Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 225

Chapter 225

PAT

I sat at my desk long after everyone else had gone home, staring at a spreadsheet I had not actually read in twenty minutes, my mind stuck on the same question circling over and over like water going down a drain.

Why had Kingsley left like that? He had seemed happy here, genuinely happy, the way people are when they have found something they did not expect to find. He had not even collected his final paycheck, and people who quit jobs in a hurry usually still want the money owed to them. He had not.

I picked up the resignation letter from where I had set it down, his signature at the bottom in that neat, deliberate handwriting I had memorized over the past few days, and I read his name like it might give me answers if I stared at it long enough.

Was it me? Was it because we had slept together? Had there been someone else in his life this whole time, some girlfriend or fiancée I knew nothing about, and the guilt had caught up to him and chased hip out the door? But that did not sit right either, because if there was guilt to assign, it was not mine to carry.

He was the one who had called me. He was the one who had asked for my help. He had been inside me, his mouth on my skin, his fingers in my hair, his cock buried so deep I had felt him in my throat, and I had not asked him for a single promise afterward. I had not asked him to take responsibility for me, had not asked for a ring or a title or a conversation about where this was going.

I was a grown woman. I knew how to have a moment without turning it into a referendum on my worth. Still, if I was honest with myself, some small stubborn part of me had hoped it might turn into something more, and that hope was exactly what made his silence sting.

I thought back further, trying to find the thread I was missing, and landed on something he had said right before he disappeared. Watch your back. Seraphine is out to get you. I had not thought much of it at the time. Now it sat in my chest like a stone. How would Kingsley know anything about Seraphine, let alone know her well enough to warn me about her specifically? Was that why he had left? Did his disappearance have something to do with her?

It was seven at night. The lab had closed hours ago. I should have already been curled up on my couch with a glass of wine and a book, trying to forget the way his hands had felt on my waist. But I had stayed. I had stayed because I could not stop thinking about him, about the way he had left. And now Seraphine was waiting in the parking lot, talking about him?

My head was pounding by the time I made it down to the parking lot. Seraphine was already there, leaning against her car in a red dress that fit her like it had been poured on, her makeup flawless, her hair falling in perfect waves Beautiful, the way she always was, the way that made it so easy for people to forget what was underneath. She crossed her arms the moment I got close, looking me over with the particular contempt she reserved for people she had already decided did not matter

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