Chapter 23 Perry
PERRY
The reception is loud enough to hide a war.
Toasts have started again. Someone’s uncle is telling a story about Jason in middle school involving a stolen golf cart. Laughter ripples through the room at predictable intervals. Glasses clink. The band tunes again.
I’m standing at the edge of the dance floor, pretending to watch the best man perform charm.
Suddenly, Damian is at my elbow. He murmurs, “You should have told me.”
“I know.”
His jaw tightens. “That’s not an apology.”
“Is that what you want?”
“It’s a start.”
The music swells to cover our low voices, but I can feel the tension humming between us like a live wire. “I didn’t know how.”
“You knew how to say it in a hallway.”
His words sting. But he’s not wrong.
There’s no reasonable way to explain what I did, because what I did was not reasonable. I’ll still try. “I ran out of space to hold that on top of everything else I’m dealing with, and I blurted the truth. I wish I hadn’t done it like that, but I did, and now we have to figure out what comes next.”
His breath is shallow. Controlled. Furious. “You let me fall in love with you.”
The sentence lands in my chest like a physical blow. I swallow while my heart races. He’s never said that to me before. Why does it have to come now when it hates me?
He growls, “Do you understand what this does?”
“Yes.”
“Do you?”
I meet his eyes. “I understand that you’re their father.” The words feel steadier now. “I understand that you’re furious. But I don’t understand what to do about it.”
His hands flex at his sides. “What am I supposed to think, Perry?”
“I don’t know.”
The crowd crashes into applause for the end of the toast. We are both vibrating under the noise. He steps closer. Too close. “This is not something you sit on.”
“I know that—”
“You don’t get to decide when I deserve to know. I should have known when you figured out you were pregnant.”
“I wasn’t deciding for you.”
“Don’t lie to me again. You did.” His voice is low but edged. Dangerous.
People are clapping around us. The room is celebratory. And we are detonating quietly by the dance floor.
“You’re angry,” I say.
“No shit.”
“You have every right to be.”
“So you’re deciding my emotions for me too?”
“No, I—”
He exhales sharply, so I fall silent. “I cannot have this conversation while your sister’s wedding party is twenty feet away, pretending everything is perfect.”
The band starts playing something fast and upbeat. People stand. Jason and Faith are laughing, unaware.
Damian grabs my wrist. Not roughly. Decisively.
“We’re not doing this here.” He pulls me toward the hallway.
He doesn’t look back to see if I’m keeping up.
We pass the bar, the gift table, and the hallway where I detonated his life earlier.
The bathroom corridor is dimmer. Quieter. The music dulls to a distant thrum.
“This is not how I wanted to do this,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady.
He stops abruptly. The force of it nearly makes me collide with him. “Wanted?” he repeats. The word is sharp in his mouth.
“I wanted to tell you properly.”
“When?”
“When it wouldn’t ruin your son’s wedding.”
“Do you think this isn’t ruining it?”
I open my mouth and close it again. He has a point.
He pushes open the restroom door. It’s empty. The warm lights flicker on overhead, too bright, too unforgiving. The mirror shows us both flushed, strained, overdressed for a space that smells faintly of disinfectant and expensive perfume.
He lets go of my wrist.
I rub the spot absently.
“Say it again,” he demands.
I hate how much pain I see in his eyes. So, I do what he tells me to do. “You’re their father.”
His reflection goes still. The words feel heavier in this room. His hands brace on the counter on either side of the sink. He lowers his head briefly. “How long did you know it was me?”
“Since I found out I was pregnant. There was no one else.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before now?”
The question cracks open something I’ve been holding in for months.
“Because I was scared. Because you’re Jason’s father.
Because Amber is Amber. Because you’re respected and powerful and stable, and I’m a woman with two newborns and a messy apartment and a reputation I set on fire at New Year’s to ruin my ex and my sister.
Because I couldn’t stand the thought of hurting you or losing you. ”
He looks up sharply. The music outside swells again. A cheer rises and fades. His jaw tightens. “You decided I couldn’t handle it.”
“I thought you might not want it. Or me.”
“You decided for me.”
“Yes,” I whisper.
