Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 67

Chapter 67

SERAPHINE

I left that house seething.

My jaw was tight the entire drive home, my hands gripping the wheel harder than necessary, replaying every single moment of that evening on a loop that would not stop.

Both of them had put their hands on me.

Julian, who I had knelt in front of. Who I had swallowed for. Who I had let use my body against a wall in his own living room while his wife was God knows where doing God knows what. That same Julian had slapped me hard enough to knock me to the floor, and for what? For Celeste?

And Celeste.

I balled my fist against the wheel.

The Celeste I had known for over a decade would never have raised her hand to me. If I had slapped her, and I admitted to myself that perhaps I should not have done it the moment she walked through the door, she would have asked me why. She would have listened. She would have apologized for whatever she thought she had done to upset me and then she would have offered me tea.

That was the Celeste I knew.

The woman who had looked me in the eye tonight and slapped me twice without blinking was somebody else entirely.

And I did not like her.

I hated her, actually. Both of them. But Celeste more, because at least with Julian I understood the transaction. With Celeste I felt something I was not used to feeling, and it took me the full drive home to name it.

I felt outmaneuvered.

She had lied to my face. Beautifully. With tears and everything. The exit door story, the fainting, the ice cream. It was all constructed and delivered without a single tremor in her voice. I knew she had seen me at Veil Holdings. I had been sitting twenty feet from the elevator when she walked past me. We had made eye contact. There was no exit door she had conveniently used that meant she had not seen me.

And she knew that I knew.

She had just not cared.

I went round that building afterward, all the way around, looking. I had not found any alternative exit. Which meant either she had lied or she had somehow vanished through a wall. And Celeste was many things but she was not magic.

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