Chapter 4
Skylar
Damien paces the living room with his phone pressed to his ear.
I stand at the sink, rinsing dishes. Warm water runs over my fingers, turning my knuckles pink as steam curls around my face.
The sponge glides over the plate, already clean, but I scrub it anyway.
I rinse it, before stacking it carefully beside the others, edges aligned the way I like them. I reach for the next one.
Busy hands. A quiet mouth. That has become my specialty.
Damien paces from the couch to the window and back again—his bare feet making almost no sound on the heated tiles.
But his irritation fills the apartment anyway.
It doesn’t need sound. It seeps into the air like something that’s been building all morning, settling over the furniture, crawling along the polished counters, pressing against the back of my neck until my shoulders draw up tight without my permission.
I keep scrubbing.
I should be listening. I know this because he’ll expect me to know what was said when he hangs up, the way he always does, that casual conversational test he runs to check whether I was paying attention.
It’s some client issue. A campaign that’s apparently imploded because someone somewhere made a decision without running it through Damien first and now the world is tilting off its axis and he is the only man with the particular skill set required to tilt it back.
His voice rises and then drops—controlled even in frustration, smooth even when he’s furious.
Marketing manager. That’s his job.
That is what he tells people at dinner parties, with that clean white smile and the easy confidence of a man who has never once had to fight for a room’s attention because rooms concede it to him.
He manages brands, campaigns, and perception.
The careful architecture of how things look versus what they are.
Sometimes I think he manages me the same way he manages others. Positions me. Adjusts me. Makes sure I reflect well in the right light at the right moment and loud about the parts that don’t fit the picture.
I turn off the tap—the sudden silence at the sink making the rest of the apartment seem louder.
Damien’s voice drops into that smooth, particular tone he reserves for moments like this. The one that says I am being very reasonable and that you should feel grateful I haven’t stopped being reasonable yet.
“No, you listen to me. I don’t care what Derek said. Pull the assets, call Marcy, and tell her that if she wants to keep the account, she can stop sending me excuses dressed up as updates.”
I dry my hands with the towel and glance at him.
God, he’s something to look at. That’s never been in question.
Tall, broad across the shoulders. His hair is still damp from the shower.
His shirt is unbuttoned at the throat, sleeves rolled to his forearms, where you can see the edge of the ink he keeps hidden under business shirts and boardroom jackets.
A sleeve on his right arm, intricate work that costs real money.
He had them done young, he told me once, before he knew what he wanted to be.
Before he decided that what he wanted to be was the kind of man who wore them out of sight. Even his rebellion is controlled.
He looks collected from a distance. Polished enough to sell trust. But up close, the cracks show.
I used to think those cracks made him human. That beneath the performance, the polish, and the particular confidence of a man who had never once been told no, there was something real worth reaching for. Something that all that money, ease, and carefully managed charm was just protecting.
Now I wonder how many women have cut themselves trying to touch those cracks. And whether any of them had the sense to stop before I did.
It has been a few days since Cassie’s call.
She has sent a couple of texts. The kind Cassie sends when she’s thinking about you but doesn’t want to make it a big deal. A meme at midnight, that kind of thing. I haven’t seen her. Not the way I’d like to, sitting across from her like we used to, saying everything and nothing at the same time.
I miss her more than I let on.
But that conversation we had hasn’t left me.
I’ve tried to put it down the way you set down something heavy when your arms give out.
But it rises anyway, dragging old grief up with it every time.
In the shower, standing under water too hot to be comfortable, staring at the tiles.
At this sink, hands moving through the motions of a life I built to look a certain way.
In Damien’s bed in the dark, lying still beside a man who is already asleep.
Behind every smile I press into place when it’s required of me.
Cassie’s words.
Zane’s name.
The way she said I don’t laugh anymore.
I keep trying to push it down, but it keeps coming back up.
Zane is somewhere in this town.
That thought alone is enough to undo something in me I’ve spent years stitching shut.
He’s here. Breathing the same air, probably standing over an engine at Rainer’s, grease under his nails and that mouth he used to pretend only knew how to smirk.
