Chapter 32

Chapter 32

Harper

Married life, it turned out, looked remarkably similar to the months leading up to it, except now there was no more waiting attached to any of it. No more careful distance. No more slow.

We spent the first week after the wedding back on the same island where everything had shifted, this time without brochures or wedding planning distracting us from simply being together. Damian, to my continued amusement, still couldn’t ride a bicycle properly.

“You’re doing it on purpose,” I accused, watching him wobble dangerously close to the same palm tree from months earlier.

“I am a grown man being humiliated by a bicycle. I promise you, this is not intentional.”

“Sure it isn’t.”

He caught up to me eventually, laughing, and we spent the afternoon exploring the same small shops and quiet beaches, married now in every sense that mattered instead of just on paper.

“Any regrets?” he asked one evening, both of us tangled together on the balcony, watching the sunset paint the sky in the same orange and gold from that first pivotal conversation.

“About marrying you? Never.”

“About any of it. The scandal. The revenge plan gone wrong. All of it.”

I considered the question honestly. “No. I think I needed all of it, actually. The anger, the plan, even the mistakes. It led me here.”

“To me.”

“To you,” I confirmed. “To Lily. To a family I never expected to find, especially not in the last place I thought to look.”

Damian pressed a kiss to my temple, quiet and content in a way I’d never seen him during those early tense months when trust between us had felt impossible.

“I used to think happiness like this only existed for other people,” he admitted. “People who hadn’t lost what I’d lost. Hadn’t built walls the way I had.”

“And now?”

“Now I think I just needed the right person to finally tear them down.”

We returned to New York a week later, tanned and unhurried, ready to settle into whatever ordinary life looked like now that scandal and strategy no longer defined our relationship. Ordinary, we quickly discovered, still came with its share of complications.

Richard remained distant, unwilling to fully accept a marriage he’d never approved of, though his attempts at interference had grown increasingly infrequent since the wedding. Victoria, surprisingly, had become something closer to an ally, her sharp edges softening slightly with each passing month, our shared understanding over her mother’s bracelet apparently marking some quiet turning point neither of us discussed directly.

Vanessa still lingered at social events occasionally, though her comments had lost most of their sting once it became clear nothing she said would ever change Damian’s mind about anything involving me.

Lily, predictably, thrived through all of it, treating our second wedding as though it had personally validated every scheme she’d orchestrated leading up to it.

“I told you the beach was better,” she informed Victoria proudly during a Sunday dinner weeks later.

“You did,” Victoria agreed, something like genuine warmth in her voice now. “I stand corrected.”

“Does that mean I get to plan the next family event too?”

“Absolutely not.”

Lily pouted dramatically, though the expression didn’t last long once dessert arrived. Some battles, apparently, weren’t worth fighting when chocolate cake was involved.

That evening, once Lily had gone to bed and the house had settled into its familiar quiet, Damian found me in the study, going through Victoria’s latest letter — this one, refreshingly, containing actual affection rather than veiled criticism.

“Good news?” he asked, settling beside me.

“She wants to take Lily shopping next weekend. Apparently there’s a ‘appropriate unicorn-themed outfit’ she’s found.”

“God help us.”

“That’s becoming your catchphrase.”

“With good reason.” He wrapped an arm around my shoulders, pulling me closer. “How’s my wife doing tonight?”

“Happy,” I said honestly. “Ridiculously, embarrassingly happy.”

“Good. I plan on keeping it that way.”

“You’ve been doing an excellent job so far.”

He smiled, that quiet, genuine smile that still felt like a gift every time he offered it freely. “I intend to keep doing an excellent job. For a very long time.”

“Forever, you mean.”

“Forever,” he confirmed.

I settled against him, thinking back to everything that had led us here — the reckless night neither of us had planned, the scandal that had forced us together, the slow, deliberate months spent learning to trust each other despite every reason not to. None of it had happened the easy way. None of it had followed any sensible timeline.

But somehow, impossibly, it had led exactly here. To this quiet house. This complicated, healing family. This man who’d once seemed cold and unreachable, now sitting beside me with nothing but warmth in his expression.

“Damian?”

“Yes?”

“I’m glad the plan failed.”

He laughed softly, understanding immediately what I meant. “Me too.”

“I came here to destroy you.”

“You did destroy me,” he said. “Just not in the way either of us expected.”

“How do you mean?”

“You destroyed every wall I’d spent years building. Every excuse I had for staying distant, staying guarded, staying alone.” He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his touch gentle and certain. “You destroyed the version of me that thought love was weakness. I’d say that counts as revenge, in its own way.”

I smiled, warmth spreading steadily through my chest. “I like that version of revenge much better.”

“So do I.”.

We’d started as enemies. Ended as family. And somewhere in between, unexpectedly, impossibly, we’d found exactly what both of us had spent years convinced we’d never deserve.

“I love you,” I said quietly.

“I love you too,” Damian answered, without hesitation, without doubt, exactly the way he had every time since that first night on the beach when the words had finally become real.