Chapter 28
CASSANDRA
Snow whispers softly against the tall windows.
The study is dim and warm, perfect and cozy. Fire low, logs settling with the tiny song wood sings when it gives in to heat. Damien sits on the loveseat, jacket off, sleeves pushed up, a glass in his hand that catches the firelight and throws it back in pieces.
He watches the flames the same way he watches everything—with keen, narrow, brilliant blue eyes.
I hover in the doorway for a breath longer than I mean to. The image of his hands on my belly, his raw truth, loops over and over in my mind.
It’s too much to carry, so I don’t. I pad over the rug and sit down beside him, tucking myself into his side like a tired cat.
No words. No rules. Just pure exhaustion, mental and physical.
He slides his arm around me and pulls me close, like it’s the most natural thing he could do. His chest is solid under my cheek. When he breathes, my body remembers how, releasing a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
The wound on my forearm throbs in a dull, informative way. Beyond that, a new thought glows—faint but insistent.
Baby.
His hand moves, a slow pass along my upper arm to my shoulder in a way that says I’m here, not a request for anything else. I let my eyes fall shut. The house hums, the fire crackles. My last clear thought before sleep takes me is simple and sharp—whatever this is, it’s bigger than we think.
It’s scary. It’s real.
I sleep.
Morning finds me back in the east suite, tucked under the duvet. Damien must’ve carried me to bed after I’d fallen asleep.
The light slicing through the blinds is winter-pale, a shade between pearl and steel.
I stretch and yawn, then notice the box on the desk.
Matte white. Red ribbon. I get up and walk over to it. His precise handwriting is on the card.
For your hands, for your heart.
I slide the ribbon free and lift the lid. Inside, nestled in tissue, is a sewing machine.
It’s solid and beautiful. All clean lines and quiet power.
There’s a pack of feet—walking foot, zipper foot, buttonhole foot—each in its own tiny case like jewelry.
Extra bobbins. Needles in every gauge I could want.
A proper lamp with a flexible neck. A tailor’s kit that doesn’t play—shears with a true bite, chalk that won’t ghost, glass-head pins in a tin that clicks shut with authority.
My eyes sting with tears of joy. I press my palm to my mouth and breathe through it. He saw this part of me, really saw it. He fed it instead of starving it. That’s… not nothing.
My stomach growls, loud enough to make me laugh and wipe my eyes at the same time. My appetite is back. I slip into a robe, tie the red ribbon around my wrist—habit, comfort, who knows—and pad barefoot down the hall toward the kitchen, following the smell of coffee.
I find him there, sleeves rolled, trying to negotiate a skillet and an espresso machine that looks like it requires a pilot’s license. The kitchen is a landscape of good stuff: eggs, a plate of fruit cut with soldier-like precision, bacon, a variety of whole wheat and multigrain breads.
He looks like a billionaire cosplaying “guy who cooks sometimes,” and it’s adorable as hell. Also, hot. He glances up when I enter, a small check of my bandage, then my face, my feet on the tile. His mouth quirks up at the corner, like he knows something I don’t.
“May I?” I ask, touching two fingers to the whisk.
“Please,” he says, stepping back. “Cooking’s never been my thing.”
I rescue the eggs, adjust the heat, and get a pancake batter going in a second bowl.
He takes the bacon off the fire and sets it on a paper towel covered plate with care that makes me smile.
We fall into a rhythm that surprises both of us.
He passes me the salt without me asking.
I lean aside just as he reaches for the spatula.
He slides a hand to my hip to keep me steady while he leans past, and I don’t jump, I melt.
A small shoulder bump earns me one of his side glances that makes me feel like a teenager again.
“You were about two seconds from scrambling the pan,” I tell him, tipping the skillet to let the eggs gather.
“Delegation is a core competency,” he replies.
“So is not burning breakfast.”
He smirks, that sexy little smile that undoes me every time.
When the food’s ready, we take plates to the island and eat standing up. He watches me, a warm expression on his face, making sure I’m fed. Today feels different. Today feels like care, not command.
“Too fast?” I ask, halfway teasing, halfway not.
“No,” he says. “I’m just making sure you’re satisfied.”
I continue eating. He looks relieved.
“I feel something for you,” he says.
No preamble. No hedging. He just places it in the air between us, simple as a butter knife.
“It’s deeper than I’ve let myself feel before,” he adds after a beat. “I don’t know what to do with it.”
He doesn’t reach for me. He doesn’t try to sugarcoat it. His eyes stay steady, and I can see signs of how this admission scrapes.
“I’m not a good man,” he continues. “I’ve admitted that to you. Monster is not an unfair word.” His mouth twitches like he hates the taste of it but says it anyway. “You’re—” He searches, fails, tries again. “You’re light. You don’t deserve the weight I carry.”
I don’t rush in with comfort. I don’t argue him into a saint he isn’t. I step forward and put my palm flat on his chest, right over his heart. The beat is slow. Honest. Real.
“I don’t want a saint,” I say. “I want truth. And breakfast.”
His laugh is genuine. He dips his head and kisses my forehead—gentle and precise. It slides into me like a promise I didn’t know I wanted.
We clear the plates together, like two people who have done it before.
He dries; I stack. There’s a world where this is the whole story: eggs, laughter, a man washing a pan with sleeves pushed up while I lean against the counter and talk about darts and bustles.
That world doesn’t exist for us. But in this room, for a slice of the morning, it does, and I decide to keep it.
“Thank you for the machine,” I say, nodding upstairs.
He glances that way. “You’re welcome,” he says.
His phone sits face-down on the counter. It buzzes once, then goes still. He doesn’t pick it up.
“What happens next?” I ask.
“Next you show me the machine so I can pretend I understand it. Then I make calls in the office and keep you where I can see you. Tonight we spend the evening together. If you want.”
“If I want,” I repeat. The choice is real. I can hear it in his tone.
“If you want,” he says again, a contract sealed with repetition.
I rinse my mug and set it in the rack, then wipe my hands. I turn back and lean my hip into the island.
“I want to sit at your desk and sketch while you work,” I say. “I want to pretend I’m not listening and listen anyway. I want the names of Clara’s guards by the time I text her this afternoon.”
“Bolton and Ortiz,” he says quickly. “You’ll meet them soon.”
I smile.
He reaches out slowly, so I can throw a flag if I need to and tucks a loose piece of hair behind my ear. His fingers linger at my jaw for a second too long. The ribbon is soft at my wrist.
“Truth,” he says quietly.
“Truth,” I echo.
We stand there in the warm kitchen lit brightly by the snow outside and let the morning be slow.
He’s still who he is. I’m still who I am.
I think of the baby.
“Teach me,” he says, glancing toward the skillet, his mouth turning into a crooked grin.
I hand him the whisk and stand behind him, my arms coming around his waist, guiding his wrist through steady circles. “Gentle,” I say. “Confident. Don’t scramble. Coax.”
“Coax,” he repeats, doing exactly what I tell him. For once, the man who commands every room he enters lets himself be taught.
It lands warmer than it should. It lands exactly where I need it.