All Chapters of Ruined By Mr. Cross: Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

Damien’s PovThe morning of the wedding arrived warm for October, the kind of unseasonable gold that felt almost engineered, and I stood at the edge of the field behind the house watching the last of the wildflowers being woven into an arch by two florists Lucy had personally supervised for the better part of a week.“You’re not supposed to see her before the ceremony,” Marcus said, coming up beside me with a coffee I hadn’t asked for but was grateful for anyway. “Even the second time around, I assume some rules still apply.”“She’s upstairs with Naomi and Lucy,” I said. “I have no intention of breaking that particular rule. I just needed air.”“Nervous?”“Not the way you’d think,” I said, watching the light catch the tops of the wildflowers, the same particular gold that had lit the porch the evening she’d said yes. “I know exactly how this day ends, Marcus. I’ve known it for ten years. I think what I’m feeling is closer to gratitude than nerves. The kind that’s almost too big to hol

Damien’s PovSix months after the wedding, winter had settled fully over the house, and I found Selene in the study one evening, curled in the window seat with a stack of papers I recognized immediately — Marcus’s quarterly security review, the kind we still received religiously even though the danger that had prompted them felt, most days now, like something from another life entirely.“Anything concerning,” I asked, settling beside her.“No,” she said, setting the papers aside. “That’s almost stranger than if there were. Six months of nothing. I don’t think I know what to do with peace anymore, Damien. I keep waiting for the other version of us to show up. The one bracing for the next name, the next folder Marcus walks in with at dawn.”“Maybe that version doesn’t have to show up again,” I said, pulling her feet into my lap, the easy domesticity of it still, somehow, a small miracle after everything. “Maybe this is just what it looks like when the story actually gets to rest for a w

Damien’s PovI hadn’t planned on coming, given Marcus’s careful wording — just Selene — but I found myself in the car anyway the next morning, parked a discreet distance from the facility where Vivienne was being held, unwilling to let Selene walk into that room without at least knowing I was close enough to reach.“You didn’t have to come,” she said, though there was no real argument in it, just the same tired affection she’d shown every time I’d insisted on proximity this year.“I know,” I said. “I’m not coming in. I just couldn’t stay home pretending this was an ordinary morning.”She kissed me before she got out of the car, quick and warm, her hand lingering against my jaw. “I’ll tell you everything. The second I’m out.”“I know you will,” I said. “That’s the whole arrangement.”I watched her walk into the building, spine straight, the particular resolve I’d come to recognize as entirely, unmistakably hers, and settled in to wait, the minutes stretching long and cold in the parked

Damien’s PovThe call came from Selene’s doctor’s office on a Tuesday afternoon, and I watched her face change while she listened, the particular color draining that I’d come to recognize now as the precursor to bad news, though nothing about this year had prepared me for what kind.“What is it,” I asked, the moment she’d hung up.“They want me to come in,” she said. “Something showed up on the last set of bloodwork. They wouldn’t say more over the phone.”I felt the old, familiar fear rise, sharper for having been absent these last peaceful weeks, and reached for her hand automatically, the gesture worn smooth by a year of exactly this kind of crisis.“I’m coming with you,” I said. It wasn’t a question.The waiting room felt too bright, too quiet, and Selene’s hand stayed locked in mine the entire time, her thumb tracing anxious circles against my knuckles that I recognized as her own version of the porch conversations we’d learned to have this year — a way of staying present with fe

Damien’s PovCassandra arrived a week before the due date, settling into the guest room down the hall with a quiet gratitude that had replaced, almost entirely, the composed exhaustion I remembered from the cabin all those months ago. Lucy had taken to her presence with the easy resilience of a child who understood forgiveness better than most adults, dragging her into elaborate games of pretend within the first hour.“She’s good with her,” Selene said, watching from the kitchen window as Cassandra chased Lucy across the yard, both of them laughing in the thin, bright cold. “I didn’t expect that to feel as easy as it does.”“Neither did I,” I admitted, coming up behind her, my hands settling on the curve of her stomach out of habit now, the gesture as automatic as breathing. “I think we built something sturdier than I realized, this year. Room enough to actually forgive people, not just tolerate their presence.”“How are you feeling,” she asked, turning in my arms, and I recognized th