CHAPTER 8
Damon
My apartment isn't much to look at, not compared to what she probably had in her old life — practical furniture, minimal decoration, everything built for function over comfort because I've spent twelve years living like a man who might need to move fast if the wrong knock ever came at the door.
But it's clean, and it's mine, and something about watching Selene step into it, taking in the details with the same careful, cataloging attention she brings to everything, makes my chest tight in a way I don't have a name for.
"This is very you," she says, running a hand along the back of the worn leather couch, taking in the single bookshelf crowded with well-thumbed paperbacks and a few mechanical manuals, the kitchen that looks barely used because I eat most meals downstairs with the club.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Careful." She turns to look at me, something soft at the edges of her expression.
"Everything in here looks like it's been chosen on purpose.
Nothing wasted. Nothing here that doesn't earn its place.
" She glances at me sideways. "You were like that at eighteen too, actually.
I just didn't have the word for it back then. "
I don't answer right away. I cross to the small kitchen instead, mostly to give my hands something to do, and pour two glasses of water because it's the only thing I've got on hand that feels appropriate to offer, and when I turn back around she's still watching me with that same unguarded expression, the one that's been slowly breaking through her defenses since the night on my porch.
"Can I ask you something?" she says, taking the glass from me, close enough now that I can smell the faint trace of her shampoo, something clean and simple, nothing like the expensive perfumes I'd imagine her old life required.
"Anything."
"When you looked at me in the garage that first night —" She pauses, choosing her words carefully, the way she does when she's about to say something that costs her.
"You looked at me like I'd done something to you.
Not like I'd surprised you. Like I'd hurt you, somehow, just by existing in front of you again.
And I've been turning that over for a week now, because I'm the one who should be angry. You're the one who left."
The truth sits heavy in my chest, the same truth that's been sitting there for twelve years, locked in a box I've never once let myself fully open in front of another living person.
"I never stopped loving you," I say, and the words come out rougher than I mean them to, like they've been rusted shut from disuse.
"That's the part I never got to tell you.
That morning after prom — that text I sent — it wasn't because I stopped feeling something for you.
It was the exact opposite. I left because of how much I felt for you, and because staying meant putting you directly in front of something that would have destroyed you, and I couldn't live with that.
I still can't fully explain the rest of it.
Not tonight. But I need you to hear that much, because I think you've spent twelve years believing you weren't enough for me, and that's the one thing about all of this that was never, ever true. "
She sets her water glass down on the counter, hand not quite steady, and looks at me with something raw and unguarded and furious all tangled together.
"You don't get to say that," she says, voice cracking slightly, "and then not tell me the rest. Do you understand what it did to me, Damon?
Eighteen years old, and the boy I thought I was going to spend my whole life with just — vanished.
Six words. No explanation, no goodbye, nothing.
I spent years thinking I'd imagined how real it was between us.
Thinking I'd built up some teenage fantasy that meant nothing to you at all, because if it had meant something, how could you have just left like that? "
"It meant everything." I close the distance between us without fully deciding to, until we're standing close enough that I can see the fine tremor still moving through her hands, the fury and the hurt and something else underneath both of them that I recognize because it's been sitting in my own chest for twelve years too.
"It meant so much that I was willing to burn my whole future to the ground to keep you safe from it.
I'll tell you the full story soon, Selene.
I promise you that. But not tonight, not standing here like this, because I don't want the truth of what happened twelve years ago to be the only thing between us right now. "
"Then what do you want?" Her voice is barely above a whisper, and the distance between us has closed to almost nothing, her upturned face close enough that I can feel her breath against my jaw.
"You know what I want." My voice comes out low, rough, honest in a way I haven't let myself be in longer than I can remember.
"I've wanted it since the second you walked into my garage soaked through and furious and still the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life.
I want you, Selene. Not the memory of you.
Not some twelve-year-old version I've been carrying around like a ghost. You, now, exactly as you are — the walls, the fight in you, the way you love that little girl so fiercely it scares me a little.
I want all of it. But I'm not going to take anything you're not ready to give, and I'm not going to let old wounds be the reason we rush something that deserves better than that. "
She looks up at me a long moment, something shifting behind her eyes — the last of her hesitation, maybe, or the last of some old, careful calculation she's been running since the night her car broke down, weighing risk against reward, weighing the cost of letting herself want something against the cost of continuing to deny it.
