your home had been violated, the police were here, and afterward I was occupied with you.”
Color seeps into his cheeks. “Thank you.”
“It was nothing,” I say.