Chapter 151 – Beginning with a Daring Encounter

“Already? You are supposed to be resting,” Celsie said, looking up at him apologetically.

“I’m not complaining. Now let’s get you that drink,” Benne said, jerking his head towards the door for her to walk ahead of him. Celsie found it amusing that it was her apartment, yet he was ordering her around as though he owned the place.

“Sit,” Benne ordered her as they both walked into the living room, while he walked over to her refrigerator to take out the wine and a glass.

“You are not drinking?” She asked when he handed her the glass and sat down beside her.

“We both can’t get drunk,” Benne said, reminding her that it was a workday and she needed to be at the office in a few hours.

“That’s true. I shouldn’t drink,” Celsie said with a sigh as she dropped the wineglass on the table while looking at it wistfully.

Benne was tempted to ask her to drink the wine if it would make her feel better, but he knew he couldn’t do that. She had to be at the office, and if she was drunk, she wouldn’t be able to do that. What excuse could he come up with as the CEO to give her the day off?

“Are you feeling better now?” Benne asked instead as he gathered her close to himself so that her head was resting on his shoulder.

“I guess. You’re not going to ask me what I dreamt about?” Celsie asked, sitting up to look into his face.

“I want to ask, but since I’m not sure you would want to talk about it, I don’t want to ask,” Benne confessed, making her smile sadly.

It was ironic that she had been avoiding talking or thinking about the past for quite some time because she feared that her thoughts often triggered the nightmares, yet the nightmares had come to haunt her even without her thinking about the past.

“I killed someone when I was seventeen,” Celsie blurted out without letting herself think about it.

Benne tried not to let his surprise show on his face on hearing her sudden confession. She killed someone? Bryan had said Sonia’s half-brother had committed suicide because of Celsie, he hadn’t mentioned anything about Celsie murdering anyone, so what was she talking about? On second thought he realized that it was possible for Sonia to withhold such information from Bryan. There was no way she could have possibly told Bryan that her best friend had murdered her half-brother. It wouldn’t make sense. Or perhaps it was just her guilt speaking? That was most likely as he couldn’t imagine a person like Celsie hurting a fly.

Celsie looked at Benne’s face, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking as his expression was blank, so she sighed, “You don’t believe me, do you?” She asked, looking at Benne.

“I can’t exactly tell whether I believe you or not when I don’t know the details,” Benne explained, and Celsie’s lips twitched in a crooked smile as she gave him a small nod, and then picked up the glass of wine.

She took a long sip from the glass, and Benne did not attempt to stop her. He was glad that he was her boss and could find a way to get her to take the day off.

Celsie sighed as she returned the glass to the table and looked at Benne. She took in a deep breath and let the air out through her lips, “His name was Jamie… And he was Sonia’s half-brother,” Celsie said, and tears gathered in her eyes once again as though she was struggling with the memory.

“Older or younger?” Benne asked curiously, trying to ease her into the subject gradually, while also wanting to find out if it was a case of mere childish infatuation that wasn’t handled properly or something more serious than that.

“Older. He was a college student, while I and Sonia were both in grade twelve,” Celsie explained making Benne’s brow crease in a frown.

“Older?” That meant it was more serious than he had thought.

“Yeah. Sonia’s mother had Jamie for her high school sweetheart during their first year in college. I don’t know the exact details of all that happened, but she later got married to Sonia’s dad, and when he died some years later, she got back with Jamie’s dad,” Celsie explained, and Benne gave her a nod.

“Sonia must have been very close to him then,” Benne guessed, since he assumed Sonia had grown up under the same roof as Jamie, and he needed to understand how Sonia could have remained friends without someone who had caused her brother’s death.

“On the contrary, they didn’t get along so well. Somehow Jamie seemed to believe that he was denied of his mother’s love and affection in the early years of his life because she got married to Sonia’s father, so as a result he always tried to make things difficult for Sonia,” Celsie explained without looking at Benne.

She still remembered how she and Sonia used to tiptoe around the house when they were younger, and how they both preferred to stay back at her house instead of Sonia’s house because they didn’t want to run into either Jamie or his father who always glared at them like their mere presence around the house was a nuisance.

“Do you still want to talk about what happened?” Benne asked when she remained silent for a while just staring ahead of her like she was lost in her thoughts. Although he didn’t want to pressure her to share her story with him, he was itching to hear what she had to say.

