Chapter 46
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Emma
An hour later, the elevator chimed as the doors slid open onto Damien’s floor, the hallway washed in late afternoon glow.
“Hey.” Damien’s call came from the living room, along with the sound of a jog. He rounded the corner, slowing as he approached. “Welcome home,” he said, kissing me on the forehead. “Ava made chocolate chip banana bread. Want a slice?”
“That sounds amazing.” I toed off my shoes as Damien eased the coat from my shoulders.
“How is she?” he asked.
“Settling. Each day better than the last.”
He nodded, but his focus stayed on me, not the update. “And you?”
“I’m fine.”
He gave me a look. One unimpressed eyebrow that said he didn’t buy it for a second.
The corner of my mouth twitched. “Okay. Not fine. Just… tired.”
He opened his arms. “Come here.”
I folded into him. His warmth sank through fabric, through skin, settling somewhere deeper. My hands splayed against his chest, feeling him breathe.
“You’re wound tight. I can feel it in your shoulders.”
I let out a shaky sound. “It’s been a hard week.”
“Mm.” His hands worked gently into the knot beneath my shoulder blade, the slow pressure sending a faint shiver down my spine. “I feel you there.”
I tipped my head up to look at him. “How are things going with the breach?”
“They’re going well. I think we’ll have it completely handled in the next couple of days.”
I pulled back, startled. “Really?”
His mouth curved into a confident smile. “Yes.”
Panic kicked through me, cold creeping into my fingertips. “Damien—if that’s the case, I’m… I’m going to have to give a press statement.”
“Yes,” he acknowledged, thumb skimming a slow line along my hip. “Unfortunately.”
“God.” I pressed my hand flat against his chest. The weight of that responsibility dropped squarely onto me, sharp and sudden. “I haven’t even thought about what I’m supposed to say. Or how the investors are going to react. Or Falkirk. Hell, I don’t even know what’s happening. I—”
“Emma.” His voice cut in, low and steady. “Breathe.”
I tried. I did. But my lungs refused to cooperate, each inhale snagging halfway. Everything I’d shoved aside while managing Candace, dodging Garrett’s fallout, trying not to fall apart myself—it all hit me at once.
A surge of nerves, guilt, pressure, grief, fear.
“I don’t think I can,” I whispered.
“You can,” he said, rubbing measured circles between my shoulder blades. “You’re just overloaded.”
But the simple touch—usually grounding—barely dented the static crawling under my skin. The nerves firing along my spine weren’t calming; they were accelerating, vibrating hard enough that I felt them in the tips of my fingers.
“I feel like I’m shaking on the inside,” I managed. “Like my whole body…”
Damien’s hands stilled. He shifted, tilting my chin up with two fingers, forcing my attention to him. “Emma,” he murmured. “Look at me.”
Our eyes caught and held.
“I hate feeling like this.”
“I wish I could help,” he said, a faint frown pulling at his mouth.
Then something sparked.
A memory—weightless, warm, quiet—rose like a flare through the chaos.
Floating in space, suspended through time.
Held in the kind of peace only Damien had ever been able to give me.
Understanding clicked into place.
Because I knew.
God, I knew exactly what I needed.
Not reassurance.
Not pep talks.
Not a plan.
Not logic.
Something else entirely.
My fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt. “I don’t… I don’t want to think anymore.”
He went still.
I swallowed. “Can you help me?”
The truth slipped out before I could brace, impossible to take back.
His mouth parted. “Are you—”
“Yes,” I whispered. “Yes, I am.”
For a second, neither of us moved.
Then the dominant in him surfaced—low, controlled, unmistakable.
His shoulders squared.
His breath eased.
He pinned me with a look that felt like touch.
And just like that, the weight I’d been holding slipped into his keeping as if it belonged there.
“Emma,” he murmured, the word low, careful, reverent. “It would be my pleasure.”