Chapter 316: Chapter 318: Julian Is Back
DAMIEN’S POV
The reception had been going for an hour when he saw him.
He was mid conversation with one of his board members....something about the foundation’s international expansion that he was only half listening to because Aria was across the garden with her mother and Lucy and he kept losing the thread of everything else....when he saw a figure coming through the garden gate.
Slightly rumpled.
Jacket not quite right.
The specific dishevelled quality of a man who had come directly from an airport.
Damien stopped talking.
The board member said something he didn’t hear.
Julian Pierce walked through the gate of the west garden with his tie loosened and his carry-on bag still over his shoulder and looked around the reception with the expression of a man who had run through two airports and missed three connections and was deeply relieved to have made it at all.
He found Damien across the space.
He raised both hands in the universal gesture of I know, I know, I’m sorry.
Damien excused himself from the conversation.
He crossed the garden.
Julian met him halfway.
They stood in front of each other for a moment.....six years of friendship and one significant complicated Chapter and eight months of Julian being on the other side of the world and all of it sitting between them in the warm afternoon light.
Julian looked at him.
"You’re married," he said.
"Yes."
"I missed it."
"You did."
"My flight...."
"I know."
"Tokyo to Dubai to London to here and the London connection...."
"Julian."
"....was delayed four hours because of weather and I genuinely ran through Heathrow, Damien, I actually ran...."
"Julian."
He stopped.
Damien looked at him.
Then he pulled him in and they did the brief, firm thing that men who had known each other for six years did when they hadn’t seen each other in eight months and a significant number of things had happened in between.
Julian clapped him on the back.
"You’re actually married," he said.
"I’m actually married."
"To her."
"To her."
Julian pulled back and looked at his face and did something with his own face that was not quite a smile but contained everything a smile contained.
"Good," he said. "Finally. Genuinely." He looked around the garden. "Where is she."
****
ARIA’S POV
She saw Damien crossing the garden with someone she didn’t immediately recognise.
Then she did.
She hadn’t seen Julian Pierce in months.....he’d been in Tokyo, then Singapore, then somewhere else, the specific peripatetic existence of a man who ran his company from wherever his company needed him to be. She’d spoken to him twice on the phone during the Victoria situation. He’d called Damien every week.
He looked terrible.
He looked wonderful.
He reached her and stopped and looked at her and then looked at the dress and then looked at the ring and then looked at her face.
"You actually married him," he said.
"I did."
"This man." He pointed at Damien. "Specifically."
"Specifically him yes."
"Even though he’s...."
"Julian," Damien said.
"I’m just saying there were options," Julian said. "There were other options available. I personally....."
"Julian," Aria said.
He looked at her.
She looked at him.
Then she stepped forward and hugged him....properly, the way you hugged someone who had been in your corner when things were difficult and who had shown up jet-lagged and rumpled to a wedding reception because that was the kind of person he was.
He hugged her back.
"Congratulations," he said quietly. Into her hair. Genuinely. "You deserve every bit of this."
She pulled back.
She looked at his face.
"You look terrible," she said.
"I ran through Heathrow."
"Sit down," she said. "Eat something. Mrs Abel will find you."
"Mrs Chen is here?"
"Mrs Chen is everywhere," Damien said.
Julian sat down.
Mrs Chen appeared within four minutes with a plate, which nobody was surprised by.
The speeches started at seven.
The light had gone gold and the tables were full and the garden had the specific warm atmosphere of people who had been fed well and were happy and weren’t in any hurry to be anywhere else.
Marcus stood up first.
The table went quiet.
Aria looked at him....at this man who had been the most constant professional presence in her life for a year, who had built forty seven pages of evidence and traced book purchases through Luxembourg databases and driven her to the hospital every morning and said good catch when she’d photographed a number plate and meant it as the highest possible compliment.
He looked at his glass.
He looked at the table.
He said: "I’ve worked for my boss for six years."
He paused.
"In those six years I have watched him negotiate billion dollar contracts without flinching. I have watched him face down people who would have genuinely frightened most men. I have watched him make decisions in circumstances that would have broken someone less....constructed." He paused. "And I have never once, in six years, seen him forget to breathe."
The table was very quiet.
"Until today," Marcus said. "When she walked down that path."
He looked at Aria.
"When I first ran your background check...." A sound from around the table. He waited for it to settle. "You had seventeen separate skills listed on your forged reference. I thought....whoever made this is either very thorough or very desperate." He paused. "You were both. And I want you to know that every single one of those skills turned out to be real which made my job considerably more complicated than it needed to be." He paused. "And considerably more interesting."
Aria pressed her lips together.
"He’s different," Marcus said simply. "Since you. Better. And I’ve been doing this job long enough to know that better is rare." He looked at Damien. "Don’t make me do another forty seven pages of work."
He raised his glass.
"To Aria and Damien," he said. "Finally."
The table raised their glasses.
Aria laughed.....surprised and real.....and Damien’s hand found hers under the table and she held on.
Alexander stood up second.
The table settled differently for him....a particular quality of attention, the specific listening that happened when people understood they were about to hear something that mattered.
He stood with his glass and looked at it for a moment.
Then he looked at Aria.
"I found my daughter four months before this man proposed to her," he said. "Which means I have known Aria Chen for approximately sixteen months." He paused. "In those sixteen months she has been kidnapped, poisoned, subjected to a public campaign designed to destroy her career, and has had to manage the arrival of a father she didn’t know existed who has, by his own admission, handled that arrival imperfectly on multiple occasions."
A small sound around the table.
"Through all of it," Alexander said, "she has been....herself. Completely and without apology." He paused. "I spent twenty four years looking for her. I had a version of her in my head. What she might be like. What she might have become." He stopped. "The reality was better than anything I imagined."