Celsie who had a distant look in her eyes as she tried to gather her thoughts, turned to look at Benne. No matter how much she thought about all that happened that day, she couldn’t come up with a different way that she could have handled things. Bracing herself, she gave him a nod, “I don’t even know what to say or where to start from,” Celsie said with a weary sigh, “I don’t know when or how it started, but somehow Jamie had some sort of twisted feelings for me,” Celsie said as she looked away from him once again.

“Twisted feelings?” Benne asked, and Celsie gave him a nod.

“Very twisted. Although he never talked to me when I was around the house, little did I know that he was always watching me. He was always taking photos of me without my knowledge… Can you believe that he even had a camera set up in Sonia’s bedroom?” Celsie rubbed her arms as a shudder passed through her at the thought of it.

A stalker? This wasn’t good, “Didn’t you say he was a college student?” Benne cut in.

“He was. He claimed that he didn’t want to be separated from his parents, so he chose a school close to the house where he could go to school from home,” Celsie explained.

“He was always locked up in his bedroom, playing games or working with his system when he wasn’t attending classes in school. Little did we know that he was actually busy monitoring me and listening to my conversations with Sonia. In the past, I used to wonder why most of the guys who asked me out on a date both in school and around the neighborhood kept their distance from me after confessing their feelings to me. I had no idea that after eavesdropping on my conversations with Sonia during our sleepovers, he would find the guys and harass them. Asking them to stay away from his girlfriend,” Celsie said, and then paused as she reached out to take the wineglass again, but Benne picked it and handed it to her.

“That must have been very creepy,” Benne said as he watched her drink from the wineglass.

“Creepy is an understatement,” Celsie said as she tried to return the glass but once again Benne took it from her and dropped it on the table. Having nothing to do with her hands now, Celsie rubbed her palms together as she let out a sigh.

“The most spine-chilling thing about it all was the fact that he never acted like he cared about me. Not even for one moment did he ever give me the impression that he cared about me. The couple of times I encountered him in the house, he would look at me blankly and just walk past me. He barely even responded to my greetings,” Celsie said with a slight frown as she thought about it.

“And none of those guys ever told you that they were being threatened by him?” Benne asked, and she shook her head.

“None of them stood still long enough to talk to me after he threatened them.”

“So how did you find out he was behind it?” Benne asked, looking at her curiously.

Celsie sighed and reached out to tuck her hair behind both ears, “Well, there was this guy I liked, and I told Sonia about him as usual. So whenever I would visit, we would spend the night talking about him and giggling. And then one Friday afternoon, just before the close of school, I received a note from him, asking me to be his prom date. I was crazy with excitement that day, but I didn’t give him a response immediately as I was trying to be careful, considering my past with the other guys who had previously asked me out but suddenly started avoiding me afterward,” she paused to catch her breath.

Benne said nothing as he watched her while waiting for her to go ahead with the story.

“After deliberating over it during the weekend, I walked up to him on Monday after classes to give him my response, but he seemed to be avoiding me too. At that point, I couldn’t take it anymore, so I demanded that he tell me what was going on. That was when he told me that my boyfriend had warned him off me. He apologized for asking me to be his prom date when I was in a relationship,” Celsie said, sounding like she was still surprised by his apology.

“You can’t imagine how surprised I was to hear that. I told him I didn’t have a boyfriend, but he wouldn’t believe me no matter what I said. And then he unbuttoned his shirt and showed me the bruise on the side of his stomach where Jamie had hit him. I couldn’t believe him. None of that made any sense to me, so I went around asking all the other guys I could find why they lost interest in me, and each of them told me how my boyfriend had harassed them. Not only was I shocked, but I was also beyond pissed. I couldn’t understand why Jamie who never bothered to talk to me would go around scaring all the guys off me,” Celsie poured out her story, hardly pausing for breath.

“What about your twin brother? I noticed that you haven’t mentioned him in all this,” Benne cut, wanting to interrupt her so she would catch her breath.

“His girlfriend was always hovering around him, and she was always in the house with him, as she didn’t want me to be closer to my brother than she was. So I was closer to Sonia at the time all of this was happening,” Celsie explained, and Benne gave her a nod.

“Go on,” he urged her.

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