Chapter 34 #2
Peter parks out front and steps out quickly, opening the door for me, then for Dane. “I’ll stay outside, sir,” he says respectfully.
“Thank you, Peter,” Dane replies, back in that voice again, the one that fits him like an expensive suit.
Inside, the café is all soft country charm, sunlight pouring through big windows, teal walls warmed with reds and creams, dried flowers hanging like suspended memories.
It smells like cinnamon and butter. I grin, overwhelmed in the nicest possible way.
Dane picks a table in the window, sunlight hitting his profile like he’s carved from something holy.
I excuse myself to the bathroom, needing a moment to breathe.
When I come out, I pass the counter, and something pulls at me.
Kindness. Habit. A need to look after people who look after others.
“Can I please get a long black and a blueberry muffin?” I ask the barista. “For takeaway.” They hand it over, and I take it back outside.
Peter looks shocked when I hand him the bag and the cup. “For me?” he asks.
“Of course,” I say softly. “Thank you for driving us.”
He tries not to smile too big but fails. “Thank you, Miss Penn. That’s very thoughtful.”
I nod and go back inside. Dane is watching me like he’s trying not to fall in love but failing miserably. His eyes trace me, linger, soften, devour.
“What?” I ask, sliding into my seat.
“You,” he says simply. Like it’s a whole sentence.
A whole worship song. But the questions crowd my tongue. “Dane… Mr Stark? A driver? You’re sweating like you ran a marathon. What aren’t you telling me?”
He rubs his thumb along his jaw, eyes dropping to the table. “I’m going to tell you,” he says quietly. “I swear. Just… give me today. Please.”
Something in me wants to argue. Push. Demand. But something deeper…trusts him. So, I nod.
The bell over the café door jingles, and I turn instinctively.
My stomach implodes. Blake. He stands frozen in the entryway, eyes locked on me and Dane seated together in the sun, hands inches apart, our energy unmistakable—even from a distance.
His face cracks open. Not in anger. Not in rage.
But in a way that looks like heartbreak made of knives.
He knows. He knows I’m Pandora. He knows I’ve been slipping further away than he ever realized.
He knows this is his fault every push, every silence, every way he carved pieces out of me.
And still…He looks gutted. Like he’s the one drowning.
He turns away sharply, jaw clenched, shame and jealousy and loss trailing behind him like smoke. I exhale shakily.
Dane’s hand slides over mine under the table. Warm. Sure. Gentle in a way that feels like oxygen.
“Hey,” he murmurs, eyes on me, not Blake. “You’re here with me. Okay?”
I nod, throat burning. Because for the first time in years…I feel chosen. Not controlled. Not possessed. Not tolerated. Chosen. And it terrifies me. And it thrills me. And I’m not running this time.
Blake watched from a distance, his heart pounding with jealousy.
She was with a new guy, laughing and running her fingers through her hair in that mesmerizing way that always drove Blake wild.
He saw Dane’s eyes follow each movement of her fingers through her long curls, knowing it had the same effect on him.
As he observed them, a mix of emotions surged through him.
It used to be him the one making her smile, the one she looked at with those bright, captivating eyes.
The sight of her with someone else ignited a fierce jealousy within him.
But why? He was the one who was bored, he was the one to leave.
Call it quits. His mates all pushing him into it and online to date new women younger women.
She used to be his world, now she’s orbiting around a different set of eyes.
It hurt more than he ever thought it would.
He honestly believed she would chase him forever.
Like she always had right from the start.
He was frozen across the street and all he could do was watch as this new guy who really looked like someone from their past, their childhood. He tried to think back through the folders stored away in his mind for a reason why he was so familiar to him.
Penn
Then the bell over the café door jingles.
I don’t know why I look. Instinct. Ghost-memory.
Some old part of me still wired to a name I keep trying to purge.
Blake. My breath catches so violently it hurts.
He stands in the doorway like he’s been struck.
Eyes locked on me. And Dane. Together. Hands almost touching on the table.
Bodies angled toward each other like gravity has chosen sides.
Blake’s face fractures in slow motion. Not rage.
Not shock. Heartbreak. Sharp, jagged heartbreak, the kind made of knives and regret and too-late realizations.
Every vein in his neck pulses like the moment is physically ripping through him.
He knows. He knows I’ve been slipping. He knows I’m Pandora.
He knows he pushed me so far away I finally collapsed into someone else’s orbit.
And he hates it. He hates that it isn’t him anymore.
He steps back, shame written all over his jaw, jealousy burning behind his eyes, memories and history and loss clinging to him like smoke from a house fire. And then he’s gone. Just gone.
A hollow ache blooms in my chest something old, not love, not longing, just…
residue. Dane sees the way I freeze, even before I speak.
He reaches under the table and slides his hand over mine, warm and slow, grounding me instantly.
“Hey,” he murmurs. “You’re here with me.