The one that went soft sometimes, when he thought I wasn’t watching.
Maybe he’s changed.
Seven years changes people. It hollows some out and hardens others.
Or maybe he hasn’t changed at all.
I know I have. I can see it when I glance in the mirror long enough to be honest about what’s looking back. The girl I used to be is still there somewhere. I can sense her sometimes, pressing against the inside of my ribs like she’s trying to find a way back out.
The plate slips in my hand and knocks into another as I load it into the dishwasher.
Damien’s head turns. His eyes find mine across the apartment as he still listens to whoever is on the other end of the call. There’s a glare in them, the particular expression from a man who has decided that your inconvenience is something he tolerates rather than welcomes.
I glance away first.
I always look away first now.
I don’t know exactly when that started. When the instinct to hold ground became the instinct to yield before the cost of holding it got too high. And the worst part: I do it without thinking. It’s become a reflex.
The old me would have stared him down until he blinked or bled. Now I load his dishwasher in silence as my boyfriend comes home, smelling of another woman’s perfume, and tells me I’m in a mood.
Damien ends the call with a sharp jab from his finger.
“Fuck.”
The word cracks across the apartment like something hurled against a wall and I feel it land between my shoulder blades.
I wipe the counter. It’s already clean. It’s been that way for ten minutes. But my hands need something to do. The motion is familiar, and familiar is what I reach for when everything else is too loud to navigate.
He stands still for a second, phone in hand, breathing through his nose before he turns toward me.
“I have to go out.”
I keep my eyes on the counter. “Okay.”
His brows pull together. “Okay?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know.” He lets out a short laugh, but there’s nothing humorous behind it. “Maybe ask what happened.”
I fold the towel and set it beside the sink. “What happened?”
His mouth tightens. The irritation flashes across his face before he smooths it back into something more presentable.
“Work,” he says. “One of the accounts is going sideways. I need to handle it.”
“At night?”
His eyes sharpen.
I wish I could shove the question back into my mouth the second it leaves.
“Yes, at night,” he says, his voice dropping into that particular, calibrated calm that is somehow worse than shouting. “That’s generally how emergencies work, Skylar. They don’t check your schedule first.”
There it is.
That neat little cut. The kind he’s perfected over time, precise enough to draw blood without leaving a mark you can point to. Not deep enough to scream over. Enough to make you bleed quietly under your clothes while he straightens his collar and calls it a conversation.
He sighs and lets the silence sit for a moment. He crosses the room toward me, and the irritation drains from his face. Whether manufactured or real, I don’t know anymore.
That is the worst part. I genuinely cannot tell. He has worn this performance so long and so well that I’ve lost the ability to read him. He can look at me like I matter and I stand there searching his face for proof, coming up empty every time.
“Hey,” he says.
I don’t move.
He stops in front of me. His hand settles at my waist, thumb tracing a slow arc across my hip.
“You’ve been quiet these last few days.”
“I’m always quiet.”
“No.” His thumb stills. “You’re pretending to be quiet. There’s a difference.”
“I’m tired.”
“You’ve been tired for days.”
“I’m fine.”
“Fine.” His eyes sweep over my face. “We haven’t fucked in months, Sky.”
“Don’t start.”
“I’m not starting anything.”
He steps closer.
My hips meet the counter behind me, and there’s nowhere to go. His chest presses against mine, his body solid and completely certain of itself. He dips his head and kisses me.
I let him. That is the ugliest part. Not that he does it, but that I allow him to.
His mouth moves over mine with practiced heat, a kiss meant to bypass thought and go straight to instinct.
His fingers tighten at my waist. His other hand slides up, fingertips brushing the curve of my breast through the thin fabric of my shirt.
He’s a man who has learned the architecture of me and uses it like a blueprint.
My body knows this pattern—the kiss, the hands, the pressure building in small increments, and the expectation sitting underneath all of it like a current.
Damien wants me when I’ve been quiet too long.
As if sex is a reset button he can press until I return to the version of myself that causes him the least inconvenience.
I try to kiss him back.
I do.
My mouth moves. My hands lift to his chest, flat against the warmth of him.