(Damon's POV)
They say time dulls memory.
They lie.
It was a charity gala. One of those glittering, hollow nights filled with people pretending their money could absolve them. I'd been there out of obligation, dressed in a black suit that fit like armor, sipping whiskey that burned less than I needed it to.
I was tired of pretending. Tired of dancing with ghosts. Tired of being exactly who they expected me to be—charming, powerful, untouchable.
Then I saw her.
At first, I thought she was someone else.
She moved like a woman who didn't belong there—too real for a room so artificial. Her dress was pale champagne silk, clinging to her like it was made from secrets. And her eyes…
God.
Those eyes.
It had been over a decade since I last saw them. Last saw her. The girl with scraped knees and stubborn fire in her blood. The daughter of a man I once despised and barely tolerated. The girl who used to sneak into my study just to ask about the world she hadn't yet touched.
But this… this wasn't a girl anymore.
She was radiant. Controlled. Poised in a way that made every man in the room forget what they were doing.
Except me.
Because I remembered.
I remembered everything.
She didn't see me at first. She was too busy trying not to look out of place, sipping champagne like it might drown the noise. But when her gaze did lift—when it finally met mine across that gilded ballroom—the world stopped breathing.
And so did I.
She froze.
I stepped forward.
I didn't even realize I was moving until I was close enough to smell her perfume—something soft and wild, like jasmine after a storm. She blinked up at me like she was seeing a ghost.
"Damon Cross," she said, lips parted.
"Serena."
Even her name felt different now—sharper, heavier. A name no longer spoken with familiarity but wonder.
"You look..." she began, but her voice trailed off.
"You don't have to lie," I murmured.
Her mouth tilted into a crooked smile. "I wasn't going to."
We talked for three minutes.
Maybe four.
About nothing and everything.
About the last time she'd seen me. About how much time had passed. About how the city felt smaller now, or maybe we had just grown too big for it.
But beneath every word, there was tension—like the space between a match and dry paper.
She excused herself after five minutes.
But I watched her for the rest of the night.
Not like a man obsessed.
But like a man remembering the shape of something he once thought lost.
---
I didn't sleep that night.
Not because of guilt. Not even desire.
But because I saw it in her eyes.
The same ache I carried.
The same questions.
The same defiance… and loneliness.
She came into my world without asking for permission—and somehow, just by standing in the same room, she made every wall I'd built feel like glass.
That night, I realized something terrifying.
The girl I'd buried in memory had become the woman I couldn't forget.
And worse—
She might be the only one who could break me open again.