Chapter 10
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Damien
The onlookers gawked as I walked back to my own personal purgatory—glares hard with judgment, already casting me as the villain in the story they’d just watched unfold.
And the shit part was—they were right.
Heat climbed my throat like something trying to escape.
Shame had already settled lower—rooted in my gut, spreading into my chest, colonizing every cavity that used to hold better things.
The shattered wineglass was gone. No trace. No stain. Someone had cleaned it up—erased it like it never existed. A stark contrast to the scar tonight would leave on both our lives.
“What have I done?” I muttered, letting my head fall into my hands as I sat, visions of her tears replaying behind my eyelids.
You’re a piece of shit, an old voice snarled. Selfish prick, another hissed.
I didn’t fight them. Not this time.
Because this time they were right.
I had lied. From the beginning.
From before I even knew how much it would cost me.
Too caught up in wanting her to think straight—to see the wreckage I was building with my own hands.
I raked them through my hair, nails scraping my scalp as I tried to claw back control. I’d have to step down from the negotiations, but the thought of leaving her alone in a room with Nathan turned my stomach. Sour rising at the back of my mouth.
Maybe another board member could step in—
Maybe—
“Is there anything I can get you, sir?” the waiter asked, pity in his voice and judgement on his face.
“A double of your best whiskey on the rocks.”
“Of course,” he replied, footsteps retreating down the hall.
I listened to them fade, waiting for the silence to catch up to me—swallow me whole.
But it didn’t.
Instead came the faint click of heels on the patchwork stone.
I jerked my head up, my neck protesting, as Emma rounded the corner. She’d wiped away the makeup, the lipstick, the ruin I’d caused.
My jaw hung loose.
She was beautiful. Bare-faced and wrecked and still standing.
Still here.
God help me, still here.
I’d never seen her this exposed, stripped down to nothing and still holding herself together by some thread I’d almost broken.
My chest tightened, panic and unworthiness pooling in my gut just like it had at yesterday’s meeting.
She hesitated before lowering herself into the chair across from me, a faint trace of her perfume wafted toward me—vanilla and coconut. Warm. Familiar. Unmistakably her.
“Why?” I let the confusion bleed into the question as she settled.
She sighed. “Because I’m taking this one step at a time.”
Bitterness and pain coated the words, but I knew that line. I’d given it to her. The night she’d stripped the walls down.
And she’d remembered.
“Okay.” I kept my voice careful. “What’s the first step you want to take?”
She skimmed the table, wincing at the missing wineglass. A flush crept up her cheeks as she looked down, embarrassment easing her features. “Another drink,” she said after a moment. “A strong one.”
“Done.” The word came easily, just as the waiter turned the corner—uncannily perfect timing.
“I ordered this for myself, but you’re welcome to it. Double whiskey. Their best.” I paused, realizing what this drink said without words. “I didn’t expect to see you again,” I added tightly. “I was planning to drink myself numb.”
“I didn’t expect to see you either,” she admitted, accepting the glass with a small, polite smile for the waiter—who tried, and failed, to hide his surprise.
“What changed your mind?”
She took a sip, eyes squinting against the burn, then tipped the rest back in one go.
“We’ll have two more,” I called, catching the waiter before he wandered too far.
The empty glass met the table with a muted thud.
“I couldn’t leave without knowing.”
“Knowing what?”
“Everything,” she said.
“Okay.” The word caught in my throat.
Her eyes pinned me where I sat. “How long have you known it was me?”
I swallowed hard. This was it—the moment everything I’d done came due. “From the beginning.”
She flinched like I’d struck her, color draining. “What?”
My heart cinched, the weight impossible to avoid. “I looked into Elion first,” I said, forcing the words out. “Purely in a business capacity. But as I looked into you—into your company…”
My hands started to shake. I slid them beneath the table. “You’re amazing, Emma. I found myself wanting—no, needing—to know you. And when I saw you on that dating site, it felt like divine intervention.”
Christ. I sounded unhinged. Even to myself. I fisted the fabric of my slacks.
“I knew you wouldn’t be receptive if I’d told you who I was. With the possibility of a partnership between Elion and Falkirk, you wouldn’t have seen me as a man—only a competitor. And I knew that. So I lied. I deceived you into thinking I was someone else—so I could get to know you.”
She sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth, fury lighting behind her expression.
“Months.” She hurled the word like a spear, landing exactly where it needed to.
“You knew for months,” she repeated, each word sharper than the last. “Even after I told you who I was—after you let me open up to you.”
“Yes.”
She folded her arms tight, whiskey-flush climbing her neck. Anger and hurt warred there in equal measure. “I can’t believe this.”
“I’m sorry.” The words scraped out. “I truly am.”
“That doesn’t help.”
“I understand.”
She looked at me with eyes like tempered steel, her mouth pressed into a hard, unforgiving line.
“Here are your drinks,” the waiter said, appearing with two tumblers of amber liquid. He set them down in front of us before slipping away.
I lifted my glass and took a sip, letting the burn do what it could.
She stared at hers as the ice cubes shifted, melting into the cooling liquor. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I looked down, tracing a path through the condensation on my glass. “Because I was afraid,” I admitted, unable to meet her eyes. “I was in too deep, and I knew if I told you, you’d block me. You’d never speak to me again.”
She stared back, expression flat—unmoved. It wasn’t enough.
“And I wouldn’t have been able to explain myself,” I added, voice low.
“You mean you wouldn’t have had the opportunity to trap me in a public place and force me to behave. To listen.” She gestured around the restaurant.
