Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 63

Chapter 63

I picked up her old phone and turned it on.

Then I turned it off again.

It was not right. Whatever was on that phone was hers. Her messages. Her history. Her private life before all of this. I had no business going through it regardless of how much wanted to know she was safe.

I put it down.

Stood up.

Walked to the balcony and stood in the night air and looked out at the city and thought about Julian.

Specifically, I thought about Julian looking at Celeste in that black dress.

She had come out of the wardrobe and she had been wearing it and I had felt the entire functioning of my brain temporarily suspend. And she had gone home in it. Walking through that front door in it, with her heels clicking and her hips doing what they did, and Julian was going to see her.

Julian, who still believed she was his.

The rage that moved through me was disproportionate and I knew it was disproportionate and I stood on the balcony and breathed through it.

I had barely blinked when Seraphine started sleeping with Julian. I had been hurt, yes. I had been angry. But not like this. Not this particular heat that had no good name for itself and did not respond to reason.

I went back inside.

I lay down.

I told myself that worrying accomplished nothing. That Celeste was a grown woman who had survived two years in a marriage to a man like Julian and had come out of it not broken but sharpened. That she knew what she was doing. That she had a plan and she was executing it and she did not need me pacing hotel rooms on her behalf.

I closed my eyes.

Then I sat up again.

One to two weeks away from her.

That had been my assessment of the situation and I stood by it as a tactical decision. But I had made the assessment before I had properly considered something.

Celeste, before all of this, had been a woman who dressed the way her husband told her to and went where her husband told her to and wanted what her husband approved of wanting. That woman had a particular kind of containment built into her, a lid on everything.

That lid was off now.

I had helped take it off.

And now I was proposing to leave her alone in a house with Julian for two weeks. Julian, who had presumably noticed that something had shifted in his wife. Julian, who was not a stupid man. Julian, who would do whatever it took to keep what he believed was his.

Then I said, “I cannot stay away from her for two weeks.”

He paused for a moment.

“Who are we talking about here?” Sparrow asked. “Your wife, or the woman you fucked in the car?”

“I already told you,” I said, my voice going flat. “I do not have a wife anymore. Do not bring up that whore’s name unless it is absolutely necessary.”

“My apologies,” he said quietly. “It will not happen again. But I do need to know who you mean.”

I exhaled. “Yes. The woman from the car.”

He paused for longer this time.

“That is easy enough to solve,” He responded finally, and I could hear the smile in it even though he would never actually smile while we were discussing operational matters. “I can get you to her in disguise. Handyman. Delivery guy. Plumber. No one would know. On paper you would be in a meeting across the city.”

I smiled at the ceiling.

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