Chapter 26 - Strays
Chapter 26: Strays
CW(s): Strong Language, Implied History of Sexual Assault
It was the first time she was able to attend one of these Dorien-sanctioned outings in normal clothes. Well, semi-normal. He’d advised her to wear something “edgy” or “urban,” whatever the hell that meant. She’d opted for the high-waisted black leather skirt Nana got her for her last birthday, a snug turtleneck, her best black coat, and knee-high boots to match. When the first thing Dorien did was gawk at her hips, she figured, with growing revulsion, that she’d understood the assignment. Upon arriving, she was pleased to find that again, she had managed to aesthetically wiggle herself right into the aesthetic.
Maybe it was the wealthy Lambourne blood that gave her such a nose for fitting in at these gatherings. The thought made her irrationally angry, even for her standards.
The converted arena went up in another bout of raucous applause as the Pokemon she vaguely recognized as Vilyga, a grotesque humanoid thing with a severe case of scoliosis and an alarming lack of nose, launched itself at its opponent, a gorgeous yet vicious avian type Pokemon that she remembered being called Septulent. The vilyga enclosed its horrendous underbite around the septulent’s wing, causing it to release a pained shriek as both toppled to the ground in a mess of wrinkled skin and black feathers.
Odette felt Dorien’s body press into hers as he leaned forward to yell along with the wall of people that surrounded them. He had just enough pull in this crowd to get them right up next to the cage. “The best view in the house,” he’d called it. She was more inclined to call it an ensured trap. Or a fire hazard. She was completely boxed in at all angles; strangers flanking her sides, a fence in front of her nose, and Dorien coiled possessively around her from behind.
She felt relatively safe knowing Ange was close by; in his ball and shielded from the horrors before her. She might have elected to have him out, like some of the other attendees had with their more rowdy partners, but Ange was incapable of being subtle. He’d gawked at the first set of fighting blood ‘mon like the term “act natural” went against every aspect of his higher thought, giving her no choice but to hide him away in his ball until there was a break in the gory action.
As much as Odette tried to refrain from doing so, she would occasionally catch herself scanning the festering crowd for a head of silver, or a set of icy blue eyes to meet. Her heart would clench on search, and a part of it would subsequently disintegrate when she came up short.
She didn’t know why. She didn’t want to see him. Or, rather, that’s what she told herself.
When Dorien took a moment to lean away from her to speak with one of his Lansat groupies, she snuck a glance at RotomPhone. She’d yet to dismiss the notification alerting her to the last message from Valentin. It was reckless of her to have it showing so close to the enemy, but she couldn’t bring herself to get rid of it. Or open the message itself.
Are you going to the battle event tonight?
He knew about this gathering. Whether he was invited or not was a story she wasn’t prepared to find out yet. However, that wasn’t why she’d opened the phone.
Pulling up her camera app proved fruitless. The DISABLED pop up greeted her just as it had when she tried to open it upon arriving at this degenerate party. Equally as upsetting and slightly more unnerving was the lack of signal bars in the upper right hand corner of the screen. A blood-curdling NO SIGNAL sat in their place.
Even if she wanted to respond to Valentin—which she didn’t—there was no way to. Calls to the authorities should still be able to go through, but if Team Enigma had gone the lengths to figure out how to remotely disable every camera phone that entered the premises of one of their parties, then she wouldn’t put it past them to have an anti-cop-calling failsafe in place. She wasn’t keen on testing that theory herself.
She wanted to keep browsing through, Dorien’s arms coming to a noose-like knot around her waist as his head dipped into the crook of her neck had her sliding it back into her purse. Rotom didn’t need to be subjected to such a hideous display.
“Are you having fun?” He spoke directly into her skin, which pebbled up with goosebumps under his growling breath.
“The most,” she replied, the words toxic sludge on her tongue.
The battle soon came to an end, though Odette was too focused on Dorien’s throttling weight on her back to catch who had won. Thankfully, the emcee called for a break, but she had no chance to shove herself into the dispersing crowd before Dorien dragged her back to the set of plush leather couches set up near the arena fence, where his entire entourage was free to lounge and bother the wandering scantily-clad waitresses for more bottles of thousand-euro liquor and glasses of colorful cocktails. She tried to sit herself as far away from the group as she could, forgetting Dorien had a sixth sense for tugging on whatever threads of nerves she had left. He had her snug in his lap before she made it more than a step out of his reach.