Her words hit like a shotgun blast to the chest—accurate and excruciating.
“Yes.”
Tears welled again at the corners of her lashes. She tilted her head back, curls sliding over her bare shoulders and down her back as she blinked the tears away.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, the words too small. Too late.
She bit her lip until a small bead of blood bloomed. “I’d never opened up to someone like that before.”
Guilt twisted hard inside me.
“Everyone else…” The words fell away. “You made me believe I could trust you.”
“You can.”
She shook her head, disappointment overtaking the fury. “No. I can’t.”
Air came in short, shallow bursts as I forced my lungs to expand, contract—expand, contract. One. Two. Three. Again.
The tablecloth. The whiskey glass. The brick wall. Her tears. Her defensive posture. I counted each one, willing the panic to ease, the pain to settle.
Conversation. Forks on plates. Jazz weaving through the air. Her disappointment—steady beneath it all.
None of it helped. The tricks failed. Shame tore through me like shrapnel.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” I asked—pleaded, really.
She studied me with a weary expression, scanning me as if searching for the man she thought she’d known.
I let her look.
Let her see everything—every regret, every misstep, the acceptance of whatever this would cost me.
Eventually, she sighed, running a hand through her hair. “I don’t know.”
“Will you let me try to make it up to you?”
“Damien.” She flung my name like an insult, nostrils flaring. “You’ve destroyed my trust. Lied to me. Manipulated me. And now you sit here asking for a chance at redemption?”
I dropped my head, staring at the creases my fists had pressed into my slacks. “I know I shouldn’t ask. But I—”
“You what?” she spat.
I met her gaze head on. “But I can’t stop thinking about you. I don’t know if that makes me obsessed or insane, but you’re all I think about. Every second of the day. I wonder when your next message will come, what you’ll pick for dinner, what you’ll say next. I can’t get away from you.”
A hoarse laugh scraped out of me. “And the worst part is—I don’t want to.”
The corner of her mouth twitched, something in her easing by a fraction. “You’re a psychopath.”
“Maybe,” I said with a dry laugh. “But it doesn’t change how I feel.”
The sound of leather-soled shoes against tile drew closer, and we both turned.
“Did either of you have questions about the menu tonight?”
I looked to Emma, ready to follow her lead. She said nothing.
“I think we’re—”
“I’ll have the lobster ravioli, please,” she said, cutting me off.
The waiter and I both turned to her in equal disbelief.
“Really?” I whispered, too caught off guard to care that we had company.
She angled her head, tone cool and steady. “You heard my order.”
“Okay.” I nodded, turning to face the waiter. “I’ll have the sirloin, medium rare. Side of veggies and a loaded sweet potato. Extra sugar on the side.”
He snapped his book shut. “I’ll get this put in right away.”
She quirked a brow.
“I have a bit of a sweet tooth,” I admitted, a flush catching me off guard.
She snorted gently. “So did Read.”
The name drove in like a blade between my ribs. I wanted to look away, to escape the weight of it, but I couldn’t. Shouldn’t. Not when she was staring at me like that—like she was trying to find pieces of the man she’d known inside the stranger across from her.
“Where’d that name even come from?”
“It’s my middle name. Damien Read Holt.”
She blinked. “Really?”
“It was taken from my grandfather’s name—Ridano.” I shrugged, a sheepish grin tugging at my lips. “Wouldn’t have been my first choice, but it made my mother happy.”
“Sounds Italian.”
“Half Italian,” I corrected gently.
“Half Italian,” she echoed, tone appraising. “Read corrected me on that, too.”
A ghost of a smile tugged at my mouth before I could stop it. The memory was vivid—her teasing me during that ridiculous mob documentary, of all things. She’d ordered Mexican that night—steak fajitas, because chicken textures freak her out sometimes—with a whole avocado on the side.
I’d laughed when she’d explained it, already planning a trip to San Miguel de Allende in the back of my mind—her in a windswept dress, sunlight in her hair as we wandered the markets.
“Read likes salsa but hates cilantro.” Her voice softened. “Is that still true?”
I blinked. The images scattering. “Yes.”
Her head dipped. “I hate cilantro, too.”
“I know.”
A tiny smile slid across her face—wistful, gone almost as soon as it appeared.
“My mom’s name really is Rosie,” I blurted, the words spilling out before I could catch them. “I really did wrestle in high school—and never won a match. I really did lose my security deposit in the candy-making fiasco.”
The memories tumbled out faster. “I really did have ringworm in middle school. And my girlfriend really did punch me in the face because she thought the mark on my neck was a hickey.”
She laughed, the sound sparking along my skin.
“I really did try to go skydiving once,” I added, grinning, “but I never made it out of the plane.”
Another laugh—real this time, fragile but there.
The words kept coming, fast and frantic now, chasing that sound. Every truth I’d told her. Every stupid story. Every small, human detail—everything that had never been a lie.
Until the waiter arrived with our plates—the spell breaking as quickly as it had formed.
“Ladies first,” he announced, setting her plate in front of her. Pasta glistened under a sheen of butter and herbs, the scent rich and warm.
“And for you, sir.”
I poked at the steak, testing its give. Perfect.
Emma reached for her napkin and spread it across her lap. I mirrored her, unable to look away—the small rise and fall of her shoulders, the flicker of candlelight in her eyes, the delicate movement of her hands.
She lifted her fork and knife and cut through the tender pasta. Butter pooled on the plate, steam curling upward as lobster spilled free.
And as she took her first bite, I found myself offering a silent thank you—to whatever might be listening—that she was still here.
Still sitting across from me.