The sound of my own breath filled the quiet room. It was absurd—how loud the silence felt when he was in it. Damon stood at the edge of the living room, the late evening light carving shadows across his face. His hands were in his pockets, jaw set, eyes unreadable. But silence had a voice tonight, and it whispered more than his words ever could.
I didn't move from where I sat on the armrest, my legs curled, the silk of my dress brushing my thigh. He'd come to drop off Chloe's forgotten tablet, a casual excuse. I knew it. He knew it. The object sat untouched on the counter. Neither of us mentioned it.
Instead, the air between us stretched taut.
I glanced at him again. The same man who once made me laugh in his kitchen when I was sixteen and too awkward to know how dangerous a smile like his could be. Back then, I'd seen him as my best friend's father. Responsible. Stoic. Off-limits. Now… he wasn't just a man anymore. He was the man. The one I dreamed about. The one who haunted my senses.
He looked away first.
I could still feel his gaze, though—like a memory on my skin. I stood, slowly, the hem of my dress brushing the hardwood floor. I walked past him, brushing too close, close enough to leave behind a scent of vanilla and soft challenge. My voice was steady when I spoke, though my heart wasn't.
"You always leave when it starts to get quiet."
He didn't answer. Just turned slightly, but not enough to face me. His silence wasn't indifference—it was restraint, carved into every muscle of his body. I could see it in his hands. The way they clenched inside his pockets like they wanted something they weren't allowed to hold.
"Why did you really come, Damon?"
The name tasted forbidden in my mouth. Every time I said it, I expected him to flinch. He never did. But something always shifted in his eyes, like a line he kept drawing was being erased again and again, and he didn't know how to stop me from doing it.
"I came to return what was forgotten," he said finally, his voice low, rough. Unconvincing.
I stepped closer. "Not everything forgotten needs to be returned."
He turned then. Fully. And I knew he would. There was something in the challenge of my voice that always dragged him toward the edge. He was taller than me, the kind of tall that made you tilt your head back just to meet his eyes—and when I did, I saw more than hesitation. I saw need. A quiet, bruising need that he had no idea how to kill.
"You don't know what you're doing," he said.
But I did.
I reached up and rested my hand over his heart. It was stupid. Brave. Suicidal. His chest was warm beneath the thin cotton of his shirt, and I felt the quick jump of his pulse—so real, so alive. He didn't step back. That was his first mistake. Or maybe it was mine.
"I know exactly what I'm doing," I said softly. "Do you?"
He closed his eyes. Just for a moment. Like the weight of my touch was too much. Like the space between the years we'd lived separately had collapsed into one trembling heartbeat.
When he opened them again, something in him had changed.
"If I kiss you," he said, "I won't be able to forget it."
His confession wasn't a threat. It was a warning. And I should've stepped back. Should've apologized. But I didn't. I leaned in.
"Then don't."
It was only a breath between us now. But he didn't close it. Instead, he reached up and wrapped his fingers gently around my wrist, pulling my hand away from his chest—not cruelly. Not even coldly. Like he was trying to protect me from something neither of us had a name for.
"We can't," he whispered.
"But you want to."
He exhaled sharply. The sound of a man fighting his own body. Fighting every thought in his head. The hand holding my wrist tightened ever so slightly before releasing me altogether.
"I'm not the man you think I am," he said.
I tilted my head. "Then show me the man you are."
He took a step back. Just one. But it was enough to shatter the fragile heat we'd built in the space between us. He turned, walked toward the door.
I didn't stop him. Not this time.
But just before he left, he paused, his hand on the knob. His back to me. And his voice came softer than I'd ever heard it.
"Your silence says more than mine ever could."
Then the door opened. Closed. And he was gone.
I stood there for a long time, staring at the empty space where he'd been. My skin still burned where he had touched me. My heart beat a little too loudly for someone supposedly untouched.
His silence wasn't rejection.
It was a promise.
And I knew… he wouldn't be able to keep it.