A Man in Distress

CHAPTER ONE

****Liana Pov****

I never planned to set foot in the Reid estate again.

If grief had a smell, it would be lilies. Sweet, suffocating, and impossible to escape. The scent hit me the second the doors opened, flooding my lungs and dragging memories I thought I buried years ago back to the surface.

The wake was quiet, too quiet. People murmured in dim clusters under chandelier light, wind sighing through tall arched windows, the kind of silence that feels like it’s listening. Black suits. Black dresses. Black coffee. Everyone carefully choosing their words, as if speaking too loudly might disturb the dead.

I stood just inside the threshold, coat still buttoned, fingers curled tightly around the strap of my bag. I had rehearsed this moment in my head a thousand times. I told myself I’d be composed. Civil. Detached.

Then I saw Damien.

And every useful thought evaporated.

He stood beside Elise’s casket like something carved from stone. His shoulders were broader than I remembered. His hair darker. He wore a black suit, crisp and stark, but his tie was crooked, like he’d forced it on without caring. He looked… wrecked. Not in the loud, dramatic way people break. Quiet devastation. Controlled, lethal heartbreak. His jaw tight. His eyes hollow.

The last time I saw him, he was walking down the aisle with my sister.

And I was walking away.

I shouldn’t have come. That thought pulsed through me like a heartbeat. I should’ve sent flowers, paid respect from a distance, stayed an echo on the edge of their lives like I trained myself to be.

But Ava needed me.

That was what I whispered to myself as I forced my feet forward, step by step, across polished marble. Not I came for Damien. Not I came because I never stopped caring. I came for his daughter. My niece. Elise’s little girl.

I kept my eyes on the floor, on the hem of my black dress, on anything that wasn’t him. Until a voice called my name.

“Liana?”

It was warm, familiar, and sharper than glass through silk.

Damien.

I looked up. His eyes landed on me, recognizing me instantly. No hesitation, no confusion. Just shock. And something else, something raw, buried under layers of grief.

“You came.” His voice was lower than I remembered, slightly rough, like he hadn’t slept for days. “I didn’t think you would.”

“I almost didn’t,” I admitted.

Silence stretched between us. Heavy, unspoken things hanging there like fragile ornaments ready to shatter.

My sister — his wife — lay three feet away. And all I could think was how much I’d missed his voice. His presence. The way his eyes always seemed to pin me in place, even when he didn’t mean to.

This was wrong. All of it.

Before I could say anything else, a smaller voice broke through the thick air.

“Aunt Li?”

I turned.

Ava stood in a simple black dress, clutching a stuffed bear with one ear missing. She had Elise’s eyes — dark and wide and too knowing. My breath caught.

I hadn’t seen her since she was four. She was eight now, tall and serious and heartbreakingly composed. Too composed for a child who just lost her mother.

I knelt instinctively, arms opening on their own. Ava stepped into them, hugging me tight, burying her face in my shoulder like she remembered me. Like no time had passed at all.

My eyes stung.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” I whispered into her hair, fighting the tremble in my voice. “I’m so sorry.”

Ava didn’t cry. She just held on, silent and stiff and trying to be brave. I smoothed her hair, tasting regret like metal on my tongue.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she mumbled.

That was what broke me.

Not Damien. Not the casket. Not the lilies or the whispered condolences.

A child, trying to be strong.

I looked up and found Damien watching us, emotions flashing through his expression faster than I could read. Relief. Pain. Guilt. Something close to longing.

For my presence.

For the past.

God. This is why I stayed away.

“Would you…” Damien cleared his throat, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck, voice strained. “Would you like to sit for a moment? With Ava?”

I nodded. Words were useless.

We sat in the second row of chairs facing the casket. Ava’s small hand wrapped around mine like an anchor. Damien sat on the other side of her, close enough that I could feel heat radiating off his body, but far enough that propriety stayed intact.

Barely.

People approached with condolences. His firm partners. Elise’s friends. Distant relatives. I said nothing. My mouth was dry. I kept my focus on Ava, but every sense I had was aware of Damien — his breathing, his stillness, the tense set of his shoulders.

I shouldn’t have been noticing anything about him. Not today. Not ever again.

But feelings don’t obey logic. They aren’t polite. They don’t respect boundaries.

They linger.

Long after you’ve tried to kill them.

A voice cut through the quiet from behind me. Low. Smooth. Confident.

“Liana?”

I didn’t need to turn to know who it was. I’d recognize Ethan Ward’s voice anywhere.

Of course he came.

