Chapter 5: No One

(Damon's POV)

"No one," I'd said. Two words, and I felt them land somewhere I couldn't take back.

"Really." Valerie's grip hadn't loosened on my arm. If anything it had tightened, nails biting crescents into my skin I wouldn't feel until later. "Because no one just looked at you like the ground opened up under her."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't lie to me, Damon. I may be a lot of things, but I'm not stupid."

I didn't have an answer that wouldn't make everything worse, so I said nothing, and the silence sat between us like something with teeth.

The crowd thinned toward the pack house as the fire burned low, and I followed without deciding to, Valerie's hand still locked around my arm like she suspected I'd bolt the second she let go. She wasn't wrong to suspect it.

"Everyone's going to be talking about this by morning," she said, low, just for me. "The whole pack watched your face do whatever that was."

"Nothing happened."

"Something happened. I don't know what yet, but something happened, and you're going to tell me what it was before this night is over."

"You're hurting my arm," I said.

She looked down at her own hand like she'd forgotten it was there, and let go, though the marks stayed. "Good. Maybe it'll help you remember this conversation."

"I'm not going to forget it."

"You forgot plenty in the last two years. Forgive me for not trusting your memory."

That landed harder than she probably meant it to, or maybe exactly as hard as she meant it to, I'd never been entirely sure, with Valerie, which version I was getting.

We reached the pack house porch, and I stopped on the steps, because I could see through the kitchen window, Amara's mother, pulling her into the warm light, a circle of well-wishers already closing around her like she'd never left.

Like I'd never once been part of her life at all.

"Damon."

"Not now, Valerie."

"Not now? You don't get to not know me. You were somewhere else all night, and the second that woman walked into the clearing, you forgot I existed." Her voice cracked, just slightly, in a way that might have been real or might have been exactly calculated to sound real. "Who is she to you?"

I looked at her, really looked, for maybe the first time that whole evening and felt something old and buried stir underneath two years of careful avoidance.

"She's no one," I said again, quieter this time, like saying it softer might make it true.

"You said that already. I didn't believe it the first time either."

Inside, the kitchen had turned into a receiving line Lydia with a casserole dish, old Soren pumping Amara's hand like he was trying to start an engine, her mother already on the phone spreading the news to half the pack's aunts. I stood in the doorway and couldn't make myself cross the threshold.

"Go in," Valerie said. "If she's really no one, you won't have a problem saying hello."

"That's not what this is."

"Then what is it?"

I didn't answer. She released my arm, finally, and crossed her own over her chest, watching me with an expression I didn't like the shape of.

"Fine," she said. "Don't go in. Stand out here like a coward instead. That tells me everything I need to know anyway."

"Valerie"

"I'm going home." Her voice had gone flat, controlled, which from her was somehow worse than shouting. "You can stay here and stare through windows all night if you want. I'm not going to watch it."

She walked off into the dark without waiting for me to argue, and I let her go, because I didn't have an argument that wasn't a lie.

I don't know how long I stood on that porch. Long enough that the fire in the clearing burned down to embers. Long enough that most of the crowd drifted home, until it was just Amara's parents' kitchen, warm and golden, laughter drifting out through the screen door.

She came out onto the back porch alone around midnight, I felt it before I saw her, the bond flaring hot and immediately the second she stepped into the dark. She didn't see me at first, leaning against the railing, face tipped up toward a sky gone clear and star-heavy.

"Amara."

She went rigid. Turned. For one unguarded second I saw everything on her face, the hope from the clearing, buried but not gone, fighting with something harder that had grown up around it in the hours since.

"Don't," she said.

"I just want to talk."

"You had your chance to talk. You said 'no one.' In front of the entire pack." Her voice was steady, which was somehow worse than if she'd been shouting. "That was pretty clear."

"That's not what I meant."

"Then what did you mean, Damon? Because from where I was standing, it seemed pretty unambiguous."

I crossed the yard toward her, stopped a careful distance away, close enough to smell her still achingly, impossibly the same and far enough that she didn't bolt.

"I panicked," I said. "Valerie was right there. I didn't know what to say."

"You could have said my name."

"Amara"

"You could have said 'my friend.' 'Someone I used to know.' Literally anything that wasn't 'no one.'" Her jaw tightened. "I flew fourteen hours. I came home early because some stupid, hopeful part of me wanted to see you before I had to see you with an audience. And the first thing you said about me, out loud, in front of your entire pack, was that I was nothing."

"I didn't mean it like that."

"Then how did you mean it?"

I didn't have an answer. That was the problem I'd never had an answer, not in two years of telling myself I'd made peace with her leaving, and standing in front of her now with the bond screaming so loud I could barely hear my own thoughts, every excuse I'd rehearsed evaporated on contact.

"I'm with someone," I said instead, which wasn't an answer either, just a different kind of coward's retreat.

"I know. Maya told me in the car."

"Then you already know why I couldn't just..."

"I don't know anything, Damon. I know you chose her. I know you've been choosing her for two years. I don't know why, and honestly, right now, I don't think I want to."

The screen door creaked. Maya stepped out, took one look at the two of us standing six feet apart in the dark, and planted herself directly in the gap like a wall built out of pure spite.

"You need to leave," she said to me, not unkindly, which somehow made it land harder.

"Maya, I just need a minute..."

"You had five years of minutes. You chose how to spend them." Her eyes didn't waver. "She doesn't owe you another one tonight."

I looked past her shoulder at Amara, who'd wrapped both arms around herself like she was cold, even though the night was warm, even though it was barely autumn.

"I'm not trying to hurt you," I said. "I never wanted to hurt you."

"You didn't have to want it," Amara said quietly. "You just had to do nothing, and it happened anyway."

She turned and went back inside before I could answer. The screen door clicked shut behind her, soft and absolute, like a door being locked from a side I couldn't follow her to.

Maya lingered a second longer, arms crossed, studying me with something that wasn't quite pity and wasn't quite contempt something worse, maybe, something closer to disappointment in a person she used to actually like.

"You had one job tonight," she said. "Don't make it worse. You somehow found a way."

She went inside too, and I stood alone in the dark yard, the bond still roaring under my skin with nowhere left to go, and understood too late, the way I seemed to understand everything lately that I'd just spent the single most important moment of the last five years finding exactly the wrong three words to say, and that no version of tomorrow was going to let me take them back.