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“Was she?”
I stop short. “You have no right to ask me what Celine was to me. Or what she is to me now.”
Her mouth opens and closes without saying anything. “You made a promise to my mother,” she says at last.
Ah, of course. The promise.
A promise I should never have made. It’s not the type of thing that would usually bind me. But the woman was dying. And she loved her daughters in a way that my parents never loved Mila or me. How could I refuse? It felt unnecessarily cruel to deny an innocent woman some peace of mind right before she died.
But there were days over the last five years when I felt that promise weigh on me so heavily my shoulders ached from the pressure. From the responsibility of it.
So much so that I couldn’t quite keep it from my eyes whenever I looked at Celine.
* * *
“What are you thinking of when you look at me like that?” she asked from her bed one day.
I’d come in to check on her before she began yet another session of physical therapy. “Like what?”
“I don’t know how to describe it,” she sighed. “There’s just this…regret in your eyes. Resentment, maybe.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“‘He says defensively.’”
“Celine.”
“Ilarion,” she snapped right back. I preferred those days. The days when she was full of fire and fight and everything pissed her off, including me. The days when she got so quiet, she seemed to cave in on herself—that was when I knew I needed to worry.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I told her. “I don’t look at you in any particular way.”
“Don’t you think that’s a problem?”
“No.”
“I can leave,” she said quietly. “I have a house to go back to.”
“This is your home,” I snapped through gritted teeth. “If there are things you need, make a list and I’ll Mila or Dima pick them up for you.”
Celine sighed. “Is that it, then?” she asked. “You’re angry that my recovery is taking so long. You resent the fact that you have to take care of me.”
I glared at her, trying to find my humanity underneath all the anger.
“It’s okay for you to say so,” she added quickly and quietly. “You’re entitled to your feelings. I know I’m a burden. You wouldn’t be out of line admitting it.”
I could see the tears brimming beneath her lashes. She wanted to cry, but she was keeping it at bay for my benefit. She didn’t want to manipulate me into giving her the answer she wanted to hear. Of course, if that were really the case, she would never have asked for it in the first place.
“I made your mother a promise just before she died,” I told her, because that’s the only thing I could think of to say. “I promised her I would look after you and keep you safe.”
Celine frowned. “Is that the only reason you’re doing this?”
“Fucking hell,” I snarled, jerking up to my feet. “What the fuck do you want from me, Celine? I’m here, aren’t I? I’m here.”
I left the room so she could cry in peace. But years later, I’d look back and remember that conversation as the moment I stopped thinking of Celine as a pawn and started thinking of her as a person.
* * *
“You made a promise,” Taylor reminds me, catapulting me back to the present. “Or have you forgotten?”
