Page 115 of Where the Snakes Sleep

The thought makes my stomach lurch so violently that I press a hand over it.

No.

No, the attraction was real.

It had to be. You can’t fake the way he looks at me. Can you?

Paul did.

The comparison lands so hard I physically recoil.

I told Camille how Paul’s lies reached backward and poisoned every memory that had once felt safe. I told him.

And now my brain is doing it again.

The dinner. Was that because he wanted me? Or because he wanted me to be comfortable in his house?

The first time we fucked. Was that attraction? Or opportunity?

Did he invite me over knowing that if he could get me into bed, then eventually I might trust him enough to let him into the cottage? I think of the way our arrangement began—no promises, no relationship, just sex.

Perfect for someone who needed access without emotional responsibility.

My eyes burn again.

“Stop it.”

I press my palms against my temples.

Every memory keeps coming. Camille showing up when I needed something. Camille finding reasons to stay nearby. Camille encouraging me to come to his estate. Camille slowly becoming the first person I called when something went wrong.

Was that all intentional?

Did he manufacture that?

The word slips into place, and suddenly nothing else fits quite as well.

Manufactured.

Our whole relationship has been a series of circumstances nudged carefully into position until I believed I had chosen every step.

My throat closes.

I told him that I hated being manipulated. I told him I needed control over my own life.

He knew why.

And what if, the entire time, he was guiding me anyway?

I think about how stubborn I was when he offered practical help. How quickly I rejected anything that made me feel beholden. Then somehow sex became the one thing I accepted from him without questioning once why he was offering it.

Because sex didn’t feel like dependence.

It felt like freedom.

He probably realized that making me need him wouldn’t work, so he made me want him instead.

Was that it?