Page 126 of Where the Snakes Sleep

Not forgiving.

Not rationalizing anybody else’s choices.

Just angry.

20

Ryan

I wake up angry.

Not the spectacular kind of anger that had burned through me yesterday, hot enough to keep my hands shaking and my thoughts ricocheting from one betrayal to another until I could barely tell which part hurt most, but something steadier, a banked heat sitting beneath my ribs before I even open my eyes. For several seconds, I lie beneath the unfamiliar duvet and stare at the strip of morning light cutting around the curtains, disoriented enough to wonder why my entire body aches and why my throat feels scraped raw, and then the day before returns in one ugly rush—the wall, the journal, Nadia, eight-year-old Camille waiting for a mother who would never come home, Alberte running, Camille lying to me, Camille admitting that he saw me as an opportunity before I had even unpacked my suitcase.

My anger settles comfortably back into place.

Good.

I can work with angry.

Angry is considerably more useful than the other emotions waiting underneath it.

I roll onto my side and immediately see the bag beside the nightstand, exactly where I left it last night. The zipper remains closed. Nobody has touched it. I know that because, before eventually passing out sometime well after midnight, I tucked one of the zipper pulls beneath the strap in a stupid little arrangement that would have shifted if someone opened it. It is still exactly where I left it.

Camille kept his promise.

Naturally, that irritates me too.

I flop onto my back and drag both hands over my face. “This is going to be exhausting.” My voice sounds rough in the otherwise silent room.

There is no response from beyond the door, no polite knock to tell me breakfast is waiting, no carefully worded inquiry into whether I slept, no footsteps hovering in the hallway because Camille has apparently taken my demand for space literally enough that I cannot even resent him for violating it.

He’s probably downstairs somewhere.

I become hyperaware of the quiet beneath me, listening for evidence of him moving through the estate until, eventually, there is the faint closing of a cabinet somewhere on the first floor.

I stay in bed another twenty minutes purely because I refuse to let the sound of another person living in his own house determine when I get up, which is so childish that I become annoyed with myself too, then finally surrender because I desperately need coffee and my stomach has begun making increasingly dramatic noises about the fact that I barely ate yesterday.

The shower helps some.

By the time I scrub the last remnants of plaster dust from behind my ears and watch grayish water spiral toward the drain, my thoughts have slowed enough that I can think about something other than what I want to throw at Camille’s head. I dress in sweatpants and one of the loose shirts I packed, then stop in front of the bedroom door with my hand wrapped around the knob.

My pulse speeds up because I guess my body hasn’t received the memo that we’ve been betrayed.

Evidently, my hormones are unionized separately from my dignity.

I open the door and find the hallway empty, then venture downstairs, hearing Camille before I even reach the kitchen. The low murmur of French drifts through the silent halls.

Camille stands beside the island with his back partly toward me, one hand resting against the counter while he speaks quietly into his phone. He has dressed down by his standards, though Camille’s version of casual is dark trousers and a charcoal sweater pushed up over his forearms. It’s rude how hot he is.

His voice cuts off mid-sentence the moment I step into the kitchen. The phone stays pressed to his ear, but his attention snaps to me like a physical thing. His eyes track my movement from the doorway to the counter—a quick sweep that takes in my rumpled shirt, the way I’m holding my shoulders, and the fact I haven’t bothered with shoes. Then his gaze fixes on my face, and something in it shifts. I watch the exact moment concern flickers behind his eyes—a tightening at the corners, a slight softening of his mouth. He does nothing with it. Doesn’t speak it, doesn’t move toward me. Just lets it sit there, visible and unused.

He says something into the phone, ends the call, and sets it down on the marble with a quiet click.

“Bonjour.”

I don’t answer, just stare at him until he looks away first.

I turn toward the coffee machine. On the counter beside it sits an empty mug. Yesterday he would have had my coffee ready and waiting, full and hot. Today he’s decided even that small gesture might count as crossing a line.