20. Ryan
Ryan
I wake up angry.
Not the spectacular kind of anger that had burned through me yesterday, hot enough to keep my hands shaking and my thoughts ricocheting from one betrayal to another until I could barely tell which part hurt most, but something steadier, a banked heat sitting beneath my ribs before I even open my eyes.
For several seconds, I lie beneath the unfamiliar duvet and stare at the strip of morning light cutting around the curtains, disoriented enough to wonder why my entire body aches and why my throat feels scraped raw, and then the day before returns in one ugly rush—the wall, the journal, Nadia, eight-year-old Camille waiting for a mother who would never come home, Alberte running, Camille lying to me, Camille admitting that he saw me as an opportunity before I had even unpacked my suitcase.
My anger settles comfortably back into place.
Good.
I can work with angry.
Angry is considerably more useful than the other emotions waiting underneath it.
I roll onto my side and immediately see the bag beside the nightstand, exactly where I left it last night.
The zipper remains closed. Nobody has touched it.
I know that because, before eventually passing out sometime well after midnight, I tucked one of the zipper pulls beneath the strap in a stupid little arrangement that would have shifted if someone opened it. It is still exactly where I left it.
Camille kept his promise.
Naturally, that irritates me too.
I flop onto my back and drag both hands over my face. “This is going to be exhausting.” My voice sounds rough in the otherwise silent room.
There is no response from beyond the door, no polite knock to tell me breakfast is waiting, no carefully worded inquiry into whether I slept, no footsteps hovering in the hallway because Camille has apparently taken my demand for space literally enough that I cannot even resent him for violating it.
He’s probably downstairs somewhere.
I become hyperaware of the quiet beneath me, listening for evidence of him moving through the estate until, eventually, there is the faint closing of a cabinet somewhere on the first floor.
I stay in bed another twenty minutes purely because I refuse to let the sound of another person living in his own house determine when I get up, which is so childish that I become annoyed with myself too, then finally surrender because I desperately need coffee and my stomach has begun making increasingly dramatic noises about the fact that I barely ate yesterday.
The shower helps some.
By the time I scrub the last remnants of plaster dust from behind my ears and watch grayish water spiral toward the drain, my thoughts have slowed enough that I can think about something other than what I want to throw at Camille’s head.
I dress in sweatpants and one of the loose shirts I packed, then stop in front of the bedroom door with my hand wrapped around the knob.
My pulse speeds up because I guess my body hasn’t received the memo that we’ve been betrayed.
Evidently, my hormones are unionized separately from my dignity.
I open the door and find the hallway empty, then venture downstairs, hearing Camille before I even reach the kitchen. The low murmur of French drifts through the silent halls.
Camille stands beside the island with his back partly toward me, one hand resting against the counter while he speaks quietly into his phone.
He has dressed down by his standards, though Camille’s version of casual is dark trousers and a charcoal sweater pushed up over his forearms. It’s rude how hot he is.
His voice cuts off mid-sentence the moment I step into the kitchen.
The phone stays pressed to his ear, but his attention snaps to me like a physical thing.
His eyes track my movement from the doorway to the counter—a quick sweep that takes in my rumpled shirt, the way I’m holding my shoulders, and the fact I haven’t bothered with shoes.
Then his gaze fixes on my face, and something in it shifts.
I watch the exact moment concern flickers behind his eyes—a tightening at the corners, a slight softening of his mouth.
He does nothing with it. Doesn’t speak it, doesn’t move toward me.
Just lets it sit there, visible and unused.
He says something into the phone, ends the call, and sets it down on the marble with a quiet click.
“Bonjour.”
I don’t answer, just stare at him until he looks away first.
I turn toward the coffee machine. On the counter beside it sits an empty mug. Yesterday he would have had my coffee ready and waiting, full and hot. Today he’s decided even that small gesture might count as crossing a line.
I jam my thumb against the brew button harder than necessary. The machine grinds to life.
“I want breakfast.” I don’t turn around.
“Would you like me to cook for you?”
I turn. His expression is perfectly blank—the kind of polite detachment you’d use with a stranger—but his eyes give him away. They always do. Dark and too knowing, even now.
“Yes.”