This has to be what hell feels like, she thought through the garbled laughter that wrapped its grubby fingers around her head.
Nah, Odile said. There’s a little more fire, a little more brimstone, a lot more darkness, and a whooooole lot more blood. Throw in some ancient horrors, you basically have the old world. She sighed with a sense of longing. Miss it.
Yeah, I think I’d much prefer that over this.
Touché. This guy would give the things I used to fight with a run for their gonads.
I want to say that I don’t believe Dorien is worse than a bunch of ancient eldritch horrors, but then I’d be lying.
Odile’s laugh was quiet, but it was warm enough to rise up over the chill of the eerily jubilant chatter. Odette figured that she would never swallow to the idea of having entire conversations with a demon in her head, but here she was, content with admitting she'd grown used to it. Grown thankful for it, really.
No, Odile was no less certifiable in her ravings, nor was she particularly versed in staying quiet when she should be. But she was a good distraction. She was even good at catering to Odette’s intrusive thoughts. Naturally, Wrath would be skilled at stroking the violent ideas of the girl with severe anger issues.
Maybe they were the perfect partners.
The tea she sipped on was equal parts delicious and repugnant. She wasn’t surprised to find that it was aromatic, perfectly seeped, and just the right temperature. Her dry tongue, however, only tasted steaming sewage as she tossed it back in steady gulps. Being unable to enjoy one of her favorite beverages around him was a new low reached.
She was extricated from Dorien’s lap when he and his friends stood up and sauntered off on the muddled insistence they needed to head out front. Assuming it was something puerile, Odette made no effort to get up and follow, leaving her to the mercy of the 10 other young strangers sitting among their circle of couches. They were all far too invested in the garrulous affairs of kissing each other’s asses and discussing items of an eight-figure bank account nature to notice her sitting by her lonesome; a blessing she did well to not thwart. It was all she’d wanted the entire night; a second by herself to give her wilting façade a break.
Her eyes unwillingly began to skulk around again, moved by the subconscious need to seek out Valentin. The low lighting and densely packed crowd made it almost impossible to tell a head from a tail, and she was beginning to fear that not even silver hair would make him easy to spot. She eventually caught herself in her contradictory state of mind and anchored her eyes onto the couch cushions, deciding they’d be safest there. What she didn’t expect to find was a cell phone, nearly wedged in between two of the cushions. She chanced a subtle peek at the others around her, and when she was certain nobody in the near vicinity was paying attention, she picked it up.
Sitting among the richest citizens in Kalos, she was less than surprised to see it was the newest Applin phone. As she turned it over in her hands, the screen flicked on. Splashed across the glass was a selfie of her and Dorien; the one he’d taken of them during the private jet ride to Gloire, which seemed like years ago now. She was minutely impressed at how content she looked in the photo, with her head resting on Dorien’s shoulder and a diminutive grin in the crook of the left side of her lip. An uninformed party could look at this picture and assume they were a very happy couple.
She was holding Dorien’s phone. It must have fallen out of his pocket, and being that he’d yet to return for it, it was safe to say that he didn’t notice it was missing. Or he just didn’t care yet.
Reflexive thought considered giving it back, but investigative realization overrode it with the understanding that she now had a trove of evidence sitting in her palm. Her fingers slipped into a fugue state, tapping the screen to bring up the pin pad. Starting with the most obvious, she attempted to punch in his birthday (she was ashamed to admit she’d memorized it). When that failed, she tried hers. Another failure. Cycling through the rest of the common pin patterns proved just as fruitless and resulted in the device locking itself for 60 seconds.
“Dammit,” she muttered.
The Cinq-Mars malison for poor timing reared its infuriating little head, with Dorien’s boisterous laughter striking her even over the lively din. In a split second decision, she powered the phone off and slipped it into her purse alongside RotomPhone. There was no time to sit in any regret; just enough to settle into a natural slouch and sip some more of her sewage tea. The noise around her did a fantastic job at eclipsing the sound of her blood pulsing in her ears, and the muted lighting helped mask the way she anxiously dug the toes of her boots into the marble tile.
What the fuck did I just do?
Congratulations! You just stepped into the wonderful world of kleptomania. Don’t make a big deal out of it.
