There was something off about him. He was such a broken, damaged thing, and that made him dangerous to be around. Celine usually had to be so careful, so guarded around other people. She'd lose her temper in a crowded room, and it wasn't long before fists started flying. She'd see a mouse scurry across the floor, and when she screamed in shock, everyone else in the house screamed too.
Or she'd fall in love. She'd convince a man he loved her, and once the honeymoon phase wore off, he'd realise he'd married a woman he never loved at all.
If she wanted something badly enough, she could make everyone else around her want her to have it too. This was never something to be taken advantage of. It must be controlled and locked away, or she'd find herself miserable and alone, isolated in her own home.
Mark had grown from not loving her to openly resenting her. Damien walked on eggshells around her, and she knew he did it because he knew what had happened between her and Mark. The staff treated her well enough, but she didn't want staff at all, and they knew it.
And then there was Will. There was something off about him. Not something wrong, but something different. Something she had never seen before.
She hadn't noticed it at first. Hadn't noticed it for a long time. They sniped and jabbed at one another every time they crossed paths. Ever since the first time they met, and Will told Mark to stay away; that he'd regret a woman like her. She'd hated him for that, and he seemed to hate her back. Somehow, he knew the truth, that Mark was being controlled. She hadn't even meant to. She tried everything she could to make sure she wasn't. But Will saw it. Every time they were in the same room together, Will saw what nobody else did.
Will saw the truth, because he was incapable of seeing Celine's lies. How many countless times had he sat back and watched while Celine changed an entire room with a few words? How many countless times had he warned Mark and been ignored? How many countless times had she pretended not to see what he was really saying; had she convinced herself that she knew what she was doing?
She was so happy to find someone who wasn't afraid of her that she hadn't stopped to consider just how much of herself she was putting out there. Not once. Not ever.
And now, she was married to a man who was constantly at a moment's notice from demanding divorce, her own brother was afraid of her, and she was too scared to let herself get close to anybody ever again because of what she'd do.
And then there was Will. Will who sniped and jabbed not because she resented her, but because he was just as pissed off as she was. He'd say cruel, hurtful things, but she could never raise his ire to the point of shouting. He was just a miserable fucker all on his own.
Mark grew more and more distant, not just from Celine, but from everyone. Damien grew more and more wary, and threw himself into his work to compensate. And Will grew more and more pissed off at being ignored. Celine didn't know why he kept coming around. Mark never wanted to see him outside of the context of poker games, and wouldn't even speak to him before the time their ridiculous parties were set to start. He just kept punishing himself. Celine wondered why.
Celine knew why. For the same reason she didn't get it over with and get the divorce herself. Because then she'd have to admit how alone she was.
So she stayed with a man who was one argument away from hating her, and Will came to visit a friend he hadn't seen privately in over a year. And for all the sniping and jabbing between the two of them, at least they never argued about anything important. She could blow off as much steam as she wanted, and he'd stare blankly at her, waiting for her to finish before he delivered another cruel barb.
She was ashamed to admit she'd started to enjoy it.
And then Benjamin drugged him. Benjamin always drugged guests with whatever concoctions he'd come up with. Something about that night went wrong. He hadn't been paying enough attention to how much Will had had to drink. He hadn't paid attention to his own doses. Nobody had paid enough attention to Will after, and hadn't noticed he'd left the room. Even that horrible old house had been kind enough to put him where he needed to be to get help. If the house had been in any worse of a mood that night, they would have found Will dead the next morning.
He stopped coming after that. Stopped talking to Mark or Damien any more than he had to. And Celine was truly alone. Mark turned down role after role, and in the same breath bemoaned the costs of keeping that house. But he wouldn't hear suggestions to sell it. He'd done it all for her. But that stopped at maintaining everything he'd done. He withdrew further into himself, and then Damien stopped coming by as much. Then his other friends, and soon it was just them and the staff. Celine took any chance she could to get out of the house; started doing private readings and lessons to keep her card from getting declined when she tried to put gas in her car.
When Damien threw a fundraiser party, she knew it would be miserable, but at least she could be miserable somewhere that wasn't that house. Mark could go off and fuck some intern and pretend he wasn't married, and Celine wouldn't say anything because it would only start another fight she'd lose. If she stayed calm during a fight, Mark would rage and storm off, using it as proof that she was cold and unfeeling. If she let herself get angry, it would further feed Mark's rage until he became violent. It was easier to just pretend he had won from the start.
