All Chapters of Ruined by My Best Friend’s Father: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

He texted on a Wednesday afternoon. Not about the evening or the suite or anything that required a coded answer.Just: *Saturday morning. Early. I know somewhere quiet.*I read it twice.Then: *Okay.*He picked me up two streets from my building at seven-thirty, before the city had properly woken up. I got in the car and he glanced at me once and pulled back into the road without ceremony, which I appreciated. No preamble. No checking whether I had changed my mind.We drove for about twenty minutes, out of the central streets and into a quieter neighbourhood I didn't know well — wide roads, old trees, the kind of area that felt like it belonged to a slower pace of life.He parked outside a small place on a side street. The kind of café that didn't have a sign you could read from the car, just a window full of warm light and two tables outside that nobody was using yet."You've been here before," I said."Occasionally. They don't know me." He opened the door. "That was the point."Insi

I found it by accident.I was in the study looking for a charger — the kind of errand that had become unremarkable over months of coming and going through this house, when I opened the wrong drawer.It was near the back. A photograph, not framed, just loose between two folders like it had been placed there quickly and not moved since. I almost closed the drawer without looking properly.I didn't.The man in the photo was Damian, unmistakably, but a version of him I had never seen. Younger — not dramatically, just enough to show in the set of his shoulders, the slight looseness around his jaw. He was laughing. Properly, genuinely, the kind of laugh that didn't know it was being observed. The kind I had never once seen on his face in all the months I had known him as something more than Chloe's father.Beside him was a woman.She was turned slightly toward him, her hand on his arm, her expression warm in the particular way of someone completely at ease with the person beside them. She w

It was a small thing. That was what made it worse. Not a conversation that ran too long or a look that stayed a second past what was safe. Just a moment, ordinary, unremarkable to anyone watching, where Chloe turned away to answer her phone and I took one step toward him without thinking. One step. The kind the body makes before the brain catches up with it. The kind that happens when a habit has formed without your permission. I stopped myself immediately. Pulled back. Redirected the movement into reaching for my glass on the counter behind me like that had been the intention all along. Damian didn't move. Didn't react. He was already looking somewhere else by the time I had corrected, already speaking to Chloe about whatever she was saying into the phone, already present and composed and giving nothing away the way he always gave nothing away. I stood at the counter and held my glass and waited for my pulse to settle. Chloe came back into the kitchen two minutes later, still

Two days of silence.Not cold. Just quiet. I didn't reach out. He didn't either.On the third morning my phone buzzed on the counter.**Damian**: *I asked Chloe about Friday. Whether she minded if we skipped the gallery.*I read it twice, then set the coffee pot down and typed back. *How did that go.***Damian**: *She said she didn't mind either way. Come tonight?**Okay,* I wrote back.---The suite door was already open when I got there that evening. He was standing by the window, two glasses out, nothing poured yet."You asked her," I said."I did.""How did that feel?""Uncomfortable." He said it like it cost him something to admit. "I don't like not knowing an answer before I ask the question.""That's most of what asking actually is.""I'm learning that." He poured the wine and crossed the room to hand me a glass. Neither of us moved any closer than the exchange required.I sat down across from him instead of beside him. He noticed. He didn't comment on it, but something in his

The candles were already lit when I walked in, the unscented ones, exactly like she'd promised."You're here," Chloe said, pulling me into a hug before I'd even set my bag down. "Dad's pretending he doesn't know it's his birthday. It's very convincing. Ten out of ten performance.""I heard that," Damian called from the kitchen."You were meant to," Chloe called back.We sat down to plates she'd clearly labored over, the truffle pasta at the center of the table like a small trophy. Damian poured wine for all three of us without being asked, and when Chloe made a face at how little he'd given her, he added more without comment."To whoever's cooking next year," he said, raising his glass. "Because it will not be me.""You're impossible," Chloe said, laughing."I'm honest."We ate. Chloe told a long story about her thesis advisor's tie collection, doing an impression of the man's voice that had both of us laughing before she'd even reached the punchline."He wore the same argyle one thre