She didn’t know what else she expected from Odile. When Dorien approached to giddily pull her to stand, she gained a prompt understanding of what the Wrath god was getting at. His chipper mien and lack of concern for anything except her arm locking with his was enough to play off of. He was none the wiser to his phone hiding in her purse, and wouldn’t so long as she didn’t lose her cool, or waste any precious mental energy stressing about when he was going to notice.
“We’re leaving?” she asked as she sat her half empty teacup down. “Is the party already over?”
“Yes and no,” he said. “Lionel knows about another party back in the city that’s supposed to be much better, so we’ll be taking a ride.”
Odette had risked a lot agreeing to once again subject herself to the whims of Dorien’s transportation. That had been under the precedent they were attending this party and returning home. Diverging to a different event wasn’t anything she’d planned for, and she felt uneasiness beginning to percolate in her stomach.
“That should be fun,” was all she could manage as he led her through the sea of bodies to the ceiling-high double doors they’d come in from.
In the heat of the ballroom and her stale-tasting tea, her body had forgotten how nippy it was outside. Her outfit was a weak bulwark to the chilly pins that poked through to her skin. She was captivated by the sight of her faint eddying breaths, to the point that she didn’t notice the cars Dorien was leading her toward. She stopped dead when she caught the colors, familiar in the most rankling way, in the outer edges of her vision. Not expecting the abrupt stop, Dorien staggered on her resistant stance, whipping around to see what was holding her up.
“Oh, impressed to see these things again?” he queried with a smirk that asked for a smack.
“We’re not taking a limo?” she replied, fingering his bicep as if he had an intelligence switch hiding somewhere on the muscle.
His squinch was worthy of a homicidal lashing out. “Were you expecting to? I figured a scenic drive would be better for us. I know you’ve never really experienced the speed of cars like these before, since you graciously dodged last time.”
“The odometer on my bike says otherwise.”
“That’s not the same.”
The white Bugatti’s engine bellowed to life, much to Dorien’s audible glee and Odette’s tanking composure. Lionel, in all of his quaffed-headed and sharply dressed pomp, emerged from the vertically raised door and waved them down, veneers blinking on the headlights.
“He’s ready for you two!” he called. “We’re going the back roads so we can get a little speed going.”
As Dorien signaled back, Odette squeezed his arm tighter. If there was ever a time for that intelligence switch to appear, it was now.
“Dorien, it’s going to rain again any second. Didn’t you read the forecast?”
He laughed with the inflection of a man who believed he was invincible. Knowing him, that wasn’t far off.
“I’m a great driver, Doll. I can handle a little rain.”
“If you’d actually read the forecast, you’d have seen it’s not a little rain; it’s a fucking storm.”
“Relax!” The placating hand he raised toward her had the exact opposite effect. “You’re getting yourself worked up over nothing. Get in the car, and I’ll show you you don’t have anything to worry about.”
Except she had everything to worry about. Her life as she knew it was crumpling more and more every day, she was currently operating without a backup, and now she was facing the very real possibility of getting into the same car that nearly killed her and Noel with a torrential downpour looming somewhere off in the night sky. As if to confirm her suspicions, a murmur of thunder sounded from behind the trees covering the mansion’s secluded driveway.
Drawing in her hand, she took a single step back toward the front door.
“No. It’s the limo or a cab. I’m not engaging in your racing games on a night like this.”
Never had she seen a smile vacate somebody’s face so fast. “What?”
“You can go alone. I’m not coming.”
He seemed disoriented by her refusal, pausing to silently sort through whatever thoughts were invading his mind while casting a dumbfounded look over at the Bugatti. When he met her eyes again, he was smiling without an ounce of mirth.
“Are you serious?”
“Limo or cab. Or I’ll walk home.”
“You’re doing this again?” he fumed.
“I’m not doing anything,” she said, razor-sharp stoicism undercutting her words. “I’m giving you my options. Whether or not you take them is your prerogative.”
“You can’t honestly look me in the eye and tell me you’ve never driven your damn bike in the rain? How is this any different?”
“I’ve never done it willingly. But at least I know my driving skills and my vehicle. I can’t say the same for you or your car.”
A hydreigon would have squirmed under the sub-brow chafing glare Dorien gave her. Her hand slid into her purse, brushing past his and her phones to press the release button on Ange’s ball. The chandelure, although nonplussed by the change of scenery, came to a trained and steadfast stop at her side. With his protective presence to ease her, she swallowed down the dread that had overflowed into her mouth.
