Chapter 24 Damian
DAMIAN
The lights burn overhead, indifferent to what just happened beneath them. The mirror throws our reflections back at us—flushed, disheveled, breathing hard. My tie is crooked. Her lipstick is gone. The peachy fabric of her dress sits slightly wrinkled where my hands were.
We stand there, sweaty, sated, confused. She doesn’t speak. Neither do I.
The music from the reception filters faintly through the walls—bass vibrating through tile, laughter cresting and breaking like a distant tide. It sounds like it belongs to another building entirely. Another life.
Father. The word sits in me not as shock but as weight.
Father again. At forty-five.
I straighten slowly, but I don’t step away from her. My body is still keyed up, adrenaline and something darker braided tight in my veins. What just happened was not careful. It was not planned. It was not wise.
It was a reaction. A stupid one.
The silence stretches long enough to become fragile. But there’s been enough fragility between us, and I can’t stand it any longer, so I break the silence. “I don’t know what to say.” The honesty tastes strange in my mouth.
Her expression is no longer defiant or braced. It’s open in a way that unsettles me more than her secrecy did. “I didn’t expect you to,” she says quietly. Her voice doesn’t tremble.
That makes it worse somehow.
I step back from the counter and adjust my jacket automatically, a reflex I’ve had since residency—restore order externally when the interior is in chaos. She smooths her dress with her hands. Her hairstyle remains intact.
“You should have told me,” I say again, but the anger is muted now. Quieter somehow. Like fucking her took the edge off.
It’s an illusion. I know that. There is no taking the edge off of this.
She nods once. “I know.”
“I would have…” I stop. Would have what? Handled it? Left? Stayed? Panicked?
I don’t know. That’s the problem.
I move to the sink and turn the faucet on, splashing water over my hands though they don’t need washing. Cold helps. It sharpens thought. The shock against my skin is grounding in a way the room is not.
Private practice. The phrase resurfaces.
I’ve been researching it for weeks. Running numbers. Reviewing office spaces. Imagining autonomy without hospital politics and Meron’s hovering and Amber’s proximity.
I thought it was about independence. Now it feels like inevitability. Starting over at forty-fucking-five. Two newborns. A woman I love, who chose fear over trust.
I shut the faucet off. The room feels smaller than it did five minutes ago. I have to tell her the truth, even if she’s been neglecting the courtesy for months. “You understand this changes everything.”
She swallows. “Yes.”
I study her. She looks smaller now—not because she’s weak, but because she has been carrying something alone for too long.
Despite the betrayal, the anger, the fact that I’m still reeling, all I want to do is hold her. Not because I forgive her yet, but because I love her.
The music outside swells again—applause for something we are no longer part of. We stand there, still confused, still bewildered. And in the quiet of a wedding bathroom, I understand that my life did not just fracture. It expanded.
I have no idea yet whether that is salvation or disaster. And I don’t know what to do with my hands. They hover uselessly at my sides, as though waiting for instruction. For something procedural. For a clear next step that does not exist in this room.
She’s standing three feet from me, breathing unevenly, eyes bright in a way that unsettles me. The bravado from earlier is gone. The edge that carried her through the confrontation has dissolved, and what remains is something raw and stripped down.
I force myself to look at her properly.
Not as the woman who detonated my understanding of my own life in a hallway. Not as the woman who just kissed me like my anger was her oxygen. Just Perry.
The woman who laughed in my truck. Who demanded coffee before conversation. Who told me she was terrified of losing me.
Her composure is thinning now. I see it clearly. Her mouth trembles once before she presses her lips together in an effort to contain it.
Something inside me shifts.
The anger doesn’t vanish. Real anger doesn’t do that. This isn’t like when Meron tried to hold my job over me, and I realized I didn’t have to take it. I was enraged in the moment, but it had no teeth because his threat had no weight once I thought it through.
When I look into Perry’s eyes, all I want to do is hold her and tell her that everything is going to be alright.
I don’t know when this anger will stop choking my every breath, but I still want to hold the cause of it.
The instinct is immediate and disarming.
It overrides indignation and pride, because in the grand scheme of things, I know they don’t matter.
She does.
I step toward her slowly, closing the small physical distance between us. My voice is quieter now. “Perry.”
She inhales sharply at the sound of her name.
