Chapter 245. Two People Rehearsing for a Trial, According to Catherine’s Accurate Read
The morning light filtered through the kitchen window like a harsh interrogator, exposing every speck of dust dancing in the air and every unspoken word hanging between them. The silence in Catherine’s kitchen wasn’t peaceful; it was heavy, viscous, and suffocating.
It was the kind of silence that followed a storm, not the calm after but the eerie, charged stillness where the debris still settles.
William sat across from Lia, his throat feeling as though he had swallowed gravel. Every time he closed his eyes, he didn’t see the sunrise; he saw the way Lia’s body had arched under his touch, the way her breath had hitched into those broken, desperate gasps when he had finally pushed her past the breaking point.
The memory of her climax, raw, unguarded, and completely involuntary, seemed to vibrate in the space between them. He could still feel the phantom slickness of the oil on his palms, a sensory ghost that made his pulse quicken with both guilt and a terrifying, undeniable hunger.
Beside them, the rhythmic clack, clack, clack of Catherine’s knife against the cutting board was the only thing anchoring them to reality. The sound was maddeningly domestic, a grotesque contrast to the carnal electricity that had short-circuited their composure the night before.
Catherine hummed a tuneless melody as she fried bacon, oblivious or perhaps willfully ignorant of the war being waged in silence across the breakfast table.
Lia’s condition was even more dire. She was statue-still, her fingers twisting a loose thread on her sleeve with such ferocity that her knuckles had gone white.
Her gaze was fixed on a knot in the wooden table as if she could bore a hole through it. Her mind was a chaotic battlefield: the shame of losing control, the terrifying pleasure of it, and the way William’s hands had felt possessive, skilled, and utterly devastating.
’Don’t look at him,’ she screamed at herself internally. ’If you look at him, he’ll see that you’re still trembling...’
’He’ll see that you’re still affected by what he did to you.’
William cleared his throat, the sound echoing like a gunshot in the quiet room. He couldn’t take the pressure anymore.
The tension was a physical weight pressing against his chest.
"Look," he said finally, his voice rougher than intended.
He reached for the teapot, his movements deliberate, almost performative, as he set a cup of tea down in front of Lia with exaggerated care. He hoped the mundane gesture would act as a shield, something to smooth over the jagged edges of their shared transgression.
"About last night... the massage." William lowered his head. "I want to apologize... because that clearly did not go the way either of us intended."
The apology felt hollow even as it left his lips.
How could you apologize for something that felt less like an accident and more like an inevitability?
Lia’s reaction was instantaneous. A flush crept up her neck, flooding her cheeks with a shade of crimson that had nothing to do with the morning sun and everything to do with the memory of her own vulnerability.
Her hands jerked toward the tea, her movements frantic and uncoordinated, nearly sending the porcelain cup crashing to the floor.
"It’s fine," she snapped, the words coming out too fast, too sharp. "It wasn’t your fault..."
"Can we please... can we please just talk about something else?" Her voice wavered on the last syllable, betraying the crack in her composure.
William leaned forward slightly, his eyes searching hers, desperate to gauge the depth of the damage. "I just want to make sure you’re not upset."
"I’m not upset," Lia interrupted.
She said it with the forced conviction of someone lying to themselves, her voice taking on a brittle, mechanical tone. She refused to meet his eyes, staring resolutely at the steam rising from the tea as if it contained the secrets of the universe.
"Truly... Let’s simply move forward from it."
William opened his mouth, the words of agreement already forming a desperate plea to accept Lia’s lifeline and retreat into the safety of mundane conversation.
But fate, it seemed, had other plans, and those plans involved the terrifyingly sharp intuition of a woman who had survived battlefields and betrayal alike.
Just as the words began to form, Catherine wandered in from the washroom, drying her hands on a towel with the casual ease of someone unaware that a psychological minefield had been laid across the breakfast table.
She didn’t just walk into the room; she occupied it, her senses instinctively scanning the space with the honed attentiveness of a former knight.
She noticed the way the air felt charged, the way Lia was vibrating with nervous energy, and most importantly, she caught the tail end of their strained exchange.
"What wasn’t his fault?" Catherine asked.
Her voice wasn’t loud, but it cut through the thick tension like a blade through silk. She stopped mid-stride, her eyes narrowing as she flicked them between the two of them.
She noted with immediate suspicion the way Lia had suddenly developed an intense, almost pathological interest in the grain of the wooden table, examining it as if it held the secrets to ancient civilization.
"Nothing," William said. The word shot out of him with the panicked speed of a man trying to outrun a predator, his voice cracking slightly at the edges.
Catherine didn’t blink. "It didn’t sound like anything."
"It was genuinely nothing," Lia interjected.
Her voice betrayed her completely, climbing half an octave higher than her usual flat, controlled register. She sounded less like a composed young woman and more like someone who had just witnessed a crime or committed one.
Her fingers continued their frantic dance against her thigh beneath the table, her inner monologue screaming: ’Say something normal... Say something boring...’
’Say something that doesn’t make you sound like you’re about to combust...’
Catherine didn’t buy it. Not for a single second.
She stood there for a long, assessing moment, her arms crossing slowly over her chest. One eyebrow arched in a way that made William feel like he was standing naked under a spotlight.
"You two are acting very strange this morning," she stated, her tone carrying the weight of a verdict. "But wait... ’strange’ is an understatement. You both look like you’re rehearsing for a trial."
"We’re not acting strange," William insisted, though even to his own ears, the denial sounded flimsy and hollow.
His heart was hammering against his ribs, a frantic, uneven rhythm that he was certain Catherine could hear from across the room.
"William," Catherine said, tilting her head slightly, a ghost of a smirk playing on her lips, the kind of smirk that said she already knew exactly what kind of trouble they’d been up to. "You’re holding that teapot like it personally offended you."
William froze. He looked down, startled, and realized with a jolt of mortification that his knuckles were white.
He was gripping the ceramic handle with enough force to crack it, his entire arm corded with tension as if he were bracing for an impact. The teapot wasn’t just a vessel for tea; in his hands, it had become a weapon of suppressed anxiety.
A flush of heat crawled up his neck. ’Smooth, William....’
’Real smooth,’ he mocked himself internally. ’Nothing says... I’m a normal person who hasn’t just been thinking about intense physical intimacy quite like strangling the cookware.’
Swallowing hard, he forced his fingers to relax, releasing the teapot with as much forced, casual dignity as a man in his position could possibly muster. He set it down with a soft clink that felt embarrassingly loud in the charged atmosphere.
"I don’t know what you’re talking about," he said, staring straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge the obvious.