“Limo. Or cab. Final offer.”
The horn of the Pagani squeaked, making all three of them blench.
“You guys coming or what? We need to get a move on!” shouted Lionel. It was followed up by another honk.
Dorien pressed his lips together, turning back to her like he was building up the suspense for a dire announcement.
“Then I guess you’re walking home, huh?”
She didn’t answer.
“Well. You have fun with that, Doll.”
The sneer he left her with dropped the temperature around her to a subzero point. She forced herself to stand with it until the last tail light of the asshole car trio disappeared down the driveway and through the tunnel of trees. Even after they’d long faded, she remained still, listening to her breaths shallow and pick up pace with the pre-storm air scratching at the back of her throat as she struggled in vain to settle them.
“Are you okay?” Ange asked, his voice mousy.
The shrieking invective she let loose, accompanied by the manic kicking of dust and pebbles, was enough to answer his question. She only stopped when another rumble of thunder, closer and louder this time, snapped her back to her senses.
Okay, Odile enunciated slowly. Before you completely snap, let’s take an inventory of just how fucked we are and go from there.
Dorien had left them stranded with no signal and no immediate means to get home. The mansion seemed to be a few kilometers east of BFE, with the nearest additional sign of civilization nowhere in sight. Ange would need to keep her warm, but with the thunder trekking closer, he wouldn’t be able to when the rain started without risking his health. She could go back inside and try to find a closer means of calling for a car, but that was more than likely to put her back in front of Enigma operatives keen on getting their hands on her now that Dorien had distanced himself.
The spark of positivity within the ensuing crisis was that she’d successfully gotten ahold of Dorien’s phone. If he had any idea, he didn’t let it show.
“We’ll walk until I get a bar or find another house,” she declared on a quaking exhale. “Then I’ll call a ride.”
“But the rain…” Ange muttered.
“I’ll put you back in your ball. You’ll be fine.”
“And you’ll freeze to death!”
She wasn’t going to argue with him, instead taking off down the pavers and letting the contrition chase her all the way to the main road. The further she got from the brightly lit mansion porch, the more her surroundings benighted her. The tree line, running parallel to the road, was too thick to see more than a couple feet past the first layer of trees, and was alive with crickets screeching for the arrival of another helping of rain. They were the type of woods that guaranteed she wouldn’t reemerge if she stepped foot into them, even with a partner like Ange with her.
Before the regret tagged her, the crunching of car wheels wrenched her senses out of their depressive slumber. She and Ange turned just as an unexpected beam of LED light engulfed them. Odette had to raise her arm to avoid immediate blindness.
“Are you sure you want to do that, ma’am?”
Under the protection of her limb, her eyes went wide. Peeking between the gaps in her fingers confirmed what she didn’t want to see.
Valentin. Dressed in a coat that probably dwarfed the cost of her entire outfit and standing near the open driver’s side door of a running SUV she didn’t recognize. He’d always been a sight for sore eyes. In this case, he also had a large hand in that very eyesore.
“You know, shining your brights at somebody without a good reason is widely considered rude,” she twined.
“I’d consider walking off down an unlit road with no phone signal, on the precipice of a deluge, no less, a very good reason.” He sounded far too cool for her liking. “So I’m going to give you an option. You and your partner who’s name I do not know can get in the car now, or we can sit out here in the impending rain until you give up and get in. Your choice.”
“Ange,” Ange greeted rosily with a raised tendril. “It’s just Ange.”
Valentin nodded in acknowledgment. “A pleasure, Ange.”
Through their exchange, Odette began to feel the icy pokes of a drizzle landing on her sleeves. Before he could respond, Ange jolted.
“I definitely vote to get in the car now,” he barked, wrapping that waving tendril around Odette’s arm and trying to pull her toward him. She jerked herself free, thinking with nothing more than her raw contempt for the supposed partner who lied to her.
“I’m not a damsel in distress, Valentin. You don’t need to swoop in to bail me out every time there’s an issue.”
Valentin gaped at her, equal parts astonished and concerned for her intelligence.
“Who gave you the idea that I thought you were a damsel in distress? I’d like to ask them how the back of my hand tastes,” he groused. “If you really wanted to get technical, I’m more your damsel in distress than you are mine.”
“Huh?”