“Alright,” he answers.
“That’s it?”
His brow furrows slightly. “What would you prefer I say?”
I want him to argue. I want him to remind me that last night I told him not to feed me, not to fuss, to leave me the hell alone. I want a fight I can win.
“I want eggs,” I say.
“Okay… You will have to give me more than that.”
“Scrambled eggs.”
“American-style or ?ufs brouillés?”
“American,” I grumble.
The corner of his mouth twitches—almost a smile, quickly suppressed when I glare. He turns without another word and crosses to the refrigerator.
I take a seat at the island and watch him move around his own kitchen on my command.
He pulls eggs from the fridge, selects a pan, and lights the burner with a quiet click.
The butter sizzles when it hits the warm metal.
He cracks the eggs one-handed without looking, his focus entirely on the task I gave him.
There is a small, petty satisfaction in seeing Camille move through the kitchen because I told him to. I do not thank him. I do not offer to help. And when he places the plate in front of me, I make him go back for salt.
Camille makes his own breakfast afterward and sits at the far end of the island rather than beside me. He does not ask whether mine is good.
The silence becomes almost unbearable as I finish eating.
“That was good. Thank you,” I say quietly.
His eyes lift, and I regret complimenting him. Not because he looks smug or anything, because he doesn’t.
He simply seems pleased that I liked them.
Asshole.
The rest of the morning unfolds in much of the same way. After I find yesterday’s clothes wadded into a sodden heap on the bathroom tile, I decide on a whim that Camille can handle my laundry today.
There’s no practical reason he should. I know perfectly well how to use the washing machine. Still, I wander into his study, where he’s bent over a stack of papers.
“I have laundry,” I announce, holding my arms out for emphasis, as if the crumpled T-shirt and jeans in my hand might otherwise go unnoticed.
He glances up, expression neutral. “Okay?”
“I want you to do it,” I tell him.
He pauses, pen poised above paper. “Alright.” He abandons what he’s doing and stands up. “Is it just what you’re holding?”
I stare at him, incredulous. “You’re seriously just going to do my laundry?”
“You asked me to.”
I ball one hand into a fist. “There are a few more in my room,” I mutter, feeling like a petulant child.
Without another word, he takes the small bundle in my hands and disappears.
By midday, I have extracted from him an entire morning’s worth of favors—he’s prepared my breakfast, washed and folded my clothes, retrieved a book from the top shelf of a cabinet I could have reached if I’d bothered to stand on a stool, and made lunch.
Not a single complaint. Not a hint of the retort I crave.
Late afternoon finds me retreating to my bedroom, feeling deflated. I sprawl across the unmade bed, and consider ordering Camille to do that as well, but knowing he’d just willingly do it defeats the purpose.
I let out an exasperated sigh. “This revenge thing sucks.”
My bag sits nearby on the floor beside the bed, still holding the items from the cottage wall. I haven’t even told Camille about the USB and case yet. He thinks there’s only the journal.
I have not asked Camille to look at anything, but more frustratingly, he has not asked.
That part is becoming harder to ignore.
I roll onto my side and stare at the wall.
Something inside me softens toward him—some small, traitorous thing that I can feel happening the way you can feel yourself about to sneeze.
I crush it immediately.
No.
Absolutely not.
He does not get forgiveness just because he learned how to behave after getting caught. That would be ridiculous. People are supposed to respect boundaries. That is the minimum, not a redemption arc.
Still…
My gaze drifts toward the door.
There is another thing I have been thinking about all day.
I have tried not to. Which obviously means I have thought about it constantly, in the specific, unhelpful way that you think about something you are actively trying not to think about—each attempted redirect arriving right back at the same image.
Sex.
Not because I am horny.
I mean, I am.
Unfortunately.
Camille continues to look like Camille, which is frankly incredibly fucking inconsiderate under the circumstances.
But that is not the real reason.
The real reason is much uglier.
Sex was the tool he used. Not without my consent. Not without genuine attraction. But he admitted it benefited him—that he knew intimacy might build the trust that ordinary offers of help had failed to create. That he let me believe I was setting the pace when he already knew the destination.
So part of me wants to take it back.
Not sex itself.
Control.