I lift my hand with the intention of touching her face. I want to steady the both of us against the chaos pressing in from every direction. “I don’t know how to process all of this,” I admit. The honesty feels heavier than anger does.
Her eyes shine at that, and for a moment, I think she might collapse into me. Instead, she blinks hard. The tears gather but don’t fall immediately. She’s holding them back with visible effort.
“You don’t have to fix this,” she whispers.
“I’m not sure I could fix it,” I reply. “But it’s something that has to be faced.”
Her composure cracks then. The tears spill over, silent and unrestrained. The sight of them is far more destabilizing than the confession itself. “I didn’t know how to tell you,” she says. “I thought if I said it out loud, everything would break.”
“It broke anyway,” I answer gently.
She nods once, acknowledging the accuracy of that.
For a moment, it feels like we are suspended outside of time. The music from the reception filters faintly through the walls—laughter, applause, the dull rhythm of celebration continuing without us.
Then something in her changes. It’s subtle, but I see it. Before I can speak again, she turns. There is no dramatic flourish to it. No final declaration. She simply opens the door and steps into the hallway. The door swings shut behind her with a soft click.
My feet won’t move. I’m still hurt and angry. Still standing in a women’s bathroom at my son’s wedding, trying to reconcile fatherhood, love, and betrayal all at once.
The mirror shows a man who looks steadier than he feels.
Control the body. The mind will follow.
It does not follow. It lingers on the way her eyes filled and the way she fled. This isn’t someone manipulating me. This is someone overwhelmed by the weight of her own decisions.
Perry wasn’t trying to hurt me. She was terrified. It wasn’t only her words that said so—I read it in her body when she spoke about it. The hunched shoulders, the tightness in her face.
She was scared, and I was too angry to be there for her when she told me.
Perry needs me.
That thought gets my feet moving again. I open the door and step into the hallway.
It’s empty.
The music from the reception bleeds toward me, louder now. Applause rises and falls. Someone shouts encouragement on the dance floor. The world is celebrating while I stand here recalibrating my entire life.
I turn left. Then right. No Perry. By the time I reach the corner and scan the corridor leading toward the ballroom, she’s gone.
The hallway feels longer than it did ten minutes ago. The carpet muffles my footsteps as I move toward the ballroom, trying not to look frantic. I don’t want to be the man chasing someone through his son’s wedding. I don’t want to take attention away from his happy day.
I step into the reception space and pause just inside the doorway.
The room is loud now. The dance floor is alive. Guests have migrated from their seats to the perimeter, drinks in hand, laughter loosening posture. The band plays something upbeat and familiar, and Faith is already spinning among a cluster of bridesmaids.
I scan the room carefully.
Blush. Peach. Whatever the bridal party is wearing, the color should be easy to find.
It isn’t.
Perry is not near the head table. She’s not near the bar. She’s not on the terrace. I move slowly along the perimeter, nodding to acquaintances who mistake my focus for composure.
I pass the gift table. No pastel orange. I check near the restrooms again, just in case she doubled back. Nothing. My pulse climbs. Did she leave?
She’s not the type to flee the building entirely. She’s too responsible for that. Too invested in keeping this wedding intact despite everything. Which means she’s somewhere inside this machine of celebration.
I spot Candy near the DJ booth, laughing too loudly at something a groomsman has said. “Have you seen Perry?”
Candy blinks at me, processing through champagne. “She was just here,” she says. “She looked like she was going to murder someone, but like, quietly.”
“Which direction?” I press.
She gestures vaguely toward the back corridor. “I think she went to check on the caterer? Or maybe the photographer? I don’t know. She’s in full maid-of-honor mode.”
“Thanks.” I move again, weaving between tables.
The room feels different now that I’m actively searching for her. Bigger. The air thicker.
Across the hall, I catch sight of Amber near my mother. They’re seated close together. Too close. Amber’s hand rests delicately over my mother’s wrist, posture sympathetic, head tilted in what appears to be concern.
I slow without meaning to. What the hell else does she have to tell Mother? She already dropped the biggest bomb in my life—
Unless she also knows about my new sons. Fuck.
Amber glances up. Our eyes meet briefly. She smiles. It is not a kind smile. It’s a satisfied one. I look away before she can read anything in my expression.