“I enlisted you for help; not the other way around. So ‘bailing you out’ is just my way of keeping up my end of our bargain where you’re doing most of the heavy lifting. Or at least it would be if you responded to my messages.”
Kubrick himself would have commended her for her take on his iconic stare. “You think I can’t run?”
“Why the hell would you run when there’s a running car right in front of you?” Ange asked, bewildered. He knocked his balled nub against her crown, which was met with no movement on her part. She was running on rage auto pilot. “Hello, are we home upstairs? You’re supposed to be the smart one! Stop being so angry!”
Valentin snickered, unmoved.
“In those boots? I don’t doubt your skills walking in heels, but I can’t imagine they’ll get you very far. Besides, this thing has obscene speed for an SUV.” He patted the door. “You can do the math.”
Indignation hardened in her chest and pushed her shoulders back. “Math’s my worst subject.”
“Odeeettteee…” Ange groaned, sinking to plant his face on the ground in toddler-like defeat, dragging his limbs down her side as he went.
Valentin looked dour now; a small win in her book of astronomical losses.
“Odette,” he carped. It was the most curt she’d ever heard him. “Can you please get in the car? If you almost catch hypothermia on my watch again, Halton’s going to think something’s up. And if not for you, at least for poor Ange, who will inevitably get sick if you keep him out in the rain, even if you don’t.”
“I like the way this man thinks,” Ange insisted, springing back up to tug at her once more. “Car sounds nice. For both of us! Please, Odette, do what he asks. Just this once. I don’t wanna leave you out here, but…I really don’t want to spend a night at a Poke Center.”
She took another inventory. This was a road any trained serial killer would call heaven. The drizzle was gaining speed, and the temperature was dropping with the telltale wind. Whether she cared to admit it to herself or not, she had been looking for Valentin the whole night. He was here, with a safe way home. No danger for Ange, and no battling the weather and possible remote dangers for her.
With her molars splintering against one another, she stomped toward the car. Ange rushed ahead, rightfully eager to get to cover. Valentin was courteous enough to walk around to open the doors for them.
“Heater’s on,” he said as she climbed up into the passenger seat.
“Aren’t you sweet,” she sneered.
She practically melted as soon as her rear hit the thick leather seat, like a pat of butter landing on a fresh pancake. Although most of her frustrations remained, her stress trickled away, making extra room for her guilt.
“I’m sorry. I wasn't trying to get you sick,” she said, peeking at Ange from the corner of the rearview mirror. Thankfully, he also appeared to be settling in comfortably. He was already messing with some strange buttons on his door.
“Hm? Oh. I’m good. Look at all these knobs and stuff!”
At the expense of her anger and maybe some of her Pride, she, and more importantly Ange, were safe inside a car that was as extravagant as they came. Wood accents on the dashboard, a built-in screen fresh out of a sci-fi film, and a center console fitted with more bells and whistles than it probably needed. There were even twinkling lights built into the soft black ceiling; an aesthetic extra wasted on the enmity that subjugated the cabin.
“So,” Valentin smashed the silence about five minutes into the drive, preceded by Ange gasping in awe at the ceiling lights, which had begun to twinkle. “The silent treatment continues?”
Odette wordlessly watched the rain, now coming down in gushes, streaking over the tinted window.
“That’s fine. You know how good I am at talking,” he continued. “I could have an entire conversation with you without you responding once.”
Her hush ensued. She felt him rise to the challenge.
“What should I talk about? The weather? The car? I know you’re more of a bike person, but I could school you on this one to pass the time. It’s a Bentley.”
“I’m car’d out,” she grumbled into the butt of her hand. “But thanks.”
“Thank gods. I stole it, so whatever I told you was going to be a complete ass pull.”
She knew it was an attention grab and she balked at him anyway.
“You’re driving a stolen car?”
“Technically.” He clicked on the blinker as he worked his way around a sharp turn. “It’s my brother’s, so unless he goes out of his way to sue me for grand theft auto, however, I’m not counting it.”
“This is Halton’s car?”
“No, it’s Gaëtan’s. He has ten. I told him nobody needs that many cars and he wouldn’t notice if one went missing. He disagreed. So I took one, and I’ll give it back when he realizes.”
She really didn’t want to engage, but he was remarkably good at piquing her interest. She didn’t know he had another sibling; one that sounded so insufferable, no less. “How long has it been?”
“A month,” he smirked. "Safe to assume I was right."
