Chapter 66: A Courtesy, A Threat or I am Dirtier

He stared at her.

She rested both hands over her knee, still cheerful. "Because I’m starting to think the first and second times didn’t quite take."

Bradley’s expression went hard, and both boys stopped looking at Celeste for the same fraction of a second.

None of them asked what she meant; they knew what.

Her smile grew another notch. "Most people touch the stove once and understand fire. Some need twice." Her eyes moved over Bradley almost fondly. "You somehow made it to attempt number three still thinking — "maybe Damon won’t burn me this time"."

Bradley’s fingers tightened on his phone. "I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"Really?"

"Really."

She watched him a few seconds. "Oh, Bradley. You’re still terrible at that."

His jaw moved once.

"There." She pointed lightly at his face. "That. You push your tongue against the inside of your cheek when you’re angry and trying to sound calm. You were doing it the second time, too."

The room went noticeably quieter. Bradley’s eyes sharpened.

She continued before he could decide whether answering made it worse. "Your right eyebrow moves first when you’re lying about something you already know I know. Then you drop your voice, because you think bored sounds more believable."

Bradley stopped pressing his tongue to his cheek.

Celeste grinned. "Better."

’He’s going to think about that in the shower tonight. He’s going to stand there wondering what else I’ve noticed. The answer is everything, Bradley. The answer has always been everything.’

The two boys traded another quick glance. She’d always sort of liked those two — not personally, God no, but they were useful around Bradley, because Bradley led with pride while those two occasionally remembered consequences were real.

"I know what you’re planning after your little moment with Damon."

Bradley’s face barely changed

One of the other boys jumped in before he could. "There isn’t a plan."

Celeste turned to him. "You deleted the first group chat twelve minutes after the tour ended."

Their faces went blank.

Bradley slowly lowered his phone.

"Which would’ve been slightly smarter," she went on pleasantly, "if the three of you hadn’t immediately made a new one. Same three people. Different name. Terrible name, by the way — I genuinely expected more creativity from men planning revenge."

The boy near the door swallowed.

Bradley’s voice dropped. "What exactly do you think you know?"

Celeste looked back at him. "Enough."

The word came out soft. Bradley didn’t relax.

’Good. Don’t. The day you relax around me is the day I’ve lost interest, and trust me, you do not want me to lose interest. Interest is what’s keeping this a conversation and your whole secret life under the covers.’

She could have told them more and even quoted the first message or said exactly when the second boy floated the idea of digging into Damon’s past, or mentioned the specific name one of them had typed and Bradley had immediately told him never to type again.

That would’ve been fun.

She uncrossed her legs and stood, smoothing her skirt with both hands.

"I don’t care what little revenge fantasy you’ve been building because Damon embarrassed you in front of some freshmen. Maybe you want to make him look bad. Maybe you want to poke at things you were already told to leave alone. Maybe the three of you have talked yourselves into believing that because there are four of you now with that idiot at the door, an old bad idea has matured into a strategy." One of the boys stiffened.

She let her eyes rest on him half a second too long, and a little color left his face. Bradley noticed and shifted slightly into her line of sight.

Interesting.

She looked back at Bradley. "What matters is you’re going to stop."

Bradley laughed once, dry. "And if I don’t?"

For the first time since she’d walked in, Celeste looked genuinely surprised, she smiled. "Oh. I like that question."

She walked toward him.

She was much shorter. Bradley had height and weight on her enough to make the difference almost comical. Somehow he still didn’t look bigger as she came.

’That’s the trick, boys. Size is a number. Fear is a feeling. And I’ve never once needed the first to produce the second.’

She stopped a comfortable distance away and looked up at him with the same bright eyes the students outside had been staring at fifteen minutes ago: "Because the first two times, you got Damon."

His face moved before he could stop it, some memory dragging through it, the other boys remembered too — one looked away completely.

Her voice stayed almost sweet. "This time, it’ll be me you’re dealing with."

Nobody laughed.

Bradley held her eyes, and she could nearly watch him doing the math; the Bellamy money, Bellamy lawyers and Bellamy connections. That was where his mind went first, because Bradley still had a very ordinary imagination when he got nervous, and he was thinking far too small.

Money wasn’t what made her dangerous.

Everyone in this room had money.

She knew everything there was to know about them.

Most of all, she had patience, Bradley should’ve remembered that from the first two times Damon dealt with him. She had no intention of handing him a third chance to learn it through Damon.

"You’re threatening me," Bradley said.

Her nose wrinkled. "Threatening sounds so dramatic."

"Then what would you call this?"

"A courtesy." One boy actually looked at her, she smiled at him too. "I’m here before you’ve done anything stupid enough to become difficult. That’s nice of me. If you’d already done it, we’d be having a very different conversation."

Something in how she said it made the boy nearest the door shift his weight.

Bradley’s eyes went to the phone in her hand. "Did Damon send you?"

That pleased her enormously.

She glanced down at the phone like the question reminded her she was holding one, checked the screen, smiled at whatever was there, and started for the door.

Bradley stared after her. "That’s it? You break into my room, threaten me, and leave?"

She paused with one hand almost on the handle. "Oh, please. I knocked."

"You forced the door open."

"Your minion was being rude."

She turned slowly back around, and the smile came with her. Bradley immediately looked like he wished she’d just left. She leaned lightly against the doorframe, phone against her thigh, and made sure all three of them were listening.

"Actually — let me let you in on a secret."

Nobody interrupted.

Her smile went almost unbearably sweet. "Damon doesn’t know I’m here."

Bradley’s face changed. She watched it happen. "He doesn’t know about your little chat, either. He doesn’t know what you were considering. And if the three of you suddenly develop some common sense, he never has to."

Bradley’s eyes narrowed, and that was probably the moment he finally understood. This wasn’t Damon sending someone to warn him. Damon hadn’t even noticed there was anything to warn about.

Celeste had... on her own.

She pushed off the doorframe.

"The first two times, you made yourself Damon’s problem." The smile faded just enough to make the rest land colder. "Don’t become mine. It won’t be as pleasant as broken bones and bruised faces. I am dirtier than that."

Then she opened the door and walked out.

Behind her, nobody said a word until her footsteps were long gone.

She was halfway down the corridor before the smile finally dropped, and what sat under it was quieter, colder, and entirely her own business.

’He drove out of Blackwood with a target on his back and didn’t even know it. Four of them. Three, on his first day, and he was too busy catching admissions staff and taking photos in dead classrooms to notice a single one. Idiot. Beautiful, careless, impossible idiot.

’Fine. I’ll notice for both of us. I always have.’

She looked down at the map on her phone.

The other dot hadn’t moved.

Good.

He was home.

__

A/N: Crazy and protective stalker😂😂