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“You look fine. And anyway, we should get going.”
Reluctantly, I follow her to the driveway, where a tinted black sedan is waiting for us, complete with a uniformed chauffeur who opens the doors for us and bows.
“Ms. Zakharov,” he greets, his head dipping low.
“Thank you, Giovanni,” she says. “The Oval Room, please.”
The chauffeur’s gaze skims over me with disinterest. The moment I follow Celine inside the sedan, the door closes on me. Celine presses a button to her side, and the partition between the driver’s compartment and ours rolls up before Giovanni has even climbed into the vehicle.
“I have to say: this life suits you.” She arches a brow, so I rush to add, “I mean that as a compliment, by the way.”
“Good to know.”
“Was it easy?” I ask. “Adjusting to all this, I mean.”
Celine looks me dead in the eye. “Nothing was easy, Taylor. Everything was a struggle. Everything was a fight. I went from having a mother, a father, a sister, and my health, to losing them all in one swoop.”
“You could have come with us,” I blurt before I can think better of it. I don’t want to trigger a fight, but I also don’t want to have to bite my tongue all the time with her.
There’s too much we’re leaving unsaid.
She raps her nails on the clutch in her lap. “There were days when I wished I had.” Her gaze drifts to me and then out of the tinted window. “Like I said: it wasn’t easy.”
“If you don’t want to talk about it…”
“No.” She suddenly looks at me. “Let’s talk about it. We might as well. You want to know why I chose to stay even after it was obvious that Ilarion’s only interest in me was as a pawn in his game?”
It’s a blunt and unforgiving way of framing the question, but I appreciate her transparency. Somehow, I wasn’t expecting it from this new Celine. She seemed to have turned into the kind of woman who pretends everything is always perfect.
“Yes.”
She nods. “I guess when it comes down to it, I chose to stay for myself. Because I loved him. And I suppose I thought that if I loved him hard enough, he would eventually love me in return.”
“I…I admire your confidence…” I mumble, mostly because I don’t know what else to say.
Celine sighs. “You think I’m dumb?”
“No! No.”
“Yes, you do. I can see it in your eyes. It’s okay. I was an idiot. I was never confident, just naïve and in love. I had the chance to be with him, regardless of his feelings for me. I thought that being with him was enough.”
“And was it?”
She shrugs. “It’s the choice I made. There’s no turning back now. Of course, if I’d known then what I know now…I might have chosen differently.”
I frown. My heart rate kicks up. “What do you know now?”
She stretches her silk-sheathed legs out across the seat. She looks like she belongs on the cover of magazines. Too bored for this world.
“That I never stood a chance,” she murmurs. “He could never fall in love with me. Because he was already in love with someone else.”
She glances at me, and for a moment, I wonder if she’s lured me into this vehicle to confront me about the truth of my relationship with Ilarion. She’s finally going to ask me point-blank, and I know that if she does, I will answer her honestly.
So I wait.
I wait for her to ask me the question that will sever our sisterhood forever.
“The worst part…”
