Scene 50¶
Notes26-01-23e¶
Scene 47¶
[26-01-23]
Scene 47 — “The Floodgates” (Celeste POV)
It started the way most dangerous things start.
Quietly.
We were in the kitchen after dinner, the apartment dim and ordinary, the kind of evening that didn’t feel like it was making history. The kettle had clicked off a minute ago. The sink was full of dishes we would both pretend we didn’t see for ten minutes.
Charli was at the table with the ledger notebook open—not Wardrobe’s ledger, hers: the small private one where she copied recipes, wrote lists, rehearsed the shapes of competence the way other people rehearsed speeches.
She had her hair up, still damp from her shower. No cap, no kerchief, no pinned discipline—just herself. A girl in a t-shirt with a pen in her hand, trying to be useful in the only way she knew how: by preparing.
I leaned on the counter and watched her without meaning to.
I didn’t intend to be like this.
I’d told myself a hundred times: keep it clean. Keep it professional. Keep it safe. I’d been good at that. I’d built it into my bones the way I’d built Wardrobe’s rules into my mouth: calm voice, clear line, no ambiguity.
But somewhere over the last weeks, that discipline had started to cost me.
Because Charli wasn’t a project anymore.
She wasn’t “an interesting case.”
She wasn’t even “my responsibility.”
She was… mine, in a way my body understood before my mind allowed it.
She looked up and caught me looking.
Her smile arrived softly, like it had to be earned.
“You’re thinking,” she said.
“I’m always thinking,” I replied.
Charli’s eyes warmed—no argument, no flinch. She went back to her notebook, and I realised what I was actually watching: her hands.
Long-fingered. Careful. Precise. A person who touched paper the way she touched fabric: as if it had feelings.
I said, mostly to give myself something to do, “Show me what you’re writing.”
Charli hesitated—a small, old reflex of fear—then she slid the notebook toward me. Not defensive. Not secretive. Just offering.
I walked around to the table and leaned in to read.
A list.
Simple.
GP appointment bloods script pick-up hair pins (more) salt (for pasta water) thank Lauren? (crossed out, then rewritten: tell Lauren.)
My chest tightened at that last line. Not because of Lauren. Because of the way Charli kept learning: not theatrically. Not with speeches. With small corrections. With practice.
I tapped the page lightly.
“This is good,” I said.
Charli’s shoulders lifted and lowered, a quiet exhale.
“I don’t want to forget,” she murmured.
“You won’t,” I said, and then—without planning to—added, “You’re not alone.”
Charli went still.
Not frightened. Not startled.
Just… struck.
Her eyes came up to mine, wide and bright, and for a moment she looked so young I felt something inside me soften dangerously.
She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to.
The wanting in her face was not sexual. It was worse than that.
It was trust.
It was devotion.
It was the look of someone who had been starving and didn’t quite believe food was allowed.
I should have looked away.
I didn’t.
Charli’s hand lifted—slow, tentative—as if she was asking permission from the air.
She reached toward my wrist where it rested on the table.
I felt the pause in her fingers before contact: that careful millimetre where she waited to see if I would pull away.
I didn’t.
Her fingertips touched my skin.
And my whole body reacted as if she’d turned on a light.
It wasn’t heat. Not exactly.
It was… relief.
Touch so gentle it didn’t feel like a claim. Touch so careful it felt like reverence. The smallest pressure, a feather of contact, but it landed inside me like certainty.
Charli’s thumb made one slow, tentative stroke across the inside of my wrist.
I inhaled sharply.
Charli froze, immediately—eyes flashing with panic.
“Sorry—” she began.
“No,” I said, too fast.
The word came out rougher than I intended.
Charli’s mouth closed. She watched my face, braced for correction, for withdrawal, for the old rules.
I forced myself to slow down.
“Don’t apologise,” I said, quieter. “Just… don’t stop.”
Charli’s eyes widened.
A flush rose in her cheeks, soft and disbelieving.
“Are you sure?” she whispered.
I hated how much I needed her to do it again.
“Yes,” I said, flat, because if I tried to make it pretty I’d lose control. “I’m sure.”
Charli’s hand returned, slower this time, as if she was learning me the way she learned fabric: testing tension, reading response, adjusting.
Her thumb traced the same small stroke again.
My skin prickled. My throat tightened. Something in my chest gave way with a quiet, internal sound—like a knot finally untying.
I had spent so long holding myself back—out of caution, out of responsibility, out of fear of becoming the kind of woman who takes what she wants without considering the cost.
But this didn’t feel like taking.
It felt like being met.
I looked down at her hand on mine and realised, with a shock that was almost comic, that Charli’s touch was not demanding.
It was offering.
Which made my own hunger feel unbearable.
I turned my palm over, slowly, and let my fingers curl around hers.
Not tight.
Not possessive.
Just… answering.
Charli’s breath hitched.
Her eyes shone, the way they did when she wanted to cry but refused to perform it.
“Celeste,” she whispered, like my name was a place.
I swallowed.
“This,” I said, trying to make my voice steady, “is not a reward.”
Charli blinked.
“It’s not something you earn by being good,” I continued. “Do you understand me?”
Her expression shifted—confused, then dawning.
“You mean…” she began.
“I mean,” I said, and my voice softened despite myself, “I want it too.”
Charli’s lips parted slightly, stunned.
I could have left it there. I should have.
Instead, I leaned down—slowly, deliberately—and kissed her.
Not hungry.
Not urgent.
A small kiss, precise as a pin placed correctly. A kiss that asked a question and waited for the answer.
Charli answered by making the smallest sound in her throat and lifting her free hand to my waist—light, careful, as if she was afraid I’d dissolve.
Her touch there was just as gentle.
And it nearly undid me.
I broke the kiss and rested my forehead lightly against hers.
“Touch,” I murmured, the word half a confession. “That’s all I want tonight.”
Charli nodded quickly, almost frantic with relief.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes. I can—yes.”
I guided her up from the table and toward the couch. We sat, close, and she curled against me with the cautious joy of someone waiting for the rules to change back.
They didn’t.
I wrapped an arm around her and let her settle.
Charli’s hand slid along my forearm, then my shoulder, then my collarbone—each touch a question, each pause a check-in.
It was unbearably sweet.
It was… bliss, in the simplest sense: my body unclenching, my mind quieting, the world narrowing to the fact of her presence.
Charli kissed my cheek once, then my jaw, then—very carefully—my throat, as if she’d learned I might break there.
I closed my eyes.
The floodgates opened with no drama at all.
Just a steady, unstoppable softness.
And in the dark, held by the gentlest hands I’d ever known, I realised the truth I’d been skirting for months:
I wasn’t losing control.
I was finally allowing myself to be loved.