Chapter 22
Sitting in the small café with Dane, the world outside sounds like it’s underwater muffled, far-off, unreal.
Morning light fractures through the tall windows, gold dust settling on his hands, on the steam between us, on the soft tremble of hope I keep swallowing down.
His fingers skim mine across the table. A whisper of touch. He stops when his thumb grazes the thin gold of my wedding band.
A flicker of something crosses his face grief, maybe. Recognition. Restraint.
I look down at the rings. Symbols of a life that had already burned to ash.
“It’s just a ring,” I whisper.
His eyes lift to mine, that deep blue-green like a storm trying to be gentle.
“No, it’s not,” he says quietly. “It’s a thousand promises. A thousand lies he should’ve never been allowed to tell.”
When he lifts my hand and presses his lips to the metal, heat blooms across my chest. Not desire. Not yet.
Something older. Softer. Like someone remembering how to breathe for the first time.
My throat tightens. “Sometimes, it just… ends this way.”
Before either of us can fall all the way into that moment, the waitress sets down breakfast. Plates. Cutlery. A fracture in the intensity that lets us exhale.
Dane reaches for his black coffee.
“No sugar?” I tease.
He grins. “Already sweet enough, Peach.”
I choke on a laugh. “Is that right?”
Then he leans across the table, slow as a sunrise, and presses a kiss to the corner of my mouth — soft, fleeting, stealing the foam off my latte.
“And sweeter,” he murmurs, “when you’re around.”
My pulse stutters. His knee bumps mine under the table.
“You know,” he adds, “I could get used to this.”
“What? Breakfast?”
“No.” His gaze pins me gently. “You. Me. Existing in the same place… without the world swallowing you whole.”
My chest constricts. Words spill out without permission. “He left me in a burning house,” I say, voice barely stable. “And watched me choke.”
Dane puts down his cutlery, the teasing gone, replaced with something reverent.
“You can talk about him,” he says softly. “You can bleed here. I’m not afraid of your ghosts.”
His gaze deepens, turns molten. “Just… don’t run from me while you do it.”
Emotion crushes me then — raw, overwhelming, terrifying.
I lean across the table. I kiss him.
Not hungry.
Not claiming.
But grateful.
Something holy in the simplest form.
He inhales sharply against my mouth, fingers tightening around mine.
When he pulls back, his lips brush my cheek.
“Not yet,” he whispers. “You’re not free enough to choose me. Not fully. But when you are… Penn, when you finally come to me, I will never let you wonder if you’re loved.”
His words settle like an ember under my ribs.
We finish breakfast in a long, warm hush. And when we step outside into the sunlight, it feels like stepping into a different life.
I have to look away. Out toward the street, the people moving on with their day, unbothered and untouched by the ache that’s settled into my bones.
I have so much to think about. A mess of memories to sort through. And a damn article to write before night falls.
But one thing is suddenly clear.
I think I might be falling again. Falling into something real. Something dangerous. Something new.
And God, I just hope I’m not falling for a devil in disguise. One who steals angel wings and tells beautiful, believable lies.
Because this time… I don’t think I could survive the fall.
The day gave way to something more. He didn’t want it to end with coffee and confessions.
“Come with me,” Dane said, his hand still in mine. “No phones, no plans, no bullshit. Just the day. Just us.”
I should’ve said no.
I should’ve gone home and buried myself in work.
But I didn’t.
We walked. Through the city, through the quiet lanes where the weekend hum softened into something that almost sounded like peace. His hand never left mine. Every time I tried to pull away, he’d tighten his hold, grounding me.
We wandered through bookshops and old record stores, trading stories in pieces. He laughed at the way I lingered in the travel section, fingers tracing the names of places I’d never been.
“I always knew you were meant to go far,” he said.
I frowned. “You make it sound like you knew me.”
“I did,” he said simply. “You just don’t remember.”
I tried to.
Tried to dig through the blur of high school the after-game parties, the noise, the girls who only smiled if it meant getting close to Blake, the boys who thought trophies came shaped like girlfriends. But I didn’t remember him. Not really.
Bits maybe a boy under the bleachers, long legs, dark hair, ink-stained fingers flipping through a sketchbook. I wasn’t sure if the memory was real or something my heart invented just to make sense of how familiar he felt.
