Jacques parted and closed his lips several times before landing on: “You have entered a fashion competition?”
“Y-yes.”
“Alright.” He shook his head. “I don’t—”
“That’s not all…” Celine swallowed with some difficulty, as if the words had lodged in her throat like fish bones. She could spin verses when she was lying, why couldn’t she be as good at telling the truth? “I have entered with Bastien…as my model.”
She waited for him to process everything, but every second that ticked by seemed to take the oxygen in the car along with it. Her lungs strained with each uncomfortable breath. Fortunately, Jacques opened the door again. To her dismay, he stepped out.
“Bastien?” he echoed flatly before striding away.
Celine followed after him. The driveway stood still and soundless in the late hour. Only her heels clattered on the pavement. Wearily, Celine eyed the lit windows, hoping, praying, begging and pleading whatever forces were at work to prevent anyone in the house from standing near the glass panes, listening in on them.
“You have entered a fashion competition with Bastien?” Jacques repeated, turning sharply when Celine placed a hand on his shoulder. “Bastien.”
“Well…his mother was a designer,” she offered to lighten the mood.
Jacques’s gloom did not disperse. “You must think me a fool.”
“Jacques, I do not.”
“You don’t?” It must have dawned on him then what she had meant earlier, because he continued: “You just admitted that for the past two months every time you told me you were with my sister, you were dallying with my brother instead.”
A warped sound left her throat at that. “I wasn’tdallying,” Celine choked out.
“Then what were you doing?”
“I told you—sewing!”
Biting down on his lip, Jacques started moving around in an agitated circle. “With Bastien.”
“Oh,mon dieu.” Celine threw up her hands and decided to simply stare at him.
“You are being serious,” Jacques said after a beat. “What, there was no one else available?”
For once in her life, she genuinely wished the earth would split open and swallow her whole.
“Look,” Celine tried again, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Bastien found out by accident. Offering to make him my model was the only way I could make sure he wouldn’t tell anyone.”
“Anyone being me.”
“No, Jacques—I wanted to tell you, believe me—”
“Then why didn’t you?” His voice was soft—Celine didn’t think it ever went above his usual register, though she assumed he was straining now to keep it level. His expression, however, had significantly morphed into one stiff with suspicion.
Celine chewed on her lip anxiously. “I didn’t think you would understand.”
“AndBasdoes?” Of course. That was what had hurt him most. Moving to stand by the only windows that weren’t lit up, Jacques ran a hand through his hair, distressing the gelled strands. “My brother plays with anything he thinks will amuse him for a few hours, Celine.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“He cares for nothing.”
“I know…” Celine’s brows furrowed. “I know Bastien says things that—”
“It’s not only what he says. It’s why. You know what he thinks of our relationship. He is never not trying to prove we are only together because our parents arranged it so. And he—” Jacques cut himself off.
“He what?”
