CHAPTER 4 — THE GUEST ROOM #2
“I get weird when I realize I'm hungry, tired, and trapped in a penthouse with someone who turns observation into interrogation,” I replied, serving food onto the plates to keep my hands busy and stop him from noticing anything else.
“If you want to talk to Julian, talk. Just don't use the call as an excuse to skip the ice.”
“You care a lot about my ice,” Damon said, almost lazily, but his eyes held nothing relaxed. There was provocation there, yes, but also an attempt to pry a smaller truth out of me to make up for the bigger ones I kept hiding.
“I care about my report,” I replied, pushing a plate toward him and keeping my tone dry, though serving Damon food in his own kitchen felt ridiculously intimate. “The report doesn't like irresponsible athletes who think inflammation responds to threats.”
“Lie,” he said, clipped, but the word didn't land alone—it came with a slow step around the island until he stood close enough for me to feel the heat of his body without touching him. “You care because you've always had the terrible habit of faking coldness when you were closest to breaking.”
The word landed between us with irritating intimacy.
I turned to face him, still holding the plates, and Damon was too close to the fridge, too close to the counter, too close to everything I needed to keep organized inside me.
He didn't smile this time. He didn't look satisfied.
He looked tired, in pain, and furious that I'd noticed both.
“You want me to care, Damon?” I asked, keeping my voice steady even though my heart had started racing before the question left my mouth.
“Because I can do my job without giving you that.
I can treat your shoulder, measure your range, record your pain, and leave the room without handing over any piece of myself.
In fact, maybe that's better for everyone.”
He went still, and for a second I thought the cruelty would come.
It always did when I got too close to a truth.
Instead, Damon grabbed the ice pack Mason had left near the sink, pressed it to his shoulder with a carefulness he tried to disguise as irritation, and stepped back from the counter.
The distance was an answer in itself—and not the victory I'd expected.
“Eat, Bennett,” he said, turning his back to me—but not fast enough to hide that his shoulder had protested the movement. “You're more bearable when you're busy chewing, and I need to find out if Reed's food came with poison or just his personality.”
We ate on opposite sides of the island, not touching the past for almost seven whole minutes—which should have counted as a miracle.
Mason had bought too much food, too spicy, and Damon pretended not to feel the burn while I pretended not to notice how he avoided lifting his left arm to reach for anything.
Forced cohabitation began like this—not with big explosions but with small domestic lies: him lying about pain, me lying about indifference, both of us sharing a meal as if it weren't a cruel parody of intimacy.
When I went to wash my plate, Damon tried to grab another container from the top shelf with the wrong hand.
The movement seized up before he could finish, and his breath hitched.
I moved toward him on instinct—not as a man, just as a physical therapist—but he turned too fast, blocking my path with his body.
The collision almost happened. Almost. I stopped so close I could see where stubble began to darken his jawline.
“Don’t start,” he said, his right hand still braced against the cabinet door, his left pressed tight against his body, as if the pain were a secret I hadn’t just witnessed in full. “I can grab a container without you turning this into an emotional rehab session.”
“I was going to grab the container, not kidnap your autonomy,” I replied, but my voice came out less distant than I wanted because Damon was too close, his heat crossing the space between us with an insistence that didn’t fit any protocol.
“Even if your autonomy is waging an aggressive campaign against your recovery.”
“Do you always call it help when you want to control the narrative?” he asked, dipping his head slightly, and the question would have been purely cruel if his voice hadn’t lost a layer of ice midway through.
“Because I remember that part well, Bennett. You deciding what everyone could know, when they could know it, and who should pay for the silence.”
“And do you always call it control when someone stops you from doing something stupid?” I asked, holding his gaze even though my chest was tight with something far more dangerous than anger.
“Because I remember that part well too, Damon. You choosing the version that hurt most and calling it truth just so you wouldn’t have to hear the rest.”
The proximity made the question less professional than it should have been.