“You were always reading,” he said, eyes soft.
“History, art, poetry. You had this look like the world was too loud for you, and books were the only place that made sense. I used to watch you when you thought no one was looking. You’d tuck your hair up with a pencil, chew on the end, scribble like the page would die if you stopped writing.
” His voice went quiet. “You had this light. I wanted to touch it, but I was too fucking dirty to try.”
The words caught in my chest. “Dirty?”
He nodded; gaze fixed on the horizon. “My mum… she worked nights. Said it was ‘just company for the lonely,’ but I wasn’t stupid.
Men came and went. Sometimes three, four a night.
They’d walk past me at the kitchen table I’d be trying to finish homework under the fridge light, and they’d run their hands through my hair, say things like, ‘You’ve got a stunner for a mum, kid. Real talent.’”
He swallowed hard, voice shaking. “They smelled like whisky and cologne and power. Some of them were well-known men businessmen, politicians. I used to hear their names on the radio, see their faces on TV. And I’d think, you fucking hypocrites.”
He went quiet for a moment, knuckles white where his hands clasped together.
“Sundays were her day off. The only day she wasn’t someone else’s entertainment.
She’d make pancakes and hum like nothing happened.
Pretend we were normal. But she drank through it all.
Vodka in her coffee, rum in her orange juice.
And when she finally passed out on the couch, I’d just sit there.
Watch the empty bottles. Listen to the walls breathe.
I hated her for what she became. But I loved her, too.
Because I knew she didn’t know how to be anything else. ”
The air around us changed. The sun felt sharper, crueller, as if it too was listening.
My throat ached, eyes burning. “Dane…”
He shook his head. “Don’t. It’s just life. Some of us get handed fire and learn how to walk barefoot.”
But I couldn’t stop the tears. They slid quietly down my cheeks, and my hands trembled the way my lip did like I was trying to hold back something that was already gone.
I reached for him, fingers brushing his arm. “You didn’t deserve that.”
He looked at me then, really looked. “No one does. But I learned early that love isn’t always gentle. Sometimes it’s survival disguised as affection. That’s why I notice things. Why I listen. Why I see what others don’t.”
His voice dropped, softer now. “You learn a lot from pain. You learn how to never make someone else feel it.”
We kept walking after that.
Through the open markets, along the marina, over the hill where the grass rolled toward the sea.
He bought me ice cream, laughed when I smeared it on my nose, and called me “Peach” again.
We lay on the hill and talked about everything and nothing, my magazine article, how I have always wanted my own publishing house, my parents, how I used to dream about writing in an old villa by the sea.
He told me about his nana the one who raised him after his mother died.
The one who believed he was good even when the world told him he wasn’t.
“She used to say, ‘Listen with your soul, boy. People will tell you who they are if you’re quiet enough.’ He smiled.
“She was the reason I didn’t become like them. ”
By the time the sun began to sink, we were quiet. The sky bled gold and rose over the water, and I rested my head on his shoulder. He pressed a kiss to my temple soft, reverent, healing.
“Feels like being young again,” I whispered. He smiled against my hair. “No, Peach. Feels like finally being alive.”
The city lights flickered on below us. For the first time in years, I wasn’t thinking about Blake, or the wreckage, or what I’d lost. Just this his hand in mine, his voice low in my ear, the promise of something that didn’t hurt.
And maybe, just maybe, that was enough.
Dane walked me home, even though his car sat parked outside the café.
We held hands like we had no right to—slow, unhurried, lingering in the soft glow of empty storefronts.
We window-shopped like teenagers high on something tender and fleeting, the kind of sweetness you don’t realise you’re starving for until it’s already in your mouth.
At my doorstep, he kissed my cheek, just a breath of a kiss and left me standing there wrapped in the warmth of him, the ghost of his lips, the safety I’d forgotten existed.
After he disappeared into the darkness, I cleaned my house for the first time in weeks. Not the tidy kind of cleaning the frantic, grief-drunk kind. The kind where you’re scared of what you’ll see if you stop moving.
I’d let the place collapse around me while I danced with heartbreak in the dark. Our home, once scented with lilies and sunlight, had sunk into shadows, the air heavy with wilting purple irises and memories I couldn’t bear to touch.