I was good. I knew it. I felt it.
Except Celia didn’t break the way I’d expected. In fact, her tears slowed and her brows furrowed in confusion. “What…what are you doing, Hudson?”
The way she looked at me, the way her gaze pierced through me—did she know? Had she figured out it was all an act? There was no way she could know. Who would guess that?
I paused too long before answering. “I’m trying to straighten out this misunderstanding.”
She studied me. “No, you’re not. You’re running away.” Her shoulders, which had sagged only a moment before, squared with renewed strength. She was the one who took a step toward me this time.
I was the one who stepped back.
“You’re convinced that you shouldn’t be allowed to feel anything or that having emotions will make you weak or something equally as ridiculous, and so you’re pushing me away.”
My calm was unraveling. Her words—they stung. They bit at me. They burned. And like the dragon who was angered by the meager attempts of humans to draw it down, I grew furious.
She took advantage of my setback. “Stop pushing me away,” she pled.
The softness of her appeal, the sweetness in her eyes, the sincerity of her posture—it stirred me. There she was assuming things about me again. She wanted to see me feel? Well, I was feeling a whole shitstorm of rage. “You don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about,” I hissed.
Her attack—because I refused to call it anything else—didn’t waver. “Stop this, Hudson. Stop lying to me. Stop lying to yourself. This isn’t who you are.”
Fury spread through me so thick that it propelled me forward until I was in her face. “This is who I am, Celia. Don’t you dare think you know something different. What you see is what you get.”
“You’re a fucking coward.” Her voice caught and I savored the victory. To her credit, she didn’t back away. “This was your chance to be a man, Hudson. I could have even forgiven your thing with Christina if you could just be honest now.”
“You could forgive me?” My eyes widened in mock exclamation. “Well, hell. How will I ever go on without your pardon?” My voice was uncharacteristically loud. I didn’t care. Venom was spewing from me whether I wanted it to or not—and I wanted it to. It was no longer about an experiment of emotion. I wanted to hurt Celia. She was the very example of how love weakened a person. She was pathetic. I loathed her.
I loathed myself for contributing to this creation.
“Scratch coward. I meant to say asshole.” She was too kind to me.
I stepped back from her, not in retreat, but in disgust. I was consumed with it—the emotion wrapping around my insides like a cobra. “Jesus, you’re really a piece of work, Celia Werner. What did you think was going to happen between us? You thought I was going to love you? You thought we were going to ride off into the sunset together? You’re the one who needs to stop lying to yourself. That’s a fairy tale, Ceeley, and I stopped believing in those a long time ago. It’s time you grew up too.”
I was done with her. Done with all of it. I left her there, crying on the edge of the driveway. I didn’t turn back once.
The next two hours I spent alleviating my temper in carnal ways with Christina. I fucked her hard and long and unrelentingly until she was raw and I was numb inside and out. A quick shot of whiskey before I left the Brookes’ kept the numbness clinging to me until I pulled into the driveway at Mabel Shores. I closed my eyes and rested my head for a moment on the steering wheel of my BMW Z4, a high school graduation present from my parents. I felt…tired. Exhausted. Drained. I certainly had notes to add to my log. My findings had been satisfactory, though not as precise as I would have wished. A part of me wanted to study further in this vein—would another subject react as Celia did, turning on me? Or was it her close relationship with me that produced the results I’d seen?
A bigger part of me never wanted to experiment with a subject so close to me again. It was too unreliable of a study. From then on, I promised myself, my research would be conducted further from home.
I’d been too distracted to notice Celia’s car until I’d gotten out of my own. It was parked at the other end of the circle drive. Its appearance was ominous—I didn’t like what it could possibly mean. I walked over to make sure she wasn’t waiting inside. She wasn’t. So I headed inside the house. The front door was locked, which meant if Celia was inside, she’d been let in before the house had been shut up for the night.
I intended to search for her but halted when I discovered Mirabelle curled in a ball reading on the main staircase. “Why are you still awake?”
“What’s it to you?” She must have sensed that I was in no mood for her attitude because she quickly amended. “It’s summer. I don’t have a curfew. Or a nanny anymore, it appears.”
Right. Erin was fired. Mother must have won that battle.
If we had parents that gave a damn, Mirabelle would have a curfew whether it was summer or not. “As long as you’re up—” Might as well use her for information. “What’s Celia’s car doing here?”
My sister shrugged her slight shoulders. “She came by. I told her you weren’t home and she said she’d wait for you on the patio. That was, like, two hours ago. She probably fell asleep out there.”
“Fuck,” I mumbled under my breath. I wasn’t in the mood to deal any more with Celia that night. But it would be even worse to have to explain her sleeping on a deck chair in the morning.
I nodded up the stairs. “Get to bed, Mirabelle.”
“I don’t—”
“Get to bed.”
“Fine.” She stomped up the stairs muttering something about “never having any fun.” I waited until she was out of sight before checking on Celia. Last thing I needed was Mirabelle as a witness to whatever was going to happen next.
The patio outside was empty, so I walked down to the pool to see if Celia had ended up there. She wasn’t there either. I was about to head down to the beach when I noticed the lights on in the guest house. My father had stayed there after the party the night before, and that morning my mother had his things moved as well. Maybe Celia had wandered over looking for me.
I’d only taken two steps toward the house when the door opened. Celia walked out then my father appeared in the doorway behind her. From where I was, and in the dark, I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed he wasn’t wearing anything but swim trunks or boxer briefs. He held his hand out and he must have said something because Celia turned back to him. She took his hand. He pulled her to him. And they kissed. It wasn’t a long kiss, but I knew that kind of kiss. It wasn’t a first kiss—it was a thanks-for-the-fuck kind of kiss.
My stomach churned, and I looked away. I stepped back into the darkness both to remain unseen and to be off the pathway in case I puked—I’d rather do that on the lawn.
At some point, their kiss must have ended, because when I glanced back, the door was closed and Celia was halfway up the walk. She slowed the tiniest bit when she saw me, but she didn’t stop. As she passed, I saw her more clearly—her lips were swollen, her hair and clothes a mess. We didn’t speak a word to each other, but a conversation transpired nonetheless. With my eyes, I told her I knew. With her eyes, she told me we were even.
With our silence, we said that it was done now. We were done now.
It was a shared understanding. Soon she was gone and a few minutes later, I heard her car starting up in the driveway.