“They’re going well. I think we’ll have it completely handled in the next couple of days.”
I pulled back, startled. “Really?”
His mouth curved into a confident smile. “Yes.”
Panic kicked through me, cold creeping into my fingertips. “Damien—if that’s the case, I’m… I’m going to have to give a press statement.”
“Yes,” he acknowledged, thumb skimming a slow line along my hip. “Unfortunately.”
“God.” I pressed my hand flat against his chest. The weight of that responsibility dropped squarely onto me, sharp and sudden. “I haven’t even thought about what I’m supposed to say. Or how the investors are going to react. Or Falkirk. Hell, I don’t even know what’s happening. I—”
“Emma.” His voice cut in, low and steady. “Breathe.”
I tried. I did. But my lungs refused to cooperate, each inhale snagging halfway. Everything I’d shoved aside while managing Candace, dodging Garrett’s fallout, trying not to fall apart myself—it all hit me at once.
A surge of nerves, guilt, pressure, grief, fear.
“I don’t think I can,” I whispered.
“You can,” he said, rubbing measured circles between my shoulder blades. “You’re just overloaded.”
But the simple touch—usually grounding—barely dented the static crawling under my skin. The nerves firing along my spine weren’t calming; they were accelerating, vibrating hard enough that I felt them in the tips of my fingers.
“I feel like I’m shaking on the inside,” I managed. “Like my whole body…”
Damien’s hands stilled. He shifted, tilting my chin up with two fingers, forcing my attention to him. “Emma,” he murmured. “Look at me.”
Our eyes caught and held.
“I hate feeling like this.”
“I wish I could help,” he said, a faint frown pulling at his mouth.
Then something sparked.
A memory—weightless, warm, quiet—rose like a flare through the chaos.
Floating in space, suspended through time.
Held in the kind of peace only Damien had ever been able to give me.
Understanding clicked into place.
Because I knew.
God, I knew exactly what I needed.
Not reassurance.
Not pep talks.
Not a plan.
Not logic.
Something else entirely.
My fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt. “I don’t… I don’t want to think anymore.”