His anger shifts. “You let me build something with you on incomplete information.”
“I know.”
“You let me deliver them. Name them.”
“I didn’t plan that—”
“Didn’t think you did. Doesn’t make it better.” His silence turns volatile, as if the quieter I am, the worse this is in his head. But I have no idea what to say right now. He grits his teeth. “You think this is something I can compartmentalize?”
“I have no idea what to say to that, Damian.”
He steps closer. Close enough that the air between us heats. “You should have trusted me.”
“I was trying to survive this. Do you have any idea how scared I am right now? How scared I’ve been since the little blue line showed up on my pregnancy test? I have been terrified and swallowing that fear down ever since!”
“We could have been scared together.” He presses himself into my space, close enough for me to smell his cologne.
“I thought you’d hate me forever—”
His mouth crashes against mine like he’s been holding back too much for too long. The anger is still there, braided tight with hurt and something dangerously close to relief. His hands come up fast—one at the back of my neck, the other gripping my waist hard enough to pull a sharp breath out of me.
I make a sound in his mouth before I can stop it. He tastes like champagne. The lights hum above us. The mirror catches the edge of the movement. The door is unlocked.
Anyone could walk in. Our specialty.
He deepens the kiss without hesitation, and I feel the fury in it. He’s not trying to hurt me. He’s releasing something he can’t control.
His hand slides down my side, fingers pressing into the curve of my hip. I’m still in my maid-of-honor heels, hair pinned too carefully for this, lipstick probably smudging across his mouth.
He turns me. Suddenly I’m facing the counter. I see us in the mirror.
The cold marble hits my hands as I brace myself instinctively. My heart is pounding so loud I’m certain it’s echoing off tile. “Damian—” I start.
He presses in behind me, heat through fabric, breath hot at my ear. “You don’t get to lie to me,” he murmurs.
“I know.” The words are barely audible.
His hands move again, sliding over my waist, up my ribs, then back down. There’s nothing careful about it. Nothing measured. He’s furious. And he can’t stop touching me.
I tilt my head back, and he kisses along my jaw, rough, deliberate. My body answers him without permission. My hips shift backward into him before I can reason with myself.
God. Even now. Even after destroying his world. Even knowing this might be goodbye, I want him.
He grips my hips and pulls me tighter. The mirror shows the shape of us. Fractured, breathless, overdressed and completely undone.
“This doesn’t fix it,” he says as he lifts the back of my dress.
“I know.”
“You don’t get absolution just because I can’t stop touching you.”
“I know.”
His hands tighten. “Then why do you look like you think this will save you?”
Because I love you, and nothing else matters. I don’t say it. Instead, I reach back and grab his wrist, anchoring him there. “I wasn’t trying to trap you.”
His breath stutters. “I know,” he says finally.
The anger softens. Not gone. Shifted lower. He peels my underwear down, pulls my hips back, and suddenly, he’s inside of me. There’s nothing gentle about it. Nothing loving. This is purely raw instinct. This is hurt given movement.
He pounds into me, our bodies smacking together in rhythm. I push back just as hard as he shoves forward. Pleasure coils, hot and fast, with every stroke. Watching us in the mirror gets me there faster. But I don’t watch his face.
I can’t. Even buried deep inside of me, he’s on the verge of pain.
I watch our bodies instead. He’s barely out of his suit—in fact, he’s not. He must have only lowered his trousers to get access. This is probably the last time we’ll ever be together, and I don’t even get to see him naked.
It’s urgency without tenderness, contact that is less about pleasure and more about rage. The risk of the unlocked door pushes everything sharper, faster, brighter.
I hurt him in the worst way possible. I don’t deserve to feel this good. Never again. But I can’t stop myself either.
I love him too much.
I hate myself for what I did, and yet I can’t tell my body no. The pleasure swells and erupts, like that guilt is my own personal G-spot that he’s stroking with his anger. Damian feels it—he joins me over that edge, shooting deep inside me.
When he finally stills, forehead pressed between my shoulder blades, I feel the tremor in him. He’s not calm. He’s barely contained.
For one terrible second, I wonder if this is how he says goodbye.