“Thank you. You didn’t have to.”
“I know.” Color rose at the base of his throat. “But you deserve it.”
The words landed delicate and devastating, unsettling something I’d worked hard to keep still. My lips parted around a response I couldn’t form. I didn’t know what to do with that kind of kindness.
“Allow me.” He eased my chair out, and I lowered myself into it. The night air stirred my hair, cool and impossibly fresh—no exhaust, no grit, nothing familiar.
He settled across from me. Candlelight flickered between us, and for a moment, nothing else existed.
The world had narrowed to this terrace.
This table.
This impossible man.
“This is… much different than I was expecting,” I admitted, fingers tightening around the stem of my glass.
His brows lifted, faint amusement easing the sharp line of his features. “What were you expecting?”
“Something…” I looked away, candlelight catching my glass. “Less romantic.”
His smile deepened. “I don’t do things halfway, Emma.”
The words settled between us, weighted and strangely intimate. A shimmering tether stretched between us, threading with the breeze and catching on the candlelight.
Silence unfurled—heavy, alive. Sparks skated over my skin, that familiar, unsettling awareness tracing patterns I didn’t have names for.
He drew in a breath. Leaned forward. And when his eyes locked on mine, everything else blurred out. “I have feelings for you,” he said, voice low—no hesitation, no deflection. “Real ones.”
Air punched out of my lungs in one uneven exhale. My pulse flickered along with the candlelight.
Now? He was saying this now—before I’d even found my footing in whatever fragile middle ground we were building?
“I fucked up,” he continued, a rough, humorless laugh catching at the end. “God, I know I did. But—” He dragged a hand through his hair. Not suave, not polished—shaken. Human.
It cracked something sharp inside me.
“I’m falling for you.” A gentle chuckle escaped him. “Head over heels, actually.”
The words hung there, suspended in the warm glow between us. For a moment, he just paused—slow, deliberate—like confessing had taken something out of him he couldn’t get back.
“Damien…” The world tipped under me, but he shook his head fast, cutting me off.
“I know.” His voice tumbled forward before I could form a thought. “I know I don’t deserve anything from you after what I did. But seeing you yesterday—after everything…” He swallowed, throat tightening. “It was the first time we were… us. In person. Real.”
He looked away for just a second, jaw flexing, tone roughening at the edges.
“I can’t pretend I don’t feel what I feel anymore,” he said. “I left Friday night a shell of myself—empty, gutted. I’ve replayed every second since.” He released a shaky exhale. “And now…” He trailed off, the rest swallowed by the quiet.
My hands trembled in my lap as I shifted, the fairy lights above us dancing in rhythm with my heartbeat. Damien waited across from me, fingers wrapped tight around the stem of his glass. He tried to look composed, but his expression gave him away—bright, sharp, terrified.
The memory of Friday night hit hard and fast.
The sting of his silence.
The humiliation splintering across the restaurant floor like broken glass.
The raw, hollow ache that followed me home.
