Chapter 23

Chapter 23

Damian

We left the island three days later.

Harper cried a little on the plane, though she denied it fiercely when I pointed it out.

“It’s allergies.”

“There’s no pollen at thirty thousand feet.”

“There’s cabin air. It’s dry. It does things to my eyes.”

I let her keep the lie. Some battles weren’t worth winning.

By the time we landed in New York, the sky had turned gray and heavy, the kind of gray that matched nothing about the week we’d just had. Harper stared out the window the entire drive home, watching the city swallow us back into its noise and traffic and endless demands.

“We’re really back,” she said quietly.

“We’re really back.”

“I already miss the ocean.”

“You’ll survive.”

“Barely.”

The mansion looked exactly the same when we pulled through the gates. Cold stone, tall windows, the kind of grandeur that had never once felt like home to me until Harper walked through its doors uninvited months earlier.

Lily came running before the car had even stopped moving.

“MOM! DAD!”

Harper barely had the door open before our daughter collided into her, arms wrapping tight around her waist.

“Hi, baby.” Harper crouched down, brushing hair away from Lily’s face. “Did you miss us?”

“A little.”

“Just a little?”

Lily grinned. “A lot. But I didn’t want to sound needy.”

I laughed, lifting her into my arms next. “Where did you learn that word?”

“Aunt Victoria.”

Of course she had.

“We have news,” Harper said, glancing at me over Lily’s shoulder.

Lily’s eyes widened immediately. “What kind of news?”

“The exciting kind.”

“Tell me. Tell me now.”

Harper smiled, that same soft, nervous smile from the balcony. “Your dad and I are having a real wedding.”

Lily blinked. “Aren’t you already married?”

“We are. This one’s just for fun. And flowers. And you, if you want to help plan it.”

That was all it took. Lily’s entire face transformed, lighting up brighter than I’d seen in weeks.

“Can I pick the flowers?”

“You can pick the flowers.”

“Can I be a flower girl?”

“You have to be a flower girl. It’s practically a rule.”

“Can there be a unicorn?”

Harper paused. “We’ll discuss the unicorn.”

I sighed quietly beside them. “I told you.”

“You did,” Harper admitted. “I should have listened.”

That evening, once Lily had finally been coaxed into bed after an hour of wedding-related interrogation, Harper and I sat together in the study, going through the mail that had piled up during our absence.

Mostly business. A few invitations. One envelope with Victoria’s unmistakable handwriting across the front.

Harper eyed it warily. “Should we even open that?”

“Eventually.”

“Not tonight?”

“Not tonight.”

She set it aside without argument, clearly relieved to avoid whatever criticism waited inside. Victoria had never made peace with our marriage, real or otherwise. A vacation wasn’t going to change that.

“Do you think she’ll try to ruin the wedding?” Harper asked.

“She’ll try.”

“That’s comforting.”

“She won’t succeed.”

Harper studied me for a long moment. “You sound very sure of that.”

“I am sure of that.” I set the mail aside and turned toward her fully. “Nothing is ruining this. Not Victoria. Not my father. Not anyone.”

Something shifted in her expression. Gratitude, maybe. Or relief. Possibly both.

“I keep waiting for something to go wrong,” she admitted quietly. “It feels strange, being this happy.”

“I know the feeling.”

“You do?”

“Every day since you walked into my life,” I said. “I keep waiting too. It hasn’t happened yet.”

Harper looked down at her hands, quiet for a moment. “I used to think happiness like this was for other people. Not for me.”

“Why not you?”

“Because my whole life was built around anger. Around proving something to people who never deserved my attention in the first place.” She glanced up. “You changed that without even trying.”

I reached over, taking her hand in mine. “You changed plenty in me too.”

“Like what?”

“I used to think love made people weak.”

“And now?”

“Now I think it’s the only thing that’s ever made me stronger.”

Her eyes softened, something vulnerable and open passing across her face. I didn’t push. Some moments needed space to breathe rather than words to fill them.

We sat there a while longer, hands linked, the mansion quiet around us except for the occasional creak of old wood settling into the night.

“We still haven’t picked a date,” Harper said eventually.

“No rush.”

“No rush,” she agreed. “I like this part, actually. The waiting.”

“The waiting?”

“Not knowing exactly when. Just knowing it’s coming.” She smiled faintly. “Feels less like rushing toward something and more like enjoying getting there.”

I understood that better than she probably realized. We’d rushed into so much already — the marriage, the scandal, the assumptions everyone made about us before either of us had a chance to prove them wrong. This, at least, could move at its own pace.

“Slow, then,” I said.

“Slow,” she echoed.

“We’ll pick a date eventually. We’ll deal with Victoria eventually. We’ll survive Lily’s unicorn negotiations eventually.”

Harper laughed quietly. “You make it sound so simple.”

“It is simple. We just have to let it happen instead of forcing it.”

She leaned her head against my shoulder, and I felt her exhale slowly, some invisible tension finally leaving her body.

“I could get used to this,” she murmured.

“Which part?”

“All of it. You. This house that somehow feels less cold than it used to. Even Victoria’s terrible letters.”

“Don’t get too used to those.”

“I said less cold. Not warm.”

I smiled, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. Outside, rain had started falling softly against the windows, a steady rhythm that matched the quiet calm settled between us.

Whatever waited beyond these walls — Victoria’s schemes, Richard’s disapproval, the entire Blackwood legacy pressing down on both our shoulders — none of it mattered tonight.

Tonight there was only this. Harper beside me. Lily asleep down the hall. A future neither of us was rushing toward, but one we both trusted would arrive exactly when it needed to.

“Goodnight, Damian.”

“Goodnight, Harper.”

The rain kept falling long after we’d gone quiet, steady and unhurried, exactly like everything else we were slowly learning to become.