His arm was between us, his right hand braced on the cabinet, his injured shoulder guarded against his body.
I could feel Damon’s heat through his shirt, and it made me angry at myself—because just having his body close was enough to make my brain rearrange its priorities in humiliating ways.
The worst part was that he knew. His gaze dropped to my mouth with calculated slowness, and I needed every ounce of discipline I had not to react like before.
“You said distance,” he reminded me, his voice lower, each word landing somewhere reason had no authority. “Looks like the rule didn’t last as long as your urge to correct me.”
“And you were standing in front of the cabinet,” I replied without looking away, though my fingers itched to grip the counter so they wouldn’t reach for his body instead.
“Don’t confuse kitchen logistics with temptation.
I know your ego loves turning everything into proof that someone wants you, but some of us can still open doors for practical reasons. ”
“My house,” he said, as if those two words were enough to justify the invasion of space, the provocation, and that impossible way of being too close without touching.
“My patient,” I replied, and the words came out quick and low, too intimate for a fight over cabinet access. The silence that followed told me Damon had heard what I’d heard too: the word my hanging between us—wrong, hot, and dangerous.
Damon exhaled through his nose, and I saw the tension in his jaw before he stepped back half a pace.
The space returned, but it didn’t solve anything.
I grabbed the container, set it on the counter, and left the kitchen without waiting for thanks—because gratitude from Damon right then would have been stranger than an insult.
The problem with living with someone you’re trying not to want is that the entire apartment becomes a map of hazards.
The hallway too narrow when Damon came from the opposite direction.
The laundry room where our clothes ended up on the same counter because the penthouse machine seemed too clever to keep tragedies apart.
The sound of his bedroom door opening while I searched for a clean towel in the wrong cabinet.
His shirtless reflection in the dark window when I went to get water—ice strapped to his shoulder, his chest marked by shadows and small scars, his abdomen rigid as he pretended not to feel the cold.
“Are you lost?” he asked, standing in the hallway with a towel slung too low on his hips, his hair wet and his skin still damp from the shower.
The question should have been mundane, but the way he filled the hallway light made the whole scene a provocation neither of us could pretend was entirely accidental.
I held a basket of clean laundry against my chest as if fabric could serve as a shield.
The sight of him in that state cut through every professional defense with obscene ease.
His injured shoulder had a slight redness near the joint, and I should have focused on that.
Instead, my eyes traced a traitorous path down his chest, his abdomen, the line of water descending to the towel.
When I returned to his face, Damon looked less irritated and more dangerous.
“Looking for extra towels,” I replied, proud that my voice came out steady, though my fingers had gripped the basket too hard.
“You organized this place like someone who’s never had to find anything on their own, and I’m not about to open seven overpriced cabinets just to figure out where you keep the towels. ”
“The towels are in the cabinet next to the guest bathroom,” he said, and his gaze dropped to my hands on the basket, then returned to my face with a slowness that made me feel like a specimen under glass.
“I could show you, but you seem determined to survive the traumatic experience of a well-organized penthouse on your own.”
“Great. I’ll add it to the survival map,” I said, stepping aside—but not fast enough to keep him from noticing the effort. “I’ll also note that the patient ignores recommendations to keep the area warm, since parading around the hallway wet is apparently part of his medical plan.”
He moved down the hallway, and I had to turn sideways to let him pass.
A simple maneuver, inevitable, but our bodies were close for a second that lasted too long.
His shoulder almost brushed mine, the heat of his shower-warm skin hitting my arm, the smell of his soap mixing with the anti-inflammatory cream I’d applied earlier.
I had to lock my fingers on the basket to keep from making the mistake of touching where the towel didn’t cover—and where the injury needed watching.
“Survival seems dramatic for someone who claimed they could treat me without giving away any piece of themselves,” Damon said, close to my ear—not low enough to be a secret, but close enough to feel like one. “Or does your distance rule not include imagining things when you pass me in the hallway?”