Will was there. He hated these things even more than she did, but he still came. The only two people he knew at these functions either had no time to speak with him, or was someone he refused to speak with. He was pissed off and hurt, and this time when he suggested they leave together, she followed him. They went somewhere else for a meal, had too much to drink, and had sex in his apartment. It wasn't making love. She hadn't done either in years, but there was no love that night. Carnal lust drove her every action, and for the first time in Celine's life, she was able to feel without guilt. It was the first time she was able to let herself go, knowing that the man she was with was there because he had made that decision, and had not been coaxed by emotions that weren't his.
She slept in his bed that night, and woke the next morning in his arms. That too was something that had not happened in a very long time, lying naked next to a man and just existing in that moment. This was what other people had, but never her. Not until that morning. She lay there for as long as she could, allowing herself to just enjoy it until Will's moustache on the back of her neck scratched and tickled too much to ignore. She got up slowly, thinking she might sneak out and try to find an inconspicuous way back home, but Will was already awake. He sat up lazily as she slid out from under the blankets, leaning on one elbow as he watched her.
"I suppose we need to take you home," he said.
She looked over her shoulder at him as she quickly dressed. "I think that would be a bad idea," she said.
He nodded. "I'll take you back to the hotel and put you in a cab," he decided, still not getting up.
Celine considered his plan. "That should work," she said. "I think we both agree that Mark doesn't need to know about this."
"I think we agree he'd find some way to murder both of us if he did," Will said.
Celine didn't want to admit he was probably right. She didn't want to admit even to herself how far things had fallen with Mark; how angry he was all the time. Angry not just with her, but with himself and everyone around him. She didn't want to go home to that, and as tempting as it was to crawl right back into bed, she knew she couldn't stay. She had never stayed out all night, and didn't know what to expect from Mark when she got home. He'd never hit her before, but she knew there were times he wanted to. As she got dressed, Will seemed to take the hint and got up to dress as well.
His apartment was small — all he could afford on an Army pension — and the bedroom tiny. Rather than trying to get past Celine to the closet, Will dressed in what he'd been wearing the night before, leaving behind his tie and jacket.
"Coffee?" he offered as he shook out his socks to put them back on.
He was trying to get her to stay longer. "I need to go home," she said. "We probably shouldn't do this again."
Will nodded, accepting it even if he didn't agree with it.
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Another fight. More broken things thrown across the room. With Mark still screaming behind her, she grabbed a shawl and began walking for the door.
"Where the fuck are you going?" Mark shouted after her.
"Out," she said firmly. She ignored the rest of his tantrum, grabbed her handbag from the table in the hall, and walked out the front door.
Celine didn't know where she was going when she got into her car, but she found herself heading into town. She quickly realised she'd known where she was going the moment she decided to leave, and there wasn't any turning back now. She barely remembered where Will's apartment was, but enough wandering around what seemed like the correct neighbourhood led her to a familiar building. She found a place to park and walked inside. She couldn't remember what apartment Will lived in, much less what floor, but she found someone at the front desk. He looked up at her with an odd expression, and she wondered what he might already be suspecting.
"I'm looking for Will Barnum," she said finally.
He nodded and consulted the book on his desk. "Ah, yes. 4-G," he said, his odd expression deepening.
"Thank you," Celine said, trying not to feel like this man was about to call her husband. She turned to the elevator, and took it up to the fourth floor.
When Will answered the door, she was surprised to find he hadn't even dressed yet. He was in a dressing gown, holding a book in one hand. He had music playing in the background; slow, quiet jazz. For a long moment, he looked at her like he couldn't figure out what was going on.
"Celine," he said finally. "What are you doing here?" He looked over her shoulder to the end of the hall before ushering her inside.
It was a mistake to be there. She stood awkwardly in Will's living room, not sure if she should sit down or find a reason to leave.
"I shouldn't have come," she said finally. "I don't know what I was thinking."
Will took her shawl and led her to the sofa. "Nonsense. What's going on?" he asked.
"Mark hasn't stopped since Damien's party," she said, shaking her head. "I told him I'd stayed at the hotel that night, but he knows that's a lie. I didn't know what else to do, so I just left."
"Well," Will said. He walked into the kitchen and pulled a mug from a shelf. "He didn't follow you, did he?" He filled the mug with coffee and brought it over to her.
Celine shook her head as she accepted the mug. "I don't think so, no," she said. "I spent about a half hour wandering around lost. I think if he followed me, he would have figured out what I was doing out here."
Will nodded as he sat down in his chair and put his book down on the table. He was distancing himself from her. They had both agreed that they shouldn't see each other again, and his was the first place she'd thought to go to. Not sure what else to do, she took a drink of her coffee.
"I'm sorry," she said again. "I should go."
