Chapter Nineteen: Almost

The photographs stayed spread across the study floor long after the stories stopped, neither of them in any hurry to break whatever quiet, unguarded thing the evening had built between them. Ivy gathered a few of them absently, stacking corners together without any real intention of putting them away, more interested in the fact that Damien hadn't moved either, still sitting close enough that his knee nearly touched hers, still watching her with an attention that had outlasted the actual stories by a considerable margin.

"Thank you," Ivy said again, softer this time, sitting closer to him now than she had been an hour ago, the distance between them having shrunk gradually, unconsciously, the way distance always seemed to shrink between them lately. "For listening like that. Really listening, not just waiting for your turn to say something comforting."

"I wanted to hear it," Damien said. "All of it. I still do, actually, if there's more."

"There's always more," Ivy said, something rueful in her smile. "Grief doesn't really run out. It just changes shape."

He reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, an unthinking gesture, gentle and unplanned, and Ivy felt her breath catch at the simple, devastating intimacy of it, the way his hand lingered a beat longer than the gesture strictly required. Somewhere behind her ribs, a small, quiet part of her that had spent weeks carefully cataloguing every reason this was complicated simply went silent, outvoted by everything closer to the surface.

"You have flour on your cheek," he said quietly, which was not remotely what either of them had been talking about, and made absolutely no sense given they hadn't gone anywhere near flour all evening.

"I don't think I do," Ivy said, laughing despite the sudden tightness in her chest.

"No," Damien admitted, his hand still resting against her jaw, not moving away. "You don't. I think I just wanted an excuse to touch you."

---

The air between them shifted, charged in a way that had nothing to do with photographs or grief anymore, everything narrowing down to the small distance still separating them, the particular gravity of two people who had spent weeks circling something neither had been ready to name directly.

"Damien," Ivy said, his name coming out softer than she intended, less a question than an admission.

"I know," he said, equally quiet, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw with a care that felt like it cost him something to maintain. "I've known for a while now, actually. I just haven't been sure what to do with knowing it."

"Since when."

"Since somewhere around the drainage catch, if I'm honest," he admitted, something almost embarrassed in the confession, entirely unlike the composed version of him she usually saw. "Watching you stand in a room full of men twice your seniority and simply refuse to be small. I think I knew then and spent the following weeks pretending I hadn't."

"That's a very specific moment to fall for someone in."

"I've never claimed to be predictable," he said, a small smile breaking through the intensity of the last minute.

"And now?"

"Now I'm considerably less interested in being sure," he admitted, and the distance between them closed another inch, close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating off him, close enough that whatever careful lines either of them had drawn around this arrangement seemed, in this exact moment, entirely beside the point.

Ivy's eyes dropped to his mouth, an instinct she didn't fully choose, and felt him notice, felt the small, sharp inhale that told her he had noticed everything, every shift in her breathing, every inch of closed distance, cataloguing it the way he catalogued everything important, carefully, completely.

"Tell me to stop," he said, low, rough, his forehead nearly resting against hers now, "and I will. I need you to know that. Whatever this is, it doesn't happen unless you want it to."

"I don't want you to stop," Ivy said, and meant it more completely than she had meant almost anything in weeks.

---

His hand slid from her jaw into her hair, and Ivy felt herself lean into it, the last careful inch of space between them dissolving into something that felt less like a decision and more like an inevitability finally being allowed to happen, his breath warm against her mouth, close enough now that she could feel the exact moment he stopped hesitating and started to close the last distance between them, his eyes falling briefly closed, hers doing the same, the entire room narrowing down to the single inch of air still separating their mouths—

His phone rang.

Loud, sharp, entirely unwelcome, cutting through the moment like a blade through fabric.

Damien froze, close enough that Ivy felt the tension lock through his whole body, his eyes still on her, clearly weighing, for one desperate second, whether the call could simply be ignored.

It rang again, insistent, and something in the specific ringtone, one Ivy had learned by now meant board business, urgent enough to override almost anything, made him swear softly under his breath and pull back, reluctant, visibly frustrated by his own obligation.

"I have to take this," he said, already reaching for the phone, his voice rougher than usual, still recovering from wherever the last several minutes had been about to take them.

"I know," Ivy said, though her own voice came out equally unsteady, the ache of the interruption settling into her chest like something physical.

He answered the call, already walking toward the hallway, throwing one last glance back at her before he rounded the corner, something apologetic and frustrated and unmistakably hungry all at once in his expression.

Ivy sat alone on the study floor amid a month's worth of scattered photographs, her heart still hammering, her lips still tingling from a kiss that had never actually happened, and pressed her fingers briefly to her own mouth, trying, uselessly, to steady herself against the particular ache of wanting something that had been so close, and was now, for tonight at least, entirely out of reach.

She could still hear his voice through the wall, low and controlled again already, the particular efficiency of a man folding himself back into the version the board required, and found herself almost resentful of how easily he could do that, how quickly the man who had just admitted to falling for her somewhere around a drainage catch could become, in the space of a single ringtone, someone else entirely.

She gathered the photographs slowly, giving her hands something to do while her pulse settled, lingering longest on the one of her father mid sentence at his desk, and found herself smiling despite everything, a small, private thing. He would have liked this version of the evening least of all, she thought. Not the almost kiss. The interruption. He had never once, in her entire memory of him, let work interrupt something that actually mattered, and some small, stubborn part of her wondered whether Damien was capable of learning that same lesson, or whether the company would always, eventually, win.

She thought, staring at the closed study door, that whatever this had almost been, it was not going to stay almost for very much longer.