He stepped into view, tall in a charcoal suit, dark hair perfectly styled, eyes unreadable. Ethan was my colleague — technically my superior — at Blackstone & Winters. The firm that goes head-to-head against Damien’s company in court regularly.

And Ethan had been interested in me for the last year. Patient. Persistent. Too observant.

He gave Damien a brief nod. Neutral. Respectful. Rival acknowledging rival.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Reid,” Ethan said, voice measured.

Damien’s reply was clipped. “Thank you.”

Their eyes met like two wolves pausing at the same water source. Not aggressive yet. But alert.

Ethan shifted his attention to me. Something softer passed through his gaze when he saw the way Ava was curled against my side.

“I didn’t know you were related,” he said quietly.

“I don’t talk about it,” I murmured.

And that was the truth. I had spent years building a life where no one connected me to Damien Reid. To Elise’s marriage. To the past.

Ethan studied me a moment longer, then cleared his throat. “If you need anything — support, time off, whatever — you know the firm has your back.”

Damien tensed at the word “firm.”

I pretended not to notice.

“Thank you,” I said.

Ethan nodded once and stepped away, but not before touching my shoulder in a brief, grounding gesture. Damien’s jaw flexed.

Possessive?

No. Impossible.

I focused on breathing evenly. On being calm. On surviving the next hour without unraveling completely.

Ava eventually drifted to sleep against me, her small body warm and heavy. Damien stood then, looking like he wanted to say something but didn’t know how. Finally he spoke, voice low enough that only I could hear.

“She missed you.”

My throat closed. “I know.”

“I should have… reached out,” he continued, eyes on Ava, not me. “When she got older. When Elise… when things were hard.”

I glanced at him sharply. There was something in his tone — something fractured and honest.

“What do you mean ‘hard’? You and Elise—”

He shook his head. “Not now.”

Right. Not now. Not here. Not next to a coffin.

Before I could answer, Elise’s mother approached to speak with Damien, and he slipped away without another word.

Leaving me alone with sleeping Ava and a heart that wouldn’t behave.

---

Hours passed. People left. The room thinned until only close family remained. I carried Ava to a lounge at the back of the estate, settling her on a sofa under a soft throw blanket.

When I turned to leave, Damien was standing in the doorway, watching me.

We stared at each other, exhaustion and tension thick between us.

“I didn’t know if you’d ever come back,” he said finally.

“I had to,” I replied. “For her.”

His eyes flicked toward Ava’s sleeping figure, then returned to me. “Only for her?”

There it was. The dangerous question. The one that made my pulse jump.

“I shouldn’t be here,” I whispered instead.

His voice softened, shattering something in me I didn’t know was still intact.

“You have every right to be here.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t. We both know that.”

His gaze dropped to the floor, then lifted again, darker now. “Liana…”

My name on his lips was a mistake. A living breathing mistake.

“I married your sister,” he said. “But that didn’t erase—”

“Stop.” My voice was sharp, too sharp. “Please. Don’t say something you can’t take back.”

His breathing slowed, controlled. Professional. Like he was standing in court trying not to give anything away.

“Are you staying in town long?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I lied.

“Where are you staying?”

“A hotel,” I said.

Damien’s jaw clenched again. “The estate has guest rooms. Ava… would like you close.”

Danger. Danger everywhere.

“I’ll manage,” I said, stepping past him toward the hallway.

He didn’t move out of my path. He stood still, close enough that I had to angle my shoulder to slip by. The air changed, thicker, charged.

I felt his gaze on the side of my face, on my hair, on my mouth.

I didn’t look at him when I whispered, “Goodnight, Damien.”

He replied just as quietly.

“Goodnight, Liana.”

I didn’t breathe again until I was outside under the night sky, cold air stinging my lungs, heart pounding like it wanted to break free of my ribcage.

I had made a mistake coming here.

Because grief might bury the dead, but it resurrects the past.

And mine was walking, breathing, and looking at me like I was a promise he wasn’t allowed to touch.

Not yet.

Not anymore.

And certainly not without consequences.

---

When I got to my rental car, I realized I was shaking. Not from the cold. From everything else.

The past. The guilt. The man in the black suit with grief in his eyes and desire buried somewhere beneath it, refusing to die.

I started the engine, forced my thoughts into straight lines, and drove toward the city lights, telling myself the same lie I’d been telling for years:

This ends tonight.

I didn’t believe it then.

I won’t believe it tomorrow.

Not with Damien Reid back in my life.

Not with Ava holding my hand like she remembers who I used to be.

And definitely not now that fate has thrown me straight into the fire I ran from.

Because some loves don’t disappear.

They wait.

They smolder.

They burn quietly…

Until someone finally opens the door

and lets oxygen in.