After a pause bursting with disbelief, Odette scoffed. “I don’t know whether to call that petty or unhinged.”
“No need to be frugal with the tags. It’s both.”
She had to study him for a beat, trying to file through her feelings. He was as candid as ever—one of the things that made her crush skyrocket in the first place—but this was a different side of that face. She supposed anybody who was capable of assuming the identity of a dead man and successfully worming half way into a cult was bound to have some sort of delinquent side.
She loved the idea that he was a bit of a societal menace underneath the strait-laced, blunt exterior, and she hated that it was transcending her sense of betrayal.
“Since you’re actually speaking to me now, care to tell me what that fight was about?”
Her body stiffened against the back rest. “You saw that?”
“Obviously.”
“Lover’s quarrel.” There was a new pressure on her wrist now, where the wrap hiding the faint bruises Dorien left her with clung to her skin beneath her sleeve. She shifted uncomfortably, a move that had Valentin sneaking a double take. “It’s our second one this week. Feels like routine.”
“The second one?” he mimicked.
She vacillated between slipping back into her mute dissent and subjecting herself to another view of those bruises. They were nowhere near as dark or pronounced as the last set that marred that very wrist just over a year ago, but they were still there. Inflicted by another man who intended harm.
“Odette, what happened?”
The question made the decision for her. He wasn’t going to let it go unless she came clean.
It was easy to pull up her sleeve and unravel the compression bandage. It was almost impossible to look at the marks, forming the vague outline of Dorien’s index and middle finger, without feeling her stomach flicking her gag reflex. She could taste her sewage tea in the pit of her throat and had to look away to keep it down.
“He’s finally showing his true colors, at least,” she said.
Although Valentin was driving, his eyes lingered on her arm a moment longer than was responsible. His face, normally calm and collected—even in the case of the micro expressions that gave him away—twisted into a look she could only dub as absolute fury. She’d witnessed the subtle snide looks and hints at animosity during his conversations with Dorien, but she’d never seen him clench his jaw so hard, nor had she ever seen true fire ignite in his eyes. In the dark of the night before them, it was practically the only thing visible.
They came to a gradual stop on the side of the road. The breath he released was calculated and level even though his expression cursed with a malicious objective.
“Ange…” he spoke on a strained inhale, angling himself so he could peer into the back seat. “I don’t mean to be rude after just making your acquaintance, but would you mind giving your trainer and I a moment alone?”
Ange blinked. Without missing a beat, he turned to Odette and tapped her shoulder.
“Do I mind?”
She very well could have said yes. Raw curiosity for where this new Valentin-grade anger would go drove her to shake her head.
“No. It’s okay.”
When the light of Ange’s return beam receded, Valentin directed all of his broiling vexation toward an interrogation.
“When were you planning on telling me he hurt you?”
“I was hoping to just forget it happened.”
“That’s—“ He threw up his arms, clearly unsure what to do with them, before he settled for thumping them on the steering wheel with his forehead coming to join. “If he’s starting to lay his hands on you, that’s a substantial problem. I needed to know that.”
“You know now.”
He shot stock straight. “Before you ended up in another altercation with him. What if he did it again?”
The image that came to form in her head made her laugh once. “He wouldn’t have an arm.”
“No.” Valentin oscillated on the fine edge of flat out yelling; something Odette didn’t think he was capable of. After she relaxed out of her startle reflex, she affixed him with a wide-eyed glare while the fuse of her temper burned shorter and shorter. “That’s not how this works. Your safety is the concern here, but we already agreed to approach in a manner that ensured we wouldn’t need to harm him until we had the necessary means to do so. I can’t keep up my end of our agreement if I don’t know what’s going on. Him grabbing you so hard that it left bruises is unacceptable, and you shouldn’t have been in his vicinity if that’s how he’s decided to operate now.”
“You know what else is unacceptable?” she barked, slamming her palm on the center console. She basked in the satisfaction of watching him flinch. “Lying to my fucking face. Let’s talk about that, since you wanna lecture me like I’m five.”
He seemed to recover quicker than she had, going as far as to lean over to her side of the car. “You’re right. It is. And I don’t know how many different ways I need to explain that I didn’t want to lie to you.”
“Don’t bother, Grandpa already got that covered.”
“And?”
“I know he wasn’t full of shit, if that’s what you’re asking,” she murmured, slinking away to cross her arms.
