CHAPTER 6 — THE HIDDEN PHOTO
POV: Noah Bennett
Damon’s bedroom door closed behind me with a gentleness that didn’t match the damage that photo had just done to my chest. I walked through the penthouse hallway without turning on the lights, guided only by the bluish glow from the enormous living room windows, and each step seemed to carry the weight of a memory I hadn’t let breathe in years.
The image of him sitting beside me on the wall behind the old arena lingered in my fingers, even after I’d returned the paper to the nightstand, as if my skin had memorized the texture of the cruelest proof of all: Damon Blackwood hadn’t thrown everything away.
I stepped into the guest room and closed the door without locking it, because locking felt too dramatic and, at the same time, too pointless.
A lock could separate bodies, but not Damon’s presence—spread through the penthouse air, in the smell of the muscle cream still on my hands, in the sensation of his wrist under my fingers, in that low voice saying some things we kept only to remember where we went wrong.
I slipped the bag off my shoulder, dropped it on the chair, and stood in the middle of the room, not knowing if I wanted to laugh at the irony or throw something against the pristine wall.
The photo had hit me where no insult could.
I was prepared for his anger, for the accusations, for the elegant coldness and that ability to turn every sentence into a blade.
I wasn’t prepared to discover that Damon had kept a memory of us inside a playbook, near the bed, in the most private space of a life he pretended to have completely expelled me from.
The simple version would be to believe he kept it to feed hatred, like he said; the dangerous version, the one my body accepted before my mind caught up, was that Damon hadn’t been able to get rid of me.
I washed my hands in the guest room bathroom for too long, scrubbing at the cream as if I could strip away the sensation of his body under my fingers along with it.
The water ran warm over my skin, and still I felt the heat of his wrist, the tension of his shoulder gradually giving way, his breath catching when I pressed the right spot.
I turned off the faucet and faced my reflection with a kind of tired irritation, because the man in the mirror looked adult, trained, responsible—and none of those things had stopped my heart from reacting as if it were still trapped in that old winter.
Four years ago, Damon and I were almost. Almost too close to be just friends, almost too cowardly to stop pretending, almost honest enough to cross that line before everything else crossed it for us.
I remembered the day of the photo with indecent clarity.
Mason had stolen my phone to take idiotic pictures after practice, Damon had complained about the snow dirtying his jacket, and I had laughed because he seemed incapable of admitting he was cold.
That afternoon, our hands had stayed side by side on the wall, too close, too still, and neither of us had the courage to touch.
Now I lived in his guest room, treated his shoulder, and fought the absurd urge to tell a truth that could destroy more than it saved.
I sat on the edge of the bed, picked up my phone, and found a message from my father sent fifteen minutes earlier: “Report received. We’ll talk early tomorrow.
Don’t argue with Damon about Julian.” I stared at the screen until the letters lost meaning, because my father always had a talent for turning fear into practical guidance.
Don’t argue. Don’t tell. Don’t provoke. Don’t touch what could bring down entire walls.
The laugh that escaped me was low and humorless.
Not arguing with Damon about Julian was like asking someone to walk across cracked ice without hearing it splinter beneath their feet.
His name was already in the penthouse, in the ignored calls, in my father’s tension, in the way Damon looked at me when he suspected something he couldn’t yet put into words.
Julian Blackwood had learned to move people without leaving visible marks, and I’d been too young when I realized that some hands wore gloves precisely so they wouldn’t look dirty.
I should sleep. I needed to sleep. The next day, Damon would wake up in pain, in a bad mood, and with an entire list of new ways to deny both.
I’d need to evaluate the shoulder, review protocol, send an update to Marjorie, and pretend that the image of him in my mind was just clinical concern.
Instead, I sat in the dark, listening to the small sounds of the penthouse: the heating humming, the rain against the distant windows, a door opening somewhere in the hallway, and footsteps too slow to be safe.
I was on my feet before I’d decided to move.
I opened the bedroom door at the same instant Damon appeared in the hallway, coming from his own room in a gray t-shirt, posture rigid, the old photo caught between the fingers of his right hand.
The sight of the paper in his hand froze me in the doorway.
The low light from the wall cut his face in half, leaving a hard shadow over his jaw, and his injured shoulder stayed guarded in a way that should have drawn my professional attention. But I could only look at the photo.
“You went through my things,” he said, and his voice was too low for a shout, too cold for a simple accusation, dangerous in that way that made players bigger than me back off without realizing they were doing it.
“You came into my room, opened my book, and decided to rummage through what you found as if you still had a right to anything here.”
The injustice of the accusation hit me before the anger did.
I stepped out of the room, leaving the door open behind me, and fought the urge to point out that I’d gone into his room because he’d been sitting on the bathroom floor in enough pain to go pale.
Damon knew that. Knowing never stopped Damon from choosing the version that hurt more when he wanted to protect himself.
“I found the photo because it was falling out of the book while I was gathering my things,” I replied, keeping my voice steady, though my entire body was alert to his proximity in the narrow hallway.
“I didn’t rummage through anything. If I wanted to invade your life, Damon, I would have started with more interesting places than a playbook. ”
“You think that’s funny?”
“I think you’re in pain, tired, furious because I saw something you didn’t want to show, and you’re using that to cast me as the thief again,” I said, holding his gaze because I’d already accepted too much guilt in silence.
“The photo was there. I saw it. You kept it. Now you’re trying to punish me for knowing. ”
His fingers tightened on the edge of the paper, and for a second I was afraid the photo would tear.
That hurt in a way I didn’t expect. The adult Damon could break furniture, reputations, and entire conversations, but the idea of seeing that image destroyed by anger hit me as if there were still something alive inside it.
Maybe there was. Maybe that’s why he held it so carefully even while accusing me.
“Don’t turn this into cheap sentimentality,” he said, taking a step forward. “I kept it because I like remembering the exact moment I should have suspected you.”
“Liar,” I shot back, before caution could catch up with my mouth.
Damon stopped. The word hung between us like a disc thrown too hard.
“You didn’t keep a photo of us smiling to remember that you hated me.
If that’s what you wanted, you would’ve kept a news article, a report, an accusation—anything that fit better with the version you chose. But you kept that.”
The hallway seemed to narrow. Damon took another step forward, and I didn’t retreat, though his presence carried heat, anger, and a physicality that was hard to ignore.
The gray t-shirt clung to his chest, his shoulders, the tension in his right arm.
His left stayed guarded, and every professional instinct in me wanted to fix his posture before he made it worse.
The rest of me wanted to grab the photo from his hand and force him to admit he remembered that afternoon on the wall the same way I did.
“You talk about versions as if you’d given me another,” he said, and there was a small crack beneath the cruelty.
“You disappeared, Noah. Vanished while my family became headlines, while my father was being investigated, while Julian tried to hold everything together, and while I discovered that the boy who slept on my dorm room floor knew more than he let on.”
“I didn’t sleep on the floor because I didn’t have a bed,” I said, and the words came out more intimate than I’d intended, bringing back nights when I stayed in his room until it was too late to go back to mine, pretending the reason was studying, games, anything except wanting to be close.
“I stayed because you asked without asking, Damon. Like always.”
His face changed. Barely, quickly, but it changed.
The blow had hit the past head-on. Damon breathed through his nose, and his jaw went tight enough to betray the effort not to react.
The photo dropped a few inches in his hand, revealing the full image again.
Two boys in the cold. Two idiots smiling too close together.
Two futures destroyed before they could happen.
“Don’t use that against me,” he said, his voice low, and this time it didn’t sound like a threat. It sounded like a warning from someone about to lose control.