Chapter 5 The Rules I Set for Us

Damien’s POV

She came in wearing jeans and a coat two sizes too big, Theo’s school bag still hanging off one shoulder. She hadn’t left it at the door on purpose. She’d simply forgotten it was there.

My wife by tomorrow morning, and she still acted like a woman running late for someone else’s life.

“You said you needed ten minutes,” she said, checking her phone. “I have to get back before Theo wakes up from his nap.”

“Then I’ll make it quick.” I nodded her toward the kitchen island instead of the sofa. Distance mattered tonight. I didn’t trust myself near her on anything soft. “After the wedding, you and Theo move in here. I’ll cover every cent of his treatment, and I don’t want to hear another thank you for it. We’ll raise him together under one roof, and we’ll try for another baby as soon as the doctors clear you to.”

“Okay.” She nodded like I’d read her a grocery list.

“There’s one more thing,” I pressed my hands flat against the counter. “I won’t be developing feelings for you. Better we’re both clear on that now, before either of us pretends otherwise.”

I waited for a flinch, for her mouth to tighten, for anything at all that told me she didn’t want to hear it.

“That’s fine,” she said, already reaching for her bag. “I never planned on making you love me, Damien. I just need your help saving my son.”

“That’s it? No conditions of your own?”

“What would I even ask for?” She said it like the question genuinely puzzled her, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “You’re already giving Theo everything he needs. I don’t need anything past that.”

I stood there and felt like an idiot, which I deserved.

I’d handed her a way out and she’d taken it. No hesitation, no bruise behind the eyes, not one flicker of disappointment.

She was relieved. She was glad I’d said it. I could have told her the sky was green and gotten a bigger reaction.

Four and a half years I’d spent looking for this woman.

I’d gone back to the Aster Hotel the week after she left, and the front desk had nothing.

I’d hired someone six months later. Described her to a man who found people for a living—blonde hair, striking blue eyes. I don’t know her last name, I met her in a bar and in the morning she was gone. He’d looked at me like I was out of my mind.

And now she was standing in my kitchen telling me she had no plans to make me love her.

Fine, I thought. Fine.

***

The wedding was small. A judge, a courthouse, my mother in the front row looking like she’d swallowed glass.

Erika came down the hall in a white dress that hit just below her knee. She’d pulled her hair back and put something on her lips that made them darker. Theo walked beside her holding a stuffed rabbit.

She stopped in front of me and I looked at her face and my breath caught. I swallowed it down before she noticed.

“Ready?” she said.

“Ready.”

The judge talked. I said the words. She said the words.

Her hand was cold when I slid the ring on, and she didn’t pull away, but she didn’t hold on either. She just let me put it there and then took her hand back, and that was that.

Julian stood in the back of the room. I hadn’t expected him to. He’d shown up in a suit with his eyes wet, and he watched the whole thing without blinking.

When Erika said I do, his lips pressed together and he looked at the floor.

I kept my eyes forward. My brother’s heartbreak was not something I could afford to feel today.

Candace sat three rows behind my mother. She’d worn black, which I was sure she thought was subtle. She smiled at me once across the room, but I didn’t smile back.

I signed the certificate. Erika signed after me.

“Congratulations,” the judge said.

Julian left before the photographs, shoving past a waiter on his way to the door hard enough that a tray of champagne rattled.

Candace stayed long enough to kiss my cheek and tell me, low enough that only I would hear it, that she’d be waiting when this “arrangement” ran its course. Her fingers dug into my arm a beat too long before she let go.

I didn’t answer her. I was already watching Erika laugh at something Theo said in his little ring-bearer suit, her whole face open in a way it never was around me.

***

My house had six bedrooms, and somehow we ended up sharing one.

I told myself it was for Theo, who’d fallen asleep against Erika’s shoulder in the car and needed carrying past our door to his own room without either of us waking half the staff doing it twice.

Erika sat on the edge of the bed still in her wedding dress, unpinning her hair one clip at a time and setting each one on the nightstand like it mattered where it landed.

I stood by the window with my jacket off and my tie already gone, watching her in the glass instead of turning around.

“We should talk about timing,” she said, not looking up. “For the baby. Dr. Kirk said the sooner the better, given where Theo is.”

“I’m aware.”

“I just—” She set the last clip down and finally found my eyes in the reflection. “I know this isn’t what you wanted. Any of it. I know you don’t want me, not really, but you promised to save our son, so I need you to tell me what you need from me to make it happen. I won’t make it complicated for you.”

She started unbuttoning the top of her dress with both hands, like she was preparing for a procedure and not a wedding night.

I crossed the room in three strides and caught her wrist before she got past the second button.

“Stop,” I said roughly.

Her hands went still, and I turned around then.

She sat there in white, every finger bare except for the ring I’d put on her hours ago, telling me to my own face that I didn’t want her, like she’d read it off a form I’d signed myself.

“When did I ever say I didn’t want you?”

Her lips parted. She stared at me, and for the first time since she’d walked out of that hotel room five years ago, I saw her lose the script.