“I can’t stay here,” I said.
“No.”
The answer came too quickly. I looked at him.
“No?”
“Your reputation is damaged,” he said. “Not destroyed—not yet. But damaged enough that the administration will keep watching, and you cannot live beneath that kind of attention forever.”
“You sound very calm about ruining my life.”
“I am calm because it is not the life you wanted.”
“It was still mine.”
“Yes,” he said. “And I am sorry for that.”
The apology was so quiet I almost missed it. Vincent Moreau did not offer sorry easily. Perhaps he barely believed in the word. But there it stood between us in the mist, with nowhere left to hide.
I looked away first. “What are you offering?”
“France.”
I turned to him slowly. “France?Do you see the irony?”
“Yes. That’s why I chose it.”
“You want me to run away to France with you?”
“No.”
I blinked. For once, he had surprised me.
Vincent’s gaze remained on the water. “I want you to go where Céline Martin can die quietly, and Selena Martin can decide whether she wants to live.”
The cliff wind moved between us.
“And you?”
His mouth curved faintly, but there was no triumph in it. “I’ll follow.”
“You would leave Bellamont, your lab, your reputation—for me?”
He looked at me then. “My reputation has always bored me.”
“Your family? I doubt they would approve of you running off to France with your student.”
“My family has waited years for me to become a scandal. It would be generous of me to finally give them satisfaction.”
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it. Vincent watched my face as though the sound mattered more than anything else.
“What would I do in France?” I asked, though the answer had already begun to take shape inside me.
“Study art.”
“I don’t even have a proper portfolio.”
“You do.”