“So if Bernard explained it to you, and you believe him, why are you still upset?”
“Because!” she shouted, having finally reached the explosive. Even with it going off, she still found herself at a loss of how to answer.
“It’s…different.”
Valentin surveyed her with narrowed eyes. He also crossed his arms, along with a cautious nod.
“Okay. Please explain to me how it’s different.”
Because I’ve been wanting to jump your bones since the moment we met and I couldn’t stand the thought that the object of my disgusting Lust might have been capable of lying to me.
Well, good job for admitting it, Odile praised. Her applause was the most irritating thing Odette had heard the whole night; a true feat on her part.
Yeah, don’t get ahead of yourself.
“...we agreed to be partners,” she iterated carefully, following a few breaths that maxed out her lung capacity. “I’d known my grandpa was keeping stuff from me, but with you…I expected more from you. And when you didn’t meet my expectations, I got more angry.”
With each word, Valentin’s shoulders slouched lower, until he was slumped in his seat with a lackadaisical hunch. After pinching the bridge of his nose with implied intent to snap the bone, he sighed out whatever chagrin he had left.
“Odette, I really did want to tell you. It was just such a bullshit predicament to be in. I didn’t want to put Bernard in a precarious situation with you, but I simultaneously didn’t want to fuck up our rapport.”
It was sincere. So much so that she felt shame rising up to fight with her feelings of deception.
“I crave what you have with him. I wish, probably more than anything, that my emotionally unavailable father showed me even a quarter the affection Bernard shows you. I decided that I didn’t want to have a hand in blemishing that.”
The sheer intensity of the confession brought on a clarity reminiscent of a regretful libidinous romp, much to Odette’s guilty horror. It made sense, with the way she’d only momentarily heard him speaking of his father. If that was any indication of their relationship, of course he felt that way.
She suddenly felt terrible. So godsdamned terrible. After her treatment of Acadia and Noel at the beginning of the week, she was on a well-deserved downward trend.
“At your expense,” she said.
Valentin laughed. It was hard to tell if he genuinely meant the humor behind it. “My daddy issues are stupidly enervating.”
At least she wasn’t the only one in the car with a debilitating relationship with their father.
“But I understand how that decision looked to you, and I cannot apologize enough. I never…” he sighed, remorse shuddering his breath. “I didn’t want to give you any reason to not trust me. Because you can trust me.”
Unlike when Dorien apologized to her for clawing her skin, Valentin’s held no trace of deception. There was an aspect of it that was almost imploring.
“I’m sorry he put that on you,” she said. “We’re fine now, after we talked. We would have been fine either way. He’s kind of the best father figure I’ve got, you know,” she added with a dubious laugh of her own. Valentin’s smile reached his eyes, but quickly dropped back down a size as he looked her over again.
“But are we fine?” He sounded nervous; like he knew just questioning it would further jinx the already jinxed.
She made herself think about it. Tab through the feelings of betrayal, heartbreak, and outrage, all stifled by the limpidity of the conversation.
“We are.”
The fact of the matter was that she couldn’t stay mad at him. She’d never been one to be so easily swayed by apologies; at least not from people she’d only known for a couple months, and yet facing another bout of his sincerity rendered her a spineless puddle on the high-quality leather seat.
This man had ruined her in more ways than one. She was welcoming it wholeheartedly.
Thunder shook the road, vibrating up through the wheels and into the floor of the cabin and making both of them start. It wasn’t enough to detract from the repose that had softened the air around them.
“Come on.” Valentin shifted the car back into drive. “Let me get you two home before this rain gets any worse.”
With the distraction of their imminent fight out of the way, she remembered a far more important detail that needed discussing.
“Before you do that…”
Dorien’s latent phone was a hot coal on her palm, though she presented it like a diamond she’d mined from one of the pits of hell with her own two hands. Valentin’s face lit up with prompt recognition.
“Is that—“
“Dorien’s. He dropped it and I just never gave it back. I don’t think he noticed it was gone, but I turned it off just in case.”
She handed it to him, watching as he flipped it between his fingers. His eyes searched it like it was the key to unlocking their entire inquest. If they were lucky, maybe it would be. She could only imagine what they would find on it once they could safely get it unlocked, and was almost certain she’d be best off not knowing.
That was forgotten when Valentin grinned at her.
“I maintain my damsel in distress stance. You’re definitely doing all the legwork here.”
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