18. Ryan #2
The offers to help, and the questions about renovations.
How much had he asked about the house?
I try to remember. Everything seemed casual at the time. Neighborly, you know?
A little intense because Camille is intense about everything, but nothing that screamed: “I have spent half my life investigating your grandfather because I believe he knew what happened to my murdered mother.”
I resisted him at first, but then—
My breath catches.
The pool.
Camille naked in the water.
I knew he knew I could see him. I fucking knew it.
At the time, I treated it like a game. It was mutual attraction.
A gorgeous man, fully aware that I was watching and enjoying the attention.
But Camille admitted he noticed my attraction. He admitted that. Not in some sinister confession, obviously, but enough.
He knew.
What if that wasn’t flirting for flirting’s sake? What if it was strategy?
The thought makes my stomach lurch so violently that I press a hand over it.
No.
No, the attraction was real.
It had to be. You can’t fake the way he looks at me. Can you?
Paul did.
The comparison lands so hard I physically recoil.
I told Camille how Paul’s lies reached backward and poisoned every memory that had once felt safe. I told him.
And now my brain is doing it again.
The dinner. Was that because he wanted me? Or because he wanted me to be comfortable in his house?
The first time we fucked. Was that attraction? Or opportunity?
Did he invite me over knowing that if he could get me into bed, then eventually I might trust him enough to let him into the cottage? I think of the way our arrangement began—no promises, no relationship, just sex.
Perfect for someone who needed access without emotional responsibility.
My eyes burn again.
“Stop it.”
I press my palms against my temples.
Every memory keeps coming. Camille showing up when I needed something. Camille finding reasons to stay nearby. Camille encouraging me to come to his estate. Camille slowly becoming the first person I called when something went wrong.
Was that all intentional?
Did he manufacture that?
The word slips into place, and suddenly nothing else fits quite as well.
Manufactured.
Our whole relationship has been a series of circumstances nudged carefully into position until I believed I had chosen every step.
My throat closes.
I told him that I hated being manipulated. I told him I needed control over my own life.
He knew why.
And what if, the entire time, he was guiding me anyway?
I think about how stubborn I was when he offered practical help. How quickly I rejected anything that made me feel beholden. Then somehow sex became the one thing I accepted from him without questioning once why he was offering it.
Because sex didn’t feel like dependence.
It felt like freedom.
He probably realized that making me need him wouldn’t work, so he made me want him instead.
Was that it?
Did he decide I would be easier to use if I was sleeping with him?
I stare at the stone floor until the lines blur. Maybe he thought I knew where the evidence was, or maybe he thought Alberte had left some clue for his idiot grandson.
He must have realized pretty quickly that I knew absolutely nothing, but I guess he still figured I could be useful.
I think back to every time he looked at me like I was interesting. Every time I mistook attention for affection when, in reality, it was observation. Just another problem to solve in order to reach a conclusion.
My eyes squeeze shut.
He probably doesn’t even like me that much.
That thought hurts more than everything else.
Which makes me hate myself because exactly how fucking selfish can I be?
Camille’s mother was murdered. His entire childhood was ripped apart. So many people were hurt by my grandfather’s inaction.
And right now, I am sitting on evidence connected to the worst thing that ever happened to Camille, and somehow my brain is busy asking whether he actually likes me.
Pathetic.
The kisses, teasing, casual touches. The way he calls me “petit chaton,” the way he slept beside me on the couch, and the way he looked after me in the shower.
The fucking peaches.
Were those part of it too?
My breathing becomes ragged again. I remember the first time he made me feel cared for enough that I panicked and ran; I invented a brother because I needed an excuse to leave.
Camille knew I was lying, but still packed fruit for me.
I thought that meant he saw me. Now I wonder if it meant he understood exactly what kind of attention would bring me back.
A sound escapes me—half a laugh, half a sob.
I don’t know what was real.
I told him that was what Paul took from me—the ability to know which memories belonged to the relationship I thought I had and which belonged to whatever Paul had actually been doing behind it.
And now Camille has done the same thing.
For infinitely better reasons, yes, but that doesn’t change how much it hurts.
I fold forward until my forehead touches my knees, cover my mouth, and muffle a scream, then press my knuckles against my sternum as if I can physically hold my chest together.
He used me.
The sentence is still reverberating through my skull when a sound from the kitchen nearly stops my heart.
“Ryan?”