Todos los capítulos de Ruined by My Best Friend’s Father: Capítulo 51 - Capítulo 60

I called him from the car park outside the café, my hands still shaking."Eva?""She knows," I said. "I told her."Silence on the line. Not shocked silence. The silence of a man absorbing something he'd always known was coming and still wasn't ready for."Where are you," he said."Sitting in my car. I don't think I can drive yet.""Are you safe?""I'm safe. I'm just not okay.""I'm coming to you.""Not the suite.""I know. Where are you?""Home.""Give me twenty minutes.""Damian.""What.""She looked at me like she'd never seen me before."A pause on the line, heavy, before he spoke again. "I'm coming now."He arrived in fifteen, standing at my door in a coat he hadn't bothered to button properly, the first time he had ever come to my apartment instead of the other way around. His hair was slightly disordered, like he'd run a hand through it more than once on the drive over."Come in," I said.He stepped inside and looked around like he was seeing the space for the first time, which,

I didn't call first. Calling first would have given her the option to say no, and I didn't trust myself to accept that answer gracefully.I drove to her building on a Saturday morning and knocked on her door with nothing in my hands. No flowers, no peace offering dressed up as a gesture. Just myself, which was already more than I usually offered anyone, and considerably less than I suspected she actually needed.She opened the door in an old sweatshirt, hair pulled back, and looked at me for a long moment before she said anything."I knew you'd come eventually," she said."I should have come sooner.""You should have. But you're here now, I suppose." She stepped back and let me in, not warmly, but not shutting the door either.The apartment smelled like coffee and something she'd been cooking earlier. A stack of papers sat on the kitchen table, her thesis notes, half organized, half chaos."Do you want coffee?" she asked, already moving toward the kitchen out of habit."I'm fine.""Ri

Chloe came in and sat on my couch, and for a while neither of us said anything.The silence was different from the silence at the café. That one had been a before, still holding its breath, waiting to see what would break it. This one was something else. Quieter. Already broken and sitting in the wreckage together instead of across a table from it."Do you want tea?" I asked, because it was the only thing I could think to offer."No." She looked around the room slowly, like she was recalibrating something. "I just wanted to sit here for a minute.""Okay.""You've barely changed anything in here since the last time I visited.""I haven't had much reason to.""That plant's still alive. I'm shocked. You've killed every plant you've ever owned, as far as I know.""This one's stubborn. It refuses to die out of spite, I think. Though I still forget to water it half the time.""You forget to water everything. It's a miracle you've kept yourself alive this long." A small, involuntary almost-s

Three weeks after the café.Things weren't fixed. But they were moving, in the particular way things move when the worst of a crisis has passed and what's left is the slower work of rebuilding something that will never look exactly like it did before, and might, in time, look like something better instead.Chloe and I were talking again. Carefully. More honestly than we'd ever managed even before any of this started, because the pretending was gone now, and there was a strange relief in that, even inside all the difficulty. Chloe and Damian were finding their way back to each other more slowly, that wound clearly running deeper than anything between her and me, the particular kind of damage that only heals on its own timeline regardless of how much anyone wants to rush it. And Damian and I weren't hiding anymore. No announcement, no formal declaration to anyone. We simply existed, openly, and let the people around us adjust in their own time.Chloe and I had lunch on a Tuesday. Real l

Six weeks later, my internship ended.They offered me a full role. My own accounts. Andre's recommendation carried more weight than I probably deserved, though he'd never let me say that out loud without arguing.I accepted before I let myself overthink it.I told Damian first. That was its own kind of answer, about where things actually stood, and we both knew it without either of us saying so directly."Good," he said, when I told him over the phone."That's it? Good?""I knew you would.""You always think you know.""I'm usually right.""Don't."He almost smiled. I could hear it in his voice even without seeing his face.---Chloe and I got coffee on a Tuesday morning, the way we used to, back before any of this. For stretches of it, it felt almost normal. Not the normal of before, the one built on something hidden underneath every ordinary conversation we'd ever had. A new normal. More honest. Slightly more fragile. For exactly that reason, more real than the old one had ever mana