Okay?” His thumb strokes the inside of my wrist. Like he’s rewiring me.
I nod, swallowing a burn in my throat I didn’t expect.
Because for the first time in my life. I’m not a second choice.
I’m not tolerated. I’m not somebody’s emotional crutch.
I’m chosen. And it scares me. And it thrills me. And I don’t pull away.
Dane
I saw him the moment he walked in. Blake. The ex. The ghost. The reason she flinches at compliments and questions her worth every second she breathes. And the look on his face when he saw us. Fuck. It hits like a blade slipping under the ribs. Not because I care about him. Because I care about her.
Penn stiffens beside me, whole body going silent in that way trauma teaches.
And I hate that he can still do that to her.
I hate that he ever had that power. Her eyes drop.
Her breath stutters. So, I do the only thing I know.
I reach for her. My hand finds hers beneath the table, warm and trembling, and she looks up as if she can’t decide which direction her heart is supposed to go.
“Hey,” I say softly. Calm. Certain. Unshakable.
“You’re here with me.” Her shoulders loosen.
Just a little. Enough. And then she nods, and something inside me uncoils, because I know, Blake might know pieces of her history.
But he doesn’t know who she’s becoming. I get to meet that version.
I get to earn her. I stand, pulling her up with me, not rushing, not pushing, just guiding her with a touch on her lower back.
“Come on,” I murmur. “We’ve got somewhere to be. ”
Blake watched them as they slipped into a sleek black sedan driven by a driver.
A driver. He had a driver. This guy who he felt he knew but couldn’t quite place it.
This guy who was holding his wife’s hand his hand in the small of her back slipping her into his waiting car.
As they drove off his heart aching with jealousy and regret.
He had taken her for granted, and now he was paying the price.
He couldn’t understand why he felt this way at all.
He had Pandora well he thought he had her, but how wrong was he she had played him.
She was her, his wife.
What a fool. As he vented his frustrations, inside his own head, his heart seethed with a bitter, gnawing regret.
He had discarded Penn like an old toy, chasing after the hollow thrill of a new conquest. Drawn into the toxic camaraderie of his mates, men who revelled in betrayal, who abandoned or cheated on their wives with faceless women online, Blake had been blind to what was right in front of him.
He had treated Penn as nothing more than a possession, something to be discarded when boredom set in.
In that moment like lighting had struck him he walked from the café and sat on a bench seat outside pulling his phone from his pocket he looked up photos from school hunted social media pages and that was when it hit him.
Dane fucking Stark.
It was Dane Stark who was with his wife.
Finally, he has come out of the shadows…
and now seeing her with another guy looking genuinely happy and safe, a dark rage bubbled up inside him.
The sight was a bleak reminder of everything he had thrown away.
The anger and jealousy consumed him, a black tide that surged through his veins.
How could that weak, pathetic kid from school the one he and his friends had tormented be the one to make her smile like that?
Blake’s mind spiralled into a darker place.
He couldn’t stand it, the thought of Dane touching her, protecting her, loving her.
It was an affront to everything he believed about himself and about Dane.
The guy who used to get his head shoved into toilets, whose belongings were tossed onto rooftops, who was mocked for his clothes and his broken family, how could he be the one now holding Blake’s world?
He snatched his phone like it was a lifeline, his fingers trembling as he furiously typed, his screen filling with venom.
“You won’t believe this, Pandora,” he began, each word dripping with malice.
“Saw her with that pathetic loser from school. The one I used to beat the crap out of. And now—he’s acting like some kind of hero.
I humiliated him for years, and now he’s playing house with my woman? It’s a joke.”
His thumbs flew faster, rage bubbling in every keystroke.
“He was raised by his Nana on and off, for God’s sake…
his mum—night-time whore of the town, drunk and high half the time.
His dad? A worthless drunk who ran off. And now this…
freak thinks he’s something special? We made his life hell, Pandora, and now he waltzes into mine like he owns it. He’s nothing. He’ll always be nothing.”
He paused, breathing hard, chest tight with fury and humiliation, before letting the bitterness pour out again.
“Clothes too big, clothes too small, stained, ripped, dirty. He was a nobody. A complete nobody, Pandora. And now she’s smiling at him like he’s the sun itself.
I worked her out of me, and he’s stepping in like he’s… he’s—he’s the one she should’ve had?!”
His heart hammered in his chest. Embarrassment mixed with fury, and the thought that Dane might tell Penn Pandora god who was he messaging, and she may actually see all of the shit he and his mates pulled on him at school—made bile rise. He hammered the send button before he could think twice.
Blake’s bitterness seeped through every word, his anger a dark cloud that blotted out reason.
He had lost Penn, not to some stranger, but to the very person he had once thought beneath him.
It was a blow to his pride, to his very sense of self.
And as he poured his hatred and frustration into his messages, all he could do was watch from a distance, his rage festering, while he sought solace in the false comfort of his online confidante.