All Chapters of OFF LIMITS: Chapter 11 - Chapter 16

CHAPTER ELEVENPOV: DamonHe’d known this moment was coming.Not like this. Not with Marcus sitting on the couch with his head in his hands looking like someone had taken something from him that he couldn’t get back. But the moment itself, the reckoning, he’d known it existed somewhere ahead of him the second he’d decided to come this weekend.Maybe before that.Maybe the night of the barbecue in the green dress when he’d looked at Zara and felt something shift permanently and known with absolute clarity that he was in serious trouble.He stood in the middle of Marcus’s living room and waited.Marcus didn’t look up for a long time.When he did his eyes were red at the edges. Not crying. Close to it. Marcus had cried exactly twice in the time Damon had known him, at his mother’s funeral and the night his first serious girlfriend left. Both times he’d been angry about it afterward. Both times he’d needed space.Damon stayed where he was. Gave him nothing to push against.“How long,” Mar

CHAPTER THIRTEEN POV: Zara She read it three times. Local businessman Damon Reid linked to criminal investigation, sources claim financial misconduct spanning five years. Reid. Not Cole. Not the street name he’d carried so long everyone forgot it wasn’t his birth name. Reid. She’d never known his last name was Reid. Had never thought to ask. He was just Damon. Had always been just Damon. The name Cole was Marcus’s, was hers, was a thing Damon had borrowed and worn so naturally nobody questioned it. But Reid. Reid meant something. She looked up from the phone. He was reading the same article on his own screen now, jaw locked, face completely closed. The controlled stillness again but different this time. Deeper. Like something underneath had gone very quiet in the way things did right before they broke. “Damon.” He didn’t answer. “Damon look at me.” He looked up. His eyes were steady but there was something behind them she hadn’t seen before. Not fear exactly. Something o

CHAPTER FIFTEEN POV: Zara She fell asleep on the kitchen floor. She didn’t mean to. One minute she was sitting there with Damon’s hand in hers listening to the house breathe and the next she was waking up with her cheek against his shoulder and grey light coming through the window and the particular stiffness of a body that had spent four hours on tile. She lifted her head. He was already awake. Had been for a while she suspected. Sitting completely still, eyes forward, thinking in that deep quiet way he had that looked like nothing from the outside and was everything on the inside. He felt her move and looked down. “Morning,” he said. “How long was I asleep.” “Three hours maybe.” She straightened. Rolled her neck. Looked at the window and the grey morning beyond it and remembered everything in approximately two seconds. Ryan. The camera. Osei. Leila. The engine outside that had been idling when she closed her eyes. She stood up fast. Went to the window. The street was em