I ran a hand through my hair, a bit thrown. A breath later, I managed to say something. “We were going to talk. I came here tonight to talk.”

She laughed, her expression in complete contradiction to the flowing stream from her eyes. “That’s f**king hilarious. You came here to talk to me and what? You couldn’t find me so you talked to Christina instead?”

This was excellent. Her emotion was pure, raw. It intoxicated me in a way that very little else could. I wanted to bottle it, inhale it, take it in and process her feelings in depth. Since none of that was possible, I wanted to draw out as much as I could before she walked away.

I stepped toward her. She stepped back.

“What is it that I did wrong, Celia?” My voice was steady and controlled, in stark opposition to hers. “You act as though I owe you something. What exactly do you think is going on between us?”

A sob escaped her lips and she wiped at her tears with her hand. “I told you I loved you, Hudson. You kissed me.”

Another step toward her. “You kissed me.”

“And you insinuated that the only reason you stopped was because I had a boyfriend.”

Ah, her side. The details of my cruel setup cited back to me like a melody I’d orchestrated but was only now hearing. It was beautiful.

I looked at my feet, hiding the corners of a smile. “No. No, Ceeley.” I lifted my eyes to hers. “I’m truly sorry if you got the wrong impression. I was simply reminding you not to throw away your relationship with Dirk simply because you remembered how you once felt for me.”

“How I felt for…?” Her eyes flared with incredulity. “That is not what happened. You were feeling things for me too.”

“No. I wasn’t.” Here was the highlight of my act. My joy in performing it was a testament to my sadistic nature. I softened my expression. “I mean, I care for you. A great deal. I always have, I always will. I know that’s probably hard to hear, but that’s all I’ve ever felt regarding you.”

I was good. I knew it. I felt it.

Except Celia didn’t break the way I’d expected. In fact, her tears slowed and her brows furrowed in confusion. “What…what are you doing, Hudson?”

The way she looked at me, the way her gaze pierced through me—did she know? Had she figured out it was all an act? There was no way she could know. Who would guess that?

I paused too long before answering. “I’m trying to straighten out this misunderstanding.”

She studied me. “No, you’re not. You’re running away.” Her shoulders, which had sagged only a moment before, squared with renewed strength. She was the one who took a step toward me this time.

I was the one who stepped back.

“You’re convinced that you shouldn’t be allowed to feel anything or that having emotions will make you weak or something equally as ridiculous, and so you’re pushing me away.”

My calm was unraveling. Her words—they stung. They bit at me. They burned. And like the dragon who was angered by the meager attempts of humans to draw it down, I grew furious.

She took advantage of my setback. “Stop pushing me away,” she pled.

The softness of her appeal, the sweetness in her eyes, the sincerity of her posture—it stirred me. There she was assuming things about me again. She wanted to see me feel? Well, I was feeling a whole shitstorm of rage. “You don’t have a f**king clue what you’re talking about,” I hissed.

Her attack—because I refused to call it anything else—didn’t waver. “Stop this, Hudson. Stop lying to me. Stop lying to yourself. This isn’t who you are.”

Fury spread through me so thick that it propelled me forward until I was in her face. “This is who I am, Celia. Don’t you dare think you know something different. What you see is what you get.”

“You’re a f**king coward.” Her voice caught and I savored the victory. To her credit, she didn’t back away. “This was your chance to be a man, Hudson. I could have even forgiven your thing with Christina if you could just be honest now.”

“You could forgive me?” My eyes widened in mock exclamation. “Well, hell. How will I ever go on without your pardon?” My voice was uncharacteristically loud. I didn’t care. Venom was spewing from me whether I wanted it to or not—and I wanted it to. It was no longer about an experiment of emotion. I wanted to hurt Celia. She was the very example of how love weakened a person. She was pathetic. I loathed her.

I loathed myself for contributing to this creation.

“Scratch coward. I meant to say ass**le.” She was too kind to me.

I stepped back from her, not in retreat, but in disgust. I was consumed with it—the emotion wrapping around my insides like a cobra. “Jesus, you’re really a piece of work, Celia Werner. What did you think was going to happen between us? You thought I was going to love you? You thought we were going to ride off into the sunset together? You’re the one who needs to stop lying to yourself. That’s a fairy tale, Ceeley, and I stopped believing in those a long time ago. It’s time you grew up too.”

I was done with her. Done with all of it. I left her there, crying on the edge of the driveway. I didn’t turn back once.

The next two hours I spent alleviating my temper in carnal ways with Christina. I f**ked her hard and long and unrelentingly until she was raw and I was numb inside and out. A quick shot of whiskey before I left the Brookes’ kept the numbness clinging to me until I pulled into the driveway at Mabel Shores. I closed my eyes and rested my head for a moment on the steering wheel of my BMW Z4, a high school graduation present from my parents. I felt…tired. Exhausted. Drained. I certainly had notes to add to my log. My findings had been satisfactory, though not as precise as I would have wished. A part of me wanted to study further in this vein—would another subject react as Celia did, turning on me? Or was it her close relationship with me that produced the results I’d seen?

A bigger part of me never wanted to experiment with a subject so close to me again. It was too unreliable of a study. From then on, I promised myself, my research would be conducted further from home.

I’d been too distracted to notice Celia’s car until I’d gotten out of my own. It was parked at the other end of the circle drive. Its appearance was ominous—I didn’t like what it could possibly mean. I walked over to make sure she wasn’t waiting inside. She wasn’t. So I headed inside the house. The front door was locked, which meant if Celia was inside, she’d been let in before the house had been shut up for the night.