He stiffened in his seat for a second, then relaxed, throwing an arm over the back of his chair. “My sister died.”
My eyes met his across the table. I wanted to take his hand and comfort him, but he didn’t look like he needed any comforting. He’d said it methodically, like he was reciting someone else’s story.
“She was Couture’s editor in chief. Was in charge of Gary and Ava.”
“Grayson,” I corrected.
“Whatever. After what happened, Mathias and I couldn’t really look at them without remembering…”
“Her,” I finished for him.
He nodded, taking a sip of his coffee and looking outside to the quiet side street. An older Asian woman crouched down to pet an even older dog. Its owner smiled at her petulantly, but kept texting with the hand that wasn’t holding the leash. The world seemed so cold all of a sudden, and hugging Célian became a physical need—a necessity, rather than an act of affection.
“It was my fault.” He cleared his throat, flipping his wrist to check his Rolex. I’d never seen him like this before—opening up while completely shutting down. His eyes were anywhere but on me, but the rest of his face was tense and strong.
He didn’t want to break.
But something told me the version of him I knew was already beyond cracked.
“How?” I whispered, trying to coax him with my eyes, which he couldn’t even meet.
“That’s why everything is a complete clusterfuck, Judith. It was my fault. Suffice it to say I killed her—much like I killed my parents’ relationship. And then it’s come to all this because my father finally decided he’d had enough and retaliated—stuck his cock in my fiancée’s mouth three days after the funeral. Apparently all it took to bed my fiancée was a Parisian weekend and a broken fiancé who didn’t want to fuck her because he was too depressed to scrape himself off of the bed that weekend.”
I bit down on the curse that threatened to slip out of my mouth.
“I broke off the engagement at first. Up until then, Lily and I had been a real couple. But then I figured, part of why Mathias did that was because he was getting weaker. He’d had several heart attacks, and he knew he was going to pass the president’s seat to me. He couldn’t stomach the idea of me doing a better job than him, making more money. At the same time, my father has never been a newsman. He’s just a businessman who got very lucky. He knew the merger between LBC and Newsflash Corp would make me an unstoppable force, so killing my engagement and shitting all over my career plans was the perfect two-birds-one-stone scenario for him.
“For that reason alone, I agreed to take Lily back, but in a very different capacity. Come August, we will get married, and I will inherit most of her family’s business. First technically, and then when her father steps down from his official duties, also officially. She will have nothing but a personal trainer to fuck and an empty existence to maintain, with one miserable thing going for her—she will be married to the asshole all her preppy Manhattan friends had wanted when we were growing up.”
Tears shimmered in my eyes, and I didn’t want to blink, knowing they would freefall the minute I let them. So this was why he was marrying Lily. To spite his dad. To spite himself. To take what he thought he deserved from a horrible situation.
My crucial teenage years had come and gone without a mother. I’d almost resented her, in a selfish, weird way—like she’d had a hand in not being alive anymore, like she could have fought a little harder against her disease. But I’d never known how it would feel not to be wanted by my parents. They’d always loved me, and hard. They weren’t rich or powerful or even mystifying in the way the Laurents were. But they’d made me feel so important. It always felt like it was us against the world. Even now, with Dad being sick, we had a bond that defied death—the type in which I felt treasured, even by those who weren’t alive.
I grabbed Célian’s hand and brought it to my face, kissing his palm like Phoenix had done to me. Intimately. Devastatingly. Warmly. We were out in the open, and it was downright outrageous, but he didn’t pull away. He stared at me, a little confused, his mouth parting. Some of the menace left his face, and that was worth the embarrassment of doing something I shouldn’t have.
“What happened to your sister? How did she…?”
“Judith Humphry?” A pudgy man in a wrinkly, mud-colored suit appeared in front of our table. Célian withdrew his hand from mine and straightened, standing to introduce both of us.
We all sat down, and I wiped my eyes quickly. For the next forty-five minutes, I watched Célian as he grilled the guy like he wasn’t the one doing us a huge favor, but vice versa. I asked a lot of questions, too, but in the end, it was Célian who coaxed him to come speak on air. He was relentless, charming, and extremely convincing. Finn Samson was worried for his job—and rightly so—but Célian spoke to his heart, reminding him of his morals and all the holocaust-surviving pensioners who had lost so much money.