She started to get up, but Will sat forward quickly. "No, no, no. Stay," he said, reaching for her to try to get her to sit down again. He got up from his seat and moved over to the sofa with her, sitting close enough for their legs to touch. She realised suddenly that he wasn't wearing anything under his dressing gown. She looked away from the skin it exposed as it fell open, and in doing so, alerted him. He shifted quickly, resettling the fabric so it closed properly.
Celine expected to see her own confusion and apprehension mirrored on Will's face, but all she saw was concern, and maybe something that looked hopeful. She didn't think she'd ever get used to that. It was alien to even think that people around her could want their own things like that. That she didn't have to constantly guard herself.
"You don't want to be here," Will said. "So why don't we go somewhere else? Lady's choice."
He said that because he wanted to say that. Not because she wanted to be somewhere else so badly he could feel it. She nodded, and he started to get up. She had never thought it would be addicting to be so powerless, but she wanted that more than anything int he world.
"I'll get dressed. Don't go anywhere." Will smiled at her and rose to his feet. He quickly rushed off to his bedroom to dress, leaving Celine alone with the music. His apartment was small, but he kept it well-furnished. Trinkets and baubles decorated shelves, small trophies and treasures from all the places his time in the Army had taken him. He'd done some hunting in Africa, and had trophies from that as well; mounted heads on the walls, a strange, half-striped pelt on the floor in front of a window. She drank her coffee and picked up the book he'd been reading. He liked Poirot, apparently. She'd half expected it to be some dry treatise on military strategy or something. He always seemed like the kind of pushy brute who never left the Army behind, but maybe that was just because he was friends with Mark, and all of Mark's friends had the potential to be very dangerous one way or another.
Maybe Mark just made them seem that way. Or maybe it was the house.
Or maybe it was her.
She put the book back down and stood to get a closer look at some of the items on his shelves. He had more fiction than anything else in his books, with an obvious tendency toward detective stories. Somehow, it was surprising that he liked to read at all. But he hadn't worked a day since he left the Army, and had borrowed money from Mark more than once. The life of an unemployed bachelor must have been full of empty moments with nothing to do.
Celine jumped sharply when the bedroom door opened again, and Will stepped back out. "Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you," he said, walking over to the turntable to stop the record.
She turned to smile at him, and then pointed at a small, stuffed creature on one of the shelves. "What is this?" she asked. It looked like a small dog, but with ears like a giant bat.
Will stepped over to see what she was pointing at. "Ah, iVulpes zerda/i," he said. "Small foxes from the Sahara Desert. I got this little fellow from a street trader in Tunisia."
"So you didn't shoot it?" Celine asked. For some reason, she was glad. She didn't like to think that Will would have killed something so small.
"No, no," he said. "Nothing that couldn't fight back, you know?"
She nodded. "He's cute."
Will smiled and took her empty cup from her and put it in the kitchen. "So where would the lady like to go?" he asked.
Celine picked up her shawl from where he'd draped it over the back of the sofa. "I would like," she said, thinking about it. She wanted to do something she'd never done with Mark. "To go dancing."
"Dancing," Will said, nodding. "I know just the spot."
She wasn't exactly dressed for it, but he didn't seem to care. He walked her out of the apartment, and had five separate suggestions before they made it to the street to hail a cab.
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That Will knew so many places to go boozing and dancing was somehow surprising. That he knew the owner of the one she picked and was able to get in without charge was somehow not surprising. Knowing that he'd spent enough time there to be friendly with the owner meant it was something he enjoyed all on his own, and that once again, he was there because he wanted to be. This was all she had ever wanted, and now she didn't know what to do with it now that she had it.
They stayed for hours, drinking and dancing until they could barely stand. Celine didn't normally like to get drunk. She hardly drank at all, because it made it all the harder to control herself. But twice, she'd gone out with Will and had too much to drink, and twice, she couldn't make herself feel like it was a mistake.
They finally left when the club closed for the night, and stumbled out to the sidewalk to find it raining. She leaned against him, and he lifted his jacket to shield her with it while she laughed. Celine didn't even know what was so funny. They quickly walked down the sidewalk, finding shelter in the doorway of a doughnut shop. Celine still leaned against Will with her entire body. He was laughing too, unsteady on his feet from their long night.
"Kiss me," she said.
He did. He kissed her because he wanted to, and it made Celine want to kiss him even more. But it didn't last long. He pulled away, leaving Celine confused for a moment. Then he stepped out into the rain and hailed a passing cab. They got inside, and the ride back to his apartment could not have been short enough. She hung on him, barely able to keep his hands off him, but not wanting to cause a scene with a taxi driver just a few feet from them.
They made it back to his apartment with her dignity intact, and barely had the door closed behind them before she started undressing him. This time, they at least made it back to the bedroom. They did not make love, but it felt dangerously close to it.
