All Chapters of The chef and The charmer: Chapter 111 - Chapter 120

Third person POVIt’s been three days since the proposal. Three days since Evelyn said yes—not out of obligation, not as a business arrangement, but as herself. For the first time in what felt like years, the world outside their walls wasn’t burning.No breaking news. No lawyers. No boardroom tension.Just quiet.She wakes up before Damian, the sun warming the white sheets. His arm is slung across her waist, his breathing slow and peaceful.She doesn’t move.Not because of pain—though it lingers—but because for the first time, she wants to be still.She closes her eyes and listens: birdsong through an open window, the low hum of the city far below. No monitors. No beeping machines. No board calls buzzing through Damian’s phone.Just life.Healing, Evelyn realizes, doesn’t announce itself like trauma does. It arrives in silence. In presence. In the ability to notice again.Damian’s penthouse smells faintly of vanilla and expensive leather. Cleaners have been through. The couch is diffe

Evelyn’s Point of ViewIt’s not the oven that scares me anymore. It’s the knife.Not because I think I’ll hurt myself.But because of what it represents: precision, mastery, confidence—all things I used to have in abundance. The things Lawrence almost stole from me.Lina smiles gently as she lays out a tray of vegetables—red peppers, zucchini, carrots—and places a chef’s knife beside it. “We won’t slice today unless you’re ready,” she says. “Let your hands touch the weight first.”I breathe. Nod.My fingers close around the handle. Muscle memory flickers in my wrists like old embers trying to catch flame.But my shoulders go stiff. My breath shortens.“I can’t—” I whisper. “I used to be able to do this blindfolded.”“You will again. But not by forcing it,” Lina says.She gives me a plastic butter knife instead. “Try cutting something soft. Banana, maybe?”I want to laugh at the ridiculousness of it—but instead, I take it. I cut the banana slowly, silently, each slice landing with a wet

Evelyn’s PoVThe air in the city always smells a little more like electricity and nerves after you’ve tasted mountain silence.Yesterday, we returned from our retreat. The drive back felt longer than it should have, probably because neither of us wanted to leave that strange, beautiful stillness behind. A part of me was half-convinced that if we turned back, the cabin might already be gone—as if it had only existed for us in that exact moment of our lives, like some pocket in time.When we got home, we unpacked almost nothing. Damian dropped our bags by the door, and I didn’t even bother to sort laundry or check the mail. We slept in too late, ordered Thai food that came lukewarm, and watched reruns of that ridiculous cooking competition I swore I’d never admit to liking. The one with the overdramatic host and the sabotages mid-dish. Still didn’t finish a full episode. We both fell asleep halfway through, tangled under a blanket on the couch.But it wasn’t the restless sleep I’d grown

Evelyn’s POVThe kitchen smelled like citrus and nerves.Not fear—no, not exactly. But that metallic edge where adrenaline lived, sharp and bracing. A kind of buzzing under the skin. My prep station was spotless. Chopping boards aligned like disciplined soldiers. Every towel folded with ritualistic precision. Every knife sharpened to a familiar hum, their handles worn in the same places my fingers used to call home.But my hands?They were shaking.This kitchen was foreign and familiar all at once. I hadn’t stood in a professional kitchen in months. Not since the hospital. Not since Lawrence. Not since everything shattered and Damian and I gathered the pieces in silence, rebuilding ourselves with the glue of shared pain and private love.Tonight wasn’t about critics or press or Michelin stars. It wasn’t about ego. Or redemption.It was about me.My return. My risk. One night only.A pop-up dinner at a reclaimed warehouse-turned-restaurant. The kind of space that was all the rage—expo

Damian’s POVThere was a moment during the kidnapping when I stopped fighting.It wasn’t the ropes that did it. Or the sting of Lawrence’s backhand. It wasn’t even the blood—mine or Chris’s.It was Evelyn.The way she looked at me across that cold, concrete floor, her body curled around a broken rib and a bruised dream. Her eyes held fear—but worse, they held blame. Not for what I’d done, but for what I hadn’t stopped.For all my power, for all the empires I’d built—when it really counted, I couldn’t protect her.And in that moment, something inside me collapsed.I wasn’t Damian Blackstone, CEO, strategist, king of boardrooms.I was just a man who’d failed the one person who mattered most.After the rescue, I went home, scrubbed the blood off my skin, and stood in front of the mirror.I didn’t recognize the man staring back.I’d lost weight. Color. Certainty. The edges of my jaw had sharpened in places that didn’t feel like strength. My eyes had sunk into shadows that no sleep could u