𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝐦𝐞 ─────⋆⋅★𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘰𝘵𝘩é𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘵

𝟏𝟎 | 𝐛𝐞𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐝, 𝐛𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐞𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝

I arrived at his apartment unannounced, the rain having soaked me to the bone, its relentless downpour a miserable accompaniment to the roiling anger and confusion that had dogged me all the way across the city.

A strange sort of numbness took over as I stood there, breath catching in the cold damp air, my fury licking at the edges of it, threatening to devour me whole.

He had kept me dangling, tethered to something unseen but irresistible, some game I couldn't quite see the rules of.

But it wasn't imagined. The stolen glances across the room, the murmured conversations that hovered just at the edge of secrecy, his hand slipping into mine when no one was looking—there was always an almost palpable promise behind it.

And yet, always the retreat.

A step back, a fading away into shadows as if it had all been a mirage.

A game, a riddle—always keeping me just close enough that I couldn't leave, and just far enough that I could never stay.

The door loomed before me, and before I could think better of it, my fist came down hard against the wood. The sharp sound of my knuckles striking the door, louder than I intended, reverberated through the quiet hallway, betraying the storm inside me.

When the door finally opened, his face appeared in the shadowy light—eyes heavy-lidded, dark hair clinging wetly to his forehead as though he too had just come in from the rain.

For a moment, we stood there, two soaked figures, bound in a strange, oppressive silence.

His expression was that same cool mask of detachment I had grown to hate—a mixture of vague surprise and something sharper, as though he had anticipated this, been waiting for it in some subterranean part of himself.

"What are you doing here?" His voice came out clipped, calm. His tone too measured for the moment. A blade made of ice.

I pushed past him without a word, the sterile coldness of his apartment like a knife against my already raw skin. My chest tightened as I turned to face him. He shut the door behind me with a soft click, and for a moment, the tension between us thickened, congealing into something almost unbearable.

"You lied to me." The words came out brittle, snapping through the air, but the tremor in my voice betrayed something more fragile beneath it.

I was trying to steady myself, trying to keep my head above water. "You're famous?" I spat the word as though it were a curse. As if it had been some intimate secret I had stumbled upon, too ugly to acknowledge.

Timothée dropped his gaze, biting his lip, his eyes closing briefly. The casual nonchalance of someone who had already braced for impact. As if my outburst, my sudden appearance, were simply another scene in a play he had rehearsed countless times.

The realisation struck me cold—he'd done this before. He'd played this game with others, and I had been no different.

I took a step back, a sharp intake of breath, the space between us impossibly vast despite the narrow room.

"Just—" My voice cracked, and I closed my eyes, fighting the tremor in my chest. When I opened them, his gaze was on me, dark and inscrutable, as if calculating the exact moment to break the silence. "Leave me alone, Timothée," I continued, my tone sharper now, my control slipping. "Stop messing with my head."

His face changed in a flicker, like a mask cracking. "Messing with your head?" The words came out in a low, dangerous growl, his anger slipping through. "It's good to know you're innocent in all of this, ma chérie." He rolled his eyes, his pet name now feeling sarcastic, "I haven't been—"