Then she closes the last of the distance herself, rising up on her toes, and kisses me.
It hits me like a physical blow, twelve years of restraint and want and grief collapsing into a single point of contact, and for one suspended second I just stand there, stunned by the reality of it after so long imagining it, before every careful instinct I've built dissolves and I kiss her back with everything I've been holding down since the second I saw her again.
My hands find her waist, pull her flush against me, and she makes a small sound against my mouth that undoes something fundamental in my chest, her fingers curling into the front of my shirt like she's afraid I might disappear if she doesn't hold on tight enough.
I deepen the kiss, slow and thorough, tasting the coffee she must have had earlier, feeling the last of her hesitation dissolve as she melts into me, and twelve years of separation collapses into nothing at all, like no time passed between the boy I was and the man I've become, like some essential part of me has been waiting this entire time for exactly this moment to arrive.
"Damon." She breaks the kiss just enough to say my name, breathless, forehead resting against mine, and I feel my whole body respond to the sound of it, want thick and immediate and almost overwhelming.
"I've got you," I murmur, and kiss her again, softer this time, savoring rather than devouring, learning the shape of her mouth all over again like something precious I'm terrified of taking too fast.
We end up on the couch somehow, though I couldn't fully trace the path there if you asked me — her in my lap, my hands framing her face, her fingers tangled in my hair, both of us breathing hard between increasingly desperate kisses, twelve years of denial burning off between us like fog under morning sun.
Her hands slide under the hem of my shirt, palms flat against my stomach, and I feel my control fraying at the edges, want pooling low and insistent, every instinct in my body screaming to pull her closer, to take this exactly as far as she's willing to let it go.
But somewhere underneath the want, an older, steadier instinct holds firm — the same instinct that's guided every hard decision I've made as president, the part of me that knows the difference between what I want in this exact moment and what actually serves the woman in my lap, trembling and wanting and still, underneath it all, a woman who's spent two years learning that trust is dangerous currency to spend too fast.
I pull back, gentle, breathing hard, resting my forehead against hers.
"Wait," I say, and it costs me something physical to say it, my whole body protesting the interruption. "Selene, wait."
She goes still, some old uncertainty flickering back into her expression, and I recognize it immediately — the fear that she's done something wrong, that I'm pulling away the way men in her life have taught her to expect.
"It's not you," I say quickly, cupping her face in both hands, making sure she's looking at me, making sure there's no room for misreading this.
"God, it's not you. I want you more than I've wanted anything in twelve years.
But I need you to hear the rest of the story first. All of it.
What really happened, why I left, what it cost. You deserve to know the whole truth before we go any further than this, because I don't want the first time to happen with half of me still hiding something from you. "
Something in her face softens, understanding dawning slow. "You're serious."
"Dead serious." I press a kiss to her forehead, chaste, grounding, an anchor for both of us.
"I'm going to earn this properly, Selene.
Not rush it because we finally let twelve years of wanting each other loose in one afternoon.
When we do this — and we're going to do this, I'm not pretending otherwise — I want it to be with everything laid bare between us. No ghosts left standing in the room."
She studies me a long moment, something in her expression I haven't seen since she walked into my garage that first night — not guarded, not careful, just open, vulnerable, trusting in a way that feels like it costs her everything and gives her something back in equal measure.
"Okay," she says softly. "I can wait for that."
We sit together on the couch a while longer after that, her head resting against my shoulder, my arm around her, both of us quiet in the particular comfortable silence of two people who've just crossed some threshold neither can fully take back now.
I can feel her heartbeat slowing gradually against my side, the tension of the last week finally easing out of her posture, and I think, not for the first time, that whatever comes next — whatever Richard Vance tries to throw at us, whatever old debts or new threats circle closer — I've already decided I'll burn down anything standing between me and building a real life with this woman and her daughter.
That's when the alarm goes off.
It's not subtle. A sharp, electronic klaxon blares through the compound's speaker system, audible even up here through the closed apartment door, and I'm on my feet before the second pulse of it finishes sounding, every soft, unguarded thing in my chest replaced instantly by the cold, focused calculation of a man whose compound just told him something's wrong.
"What is that?" Selene's up too, alarm plain on her face, and I can hear voices already shouting downstairs, boots moving fast across the garage floor.
"Perimeter alert." I'm already crossing to the door, pulling it open, adrenaline sharpening every sense at once. "Stay close to me. Don't leave my side."