Page 113 of Fractured Devotion
I glance past her toward Kade, who’s already disappeared around the corner.
“Celeste…” I begin.
She holds up a hand. “I don’t want to talk about him.”
I don’t press. Not here.
But the way her eyes linger on the space he left behind is all the answer I need.
She’s pulling away from me.
And she doesn’t even realize it’s breaking something in me.
She walks off before I can say anything else, her heels sharp against the polished floor. I stay where I am with my jaw locked, watching her disappear into the lab wing.
For a moment, I don’t follow. I just stand there, my pulse humming with something ugly. Jealousy? Anger? I can’t name it. But I know it’s got Kade’s name on it.
I head back to Reyes.
“We’re going to need more than logs and fragments,” I tell him. “We need a trail they can’t erase.”
He leans back, rubbing at his temples. “Agreed. But if Harper was documenting something off-book, there might be physical backups. Something she stashed somewhere else.”
“Then we start digging. And we don’t stop until we find out who she was trying to expose.”
Reyes nods. “If we want to catch the spider, we need to stop chasing the web and look for the nest.”
I don’t say what I’m thinking.
Which is that the spider might already be in Celeste’s bed.
And she might not even realize she’s being bitten.
I sit alone in my office long after Reyes leaves, staring at Harper’s crude red drawing—those two inked-in eyes and the word below them. WATCHED. I flip the Post-it over and back again.What the hell were you trying to tell us, Harper?
The light in the hallway dims with the end of the workday, and I catch sight of Celeste passing by. She doesn’t look in. Her arms are folded tightly across her chest, and her pace is too fast for casual.
She’s unraveling, but not visibly. Not enough that the others will see it.
Just me.
And maybe him.
I grab my coat, the edge of my nerves scraping raw as I follow the hallway out. I tell myself I’m just heading home. That I’m not trailing her shadow like some guilt-wrapped ghost.
But my pace matches hers, and my eyes track her every motion. She exits out the east side, into the small courtyard lined with dusk-burnt hedges and benches no one sits on unless they’re trying to hide a cigarette.
She stands there for a moment, her arms still tight, her gaze low. I watch from the entry alcove, half in shadow. I don’t speak. Don’t step closer.
Eventually, she moves.
And I follow a few steps behind, like some predator of memory.
Because I can’t let her fall again.
Not like Harper.
Not like the others.
