Page 29 of Fractured Devotion
He’s compromised.
And he doesn’t even know just how badly yet.
But Celeste…
She’s shifting. There’s something new in the way she moves now. Something less fractured and more focused.
It’s beautiful.
And dangerous.
Restless, I rise and pull on my coat. It’s black from the collar to the cuff. It’s a thoughtless act now, like breathing. There’s a burn under my skin that won’t cool, a need I can’t reason with. I don’t expect to sleep. I don’t want to.
The hallway outside my apartment hums with emptiness, the dim amber sconces casting long shadows across varnishedwalls. I step out without hesitation. No one watches, and no one asks.
But I don’t head to Miramont.
Not tonight.
I walk the other way, toward Celeste’s building. I don’t tell myself there’s a reason because there isn’t. At least not one I’d admit. I won’t knock, and I won’t try to see her. It’s not about that.
It’s about being near.
She’s inside, I’m sure of it. I watched her enter hours ago, after she paused at her door like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to go in. The curtains haven’t moved since. Still, I walk slowly, tracing the edge of the block, past the benches and the hedge that runs along her building’s north wall. There’s a spot behind the fence, half-obscured by trees.
I stop there.
I don’t know why.
Maybe just to breathe the air she walks through. Maybe to feed the part of me that’s been starving ever since I first saw her tilt her head toward the light.
This isn’t a strategy anymore.
It’s something else entirely.
I stay until the wind shifts, until the ache dulls just enough to retreat.
Then I turn, the night pressing in around me like a second skin, and walk home.
Alone.
For now.
I return to the apartment with a chill still in my spine,the city’s stillness threading through me like a slow pulse. The blinds stay half-drawn, the room lit only by the blue glow of a monitor waiting to be summoned again.
And yet, I don’t turn it on.
I shower instead with water hot enough to scald, hoping the heat will steam the tension out of my shoulders. But it doesn’t. All it does is fog the mirror and blur the face I barely recognize anymore.
I dry off, slip into black sweatpants and nothing else, and step barefoot into the living room. A half-empty glass of whiskey waits untouched on the table, but I pour another one instead.
And then I sit.
A knock would be too easy. A phone call would be reckless. But watching? Observing? That’s discipline. That’s control. That’s who I’ve always been.
So why does it feel like I’ve crossed a line I can’t uncross?
The last feed refreshes in my mind, the shape of her near the window. Not seeing me. Never seeing me. That’s the point.