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She gave up trying to hide it from Mark. Mark knew, even if he didn't know the details. Celine would leave whenever Mark or the house became too unbearable. Sometimes she'd leave when she'd been left alone for too long. Other times, she'd leave when she couldn't stand another minute of his noise. She began driving her car halfway, parking it in a garage, and taking a cab the rest of the way. Some days they'd stay in, and Will would cook for her. He liked to watch her bathe, and she liked to indulge him. They'd drink coffee or brandy and listen to music while he told stories from his travels. And then they'd make love.
Other days, he'd take her out to somewhere new. He knew so many places, and was friends with so many people that he could take her nearly anywhere without spending more than $20. They'd drink too much, and dance, and eat food from places she'd never even heard of before. And then they'd go back to his place and have sex.
She didn't want it to end. But it had to. She waited as long as she could to face that fact, but she couldn't wait any longer. They were in his small bed together, still tangled around one another as they tried to decide if their night was over or not.
"Mark's hired a detective," Celine said finally. It wasn't the right time to tell him, but there hadn't been a right time. Not ever.
"Fuck," Will said, his entire body tensing at her words. "When?"
"Last week, I think," she said. "I don't know if he meant to or not, but Mark invited him over while I was home yesterday."
For the first time since they'd started seeing each other, Celine was scared. She didn't know what Mark was capable of, or what he might do to either of them when he learned the full truth.
Suddenly, Will sat up to better look at her. "Run away with me," he said.
Celine couldn't believe what she was hearing. "What?" she asked.
"Tonight," Will said. "We'll go somewhere nobody can find us. Just us."
He smiled, so hopeful, and Celine did not know what to do. "Will," she said. "We can't just…" Just what? She didn't know.
"We'll get in the car, and just drive. Start somewhere new. Just us," he said. He had so many things in his apartment — valuable things from all over the world. And he was willing to just leave them all behind. For her.
"We can't do that," Celine said, sitting up as well.
"Why not?" Will asked.
Celine did not have an answer. She didn't even have a bad answer. "Where would we go?" she asked.
"Anywhere," Will said. "Throw a dart at a map, and we'll go there!"
Staying with Mark any longer wasn't an option, but she knew this was not the correct way to deal with it either. "Not tonight," she said. "I don't have any money, and if we just run away tonight, you won't either. What do you think we'd live on?"
She could see him getting desperate, and for the first time, she wished she could make him stop. But he was still the same broken, damaged thing he'd always been, and whatever it was that had broken him was stopping her powers from working on him.
"Then when?" he asked.
Celine thought, for a long time. "How long," she started, still trying to piece her thoughts into order, "would it take you to get your finances in order? If we left tonight, wouldn't you lose your pension?"
"Easy fix," Will assured her. He picked up her hand in his and kissed the inside of her wrist. "You're worrying about the wrong things. Focus on the important details."
"I…" She shook her head and pulled away from him. "I shouldn't be here. We both agreed that we shouldn't see one another again, and…"
And in a moment of weakness, she'd broken that agreement. It was an agreement he'd never wanted to make in the first place, and when she came back, he was all too eager to pick back up where they'd left off.
She stood up and slid into his dressing gown as she walked toward the window. It looked out onto the street below, and if she stood at just the right angle, she could see through a gap between the curtain and the window frame. What she saw on the street turned her blood cold.
"Will," she said gravely. "I was followed. I know that car."
Will got up abruptly. He got close to Celine, careful not to bump the curtains as he looked through the same gap she was.
"Only two kinds of people hire private dicks to tail people," Will said.
Celine nodded. She doubted Mark was looking for blackmail material. He controlled every penny that crossed her fingers. He was looking for the man he intended to kill. She quickly backed away from the window, sliding away from Will and toward her clothes on the floor.
"We have to leave tonight," Will said, rushing to do the same.
Celine looked up at him. "How?" she asked. "He's right out there."
"Call the police," Will said. "Report a burglar casing the building. When he's distracted, we run."
She nodded, finished getting dressed, and ran to the phone while Wilford grabbed a few items of clothing and anything of value that could fit into a suitcase and be sold. She watched him while she talked to the police, hating that she was the reason he would look at some of his beautiful things and mourn not being able to take them with him. But he mourned quickly, moved on, and stuffed two suitcases full of anything that might help them.
She watched the street from the window, each minute passing like days until finally the red and blue lights of an approaching police cruiser began to bounce off the building walls outside. They pulled up behind the detective's car, and she waited until the officers approached him.
"They're here," she said, already rushing for the front door.
Will picked up both suitcases. He took one more look around his apartment and left without a word.
Celine knew this plan had been a mistake.
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