Chapter 175: Chapter 175
His hand pressed slightly at my back. "Thank you."
We turned slowly. Below the railing, Ravenwood spread gold and endless, the city entirely indifferent to the fact that everything had shifted tonight.
"This time it’s real," I said quietly.
He was quiet for a moment. "Yeah," he said finally, his voice low and certain. "This time it’s real."
I rested my cheek against his shoulder and closed my eyes and let myself have it — the music, the lights, the warm air, our son somewhere behind us explaining the concept of babies to Mrs. Dora, the weight of Damien’s hand at my back — all of it.
Damien stiffened slightly beneath my cheek, a barely perceptible tension that I’d learned to read like a language, and when I lifted my head and followed his gaze I saw it — just for a moment, just long enough.
A figure standing in the shadow of the access stairwell door at the far edge of the building’s roofline, someone who had been watching long enough as the door swung slowly shut behind him.
Damien’s jaw was set, his eyes tracking the closed door.
"Who was that?" I said.
He looked down at me, and I could see him deciding — the old Damien would have said nothing and managed it alone and let me find out later. This one held my gaze. "I think," he said carefully, "that we should enjoy the rest of our evening."
"Damien."
"Tomorrow," he said. "Tonight is ours, I promise you — tomorrow."
********
The private villa sat on stilts above water so clear it looked invented. I stood on the deck with my feet bare against warm wood.
"You’re thinking," Damien said from behind me.
"I’m always thinking."
"You’re thinking loudly." He appeared at my shoulder, two glasses of cold water with lime because I was pregnant and flying had been enough without adding champagne on top of it, and set mine in my hand with the easy certainty of a man who had been paying attention. "What is it?"
I looked out at the water. "I keep waiting for something to go wrong."
He was quiet for a moment. Then he set his own glass on the railing and turned me gently by the shoulder until I was facing him. "Nothing is going wrong," he said.
"I know that."
"Do you?"
I looked at him, the way I’d learned to since we’d stopped performing at each other and started actually seeing — and found his face open and certain and entirely present in the way that still occasionally surprised me, this version of Damien who had fought his way through years of being taught that feeling things was failure.
"I’m working on it," I said.
He nodded, accepting this without pushing, and picked his glass back up. We stood together on the deck while the sun began its slow descent.
"Charles," I said eventually, because it had been sitting between us since last night.
Damien exhaled. "Barnes is handling it."
"That’s not an answer."
"It’s the only answer I have right now." He turned to look at me directly. "He was there, he watched. He didn’t approach, didn’t make contact — he stood in a shadow at his own daughter’s wedding and watched from a distance, which tells me he’s building to something rather than acting impulsively." His voice was measured, controlled, the voice that meant he had already thought through every angle. "Barnes has people watching his last known location. We have security in the penthouse. And we are in the Maldives, which he does not know about, and which he could not reach without us knowing."
I absorbed this. "You’re sure."
"I’m sure." He met my eyes. "I am not going to let him ruin this. Not this."
I nodded slowly and turned back to the water. "Okay," I said.
"Okay," he agreed.
The villa was everything Damien’s assistant had promised and several things she hadn’t mentioned — the outdoor shower open to the sky, the glass floor panel in the bedroom through which you could watch fish moving in slow formations below you, the dinner delivered by boat at sunset that appeared on the dock like something conjured.
We ate outside as the sky went through its full transformation, every shade of orange and rose and then a purple so deep it became blue, the first stars appearing one at a time.
"I want to know something," I said, setting down my fork.
Damien looked up.
"During the vows." I kept my eyes on him. "You said you noticed me, during our first relationship because I can’t really call it a marriage though, you said you noticed me reading in the library, the way I moved around the house. I want to know what you actually thought. Not the version you’ve cleaned up, the real one."
He was quiet for long enough that I thought he might redirect, find the polished answer, give me the redemption arc summary instead of the truth. But he picked up his wine glass and turned it slowly and said: "I thought you were going to complicate things."
I waited.
"You were supposed to be simple," he continued, not looking away from me. "A name on a contract, a presence at dinners, someone who would understand the arrangement and keep to her lane. And then you were — just there. All the time. Reading things, thinking things, having opinions about the business section of the newspaper that were actually correct." The corner of his mouth shifted. "I told myself it was inconvenient."
"Inconvenient," I repeated.
"You made it difficult to pretend the house was empty." He set the glass down. "I was good at pretending spaces were empty. I’d been doing it my whole life but you didn’t cooperate."
I thought about twenty-three-year-old Aria in that enormous cold house, trying to be invisible, certain she was succeeding. "I had no idea," I said.
"I know." Something moved across his face. "That was my fault. I was so determined not to feel anything that I made sure you couldn’t see that I did." He reached across the table and covered my hand with his. "I’m sorry. For all the ways I made you invisible when you were the most present person in every room."
The water moved quietly beneath us. A boat passed in the distance, just a light. I turned my hand under his and held on.
"You have six weeks to make it up to me," I said. "Starting now."
His eyes darkened in a way that had nothing to do with the fading light. "Only six weeks?"
"The rest of our lives," I corrected. "But the Maldives portion specifically is six days, so I’d suggest not wasting them."
He stood from his chair with a slowness that was entirely deliberate, came around the table, and pulled me up to meet him with both hands at my waist, careful and warm.
"Then we shouldn’t waste them," he agreed, and kissed me.
The bedroom doors were wide open, letting in the warm night air and the sound of waves. The lamp on the nightstand gave just enough light—soft, not bright. The bed was huge, sheets already a little messy from earlier.
I pushed Damien’s shirt off his shoulders. He let me do it, eyes locked on my face like he was afraid I’d disappear if he looked away. I could feel how fast his heart was under my hands.
"You’re still dressed," I said.
He gave a small laugh. "You’re in charge tonight."
I pushed him back until he sat on the edge of the bed, then climbed on, straddling his lap. He was already hard under his trousers—I could feel it clearly. I rocked against him once, slow, just to see his jaw tighten.
"I’m pregnant, not made of glass," I told him. "You know I’m okay."
"I know." His voice came out rough. His hands settled on my hips, careful but firm.
I kissed him hard, tongue sliding against his while my fingers opened his belt, then his fly. He lifted his hips so I could shove his trousers and boxers down. His cock was thick, standing straight up, the head already wet. I wrapped my hand around him, gave one slow stroke, and he let out a low groan that went straight through me.
I rose up on my knees, pushed my panties to the side, and lined him up. Then I sank down, taking him in one steady slide.
We both froze for a second. He filled me completely—hot, thick, stretching me just right. I was so wet there was no pain, only that heavy, perfect pressure.
"Fuck," he breathed against my neck. His hands slid up to my waist, thumbs brushing my stomach.
I started moving. Slow at first—lifting up until only the tip was inside, then sinking back down, taking every inch. Each time I bottomed out he hit deep, right where I needed it. I set the pace, rolling my hips in tight circles on the downstroke so the head dragged against that spot inside me.
His hands moved higher, cupping my breasts. They were heavier now, sensitive. When his thumbs brushed my nipples I gasped, and my walls clenched hard around him.
"Like that?" I asked, voice shaky.
