Page 164 of Fractured Devotion
We finish the walk to her apartment in silence, the tension thick between us. The streets are empty at this hour, our footsteps barely breaking through the heavy air.
Neither of us speaks because every word feels too sharp to voice right now.
By the time we reach her door, there’s nothing left but the weight of everything we didn’t say.
She unlocks the door, her movements steady, then glances at me.
“Come in if you want,” she says, her tone flat. “But don’t expect me to change my mind.”
I follow her inside, the stillness of her apartment making the storm between us feel even louder.
I watch her cross to the window and stare out at the streets below as if she can already see the storm she’s about to unleash.
“You think they’ll just let you do it?” I ask.
She glances back, her smile razor-thin. “I’m not asking for their permission.”
“You think Kade will let you?” I press, the name a deliberate blade.
Her jaw clenches. She turns back fully, walking toward me with steady, measured steps.
“Kade isn’t the threat right now,” she says, her tone cold and flat.
I can’t help myself. I lean forward, closing the space between us. “He will be,” I murmur. “If you think for a second he won’t stop you, you’re underestimating how far his obsession will go. He won’t care about your freedom. He never has.”
She doesn’t back down. Her breath ghosts between us, sharp with fury.
“Then he can try,” she says, almost softly.
“Celeste—”
“I’m not leaving,” she cuts in again. “And if you can’t accept that, you can go.”
I close my eyes, breathing deep and trying to force calm into the roiling mess inside me. “I don’t want to leave you,” I finally say. “I just want you to survive this.”
Her voice softens, just a fraction. “I won’t survive it, Alec,” she says. “Not the way you mean. But I can still win.”
I lean back, my hands curling into fists at my sides.
“You sound like him,” I say, and the words hit the air with more venom than I intend.
Her eyes darken, and she tilts her head slightly, studying me with unsettling precision. “No,” she says. “I sound like me. You just don’t recognize her yet.”
That lands harder than anything else.
She crosses to the bedroom, and I trail behind her, not moving past the door. I rest against the door as I watch her move to the bed and drop to her knees to pull out a worn box.
Her movements are dragged but certain, as if this ritual has become something sacred. She sets it gently on the bed, her fingers gliding over the lid before she lifts it.
One by one, she sifts through its contents with delicate precision, touching each faded photograph and brittle page like she’s cataloging the dead, her expression blank but steady, as if these relics are the only truths she still trusts.
“If you stay,” she says, not looking up, “it has to be on my terms. No more trying to save me. No more pulling me back.”
“And if I can’t do that?”
She glances at me then, her gaze cutting.
“Then you leave tonight,” she says, calm and absolute.
