Off Limits

Chapter 10: Distance

Damian read Elena's text four times before he set the phone down without responding, and told himself, with the same firm discipline he brought to every difficult decision in his professional life, that the responsible thing to do now was exactly what he'd promised her two nights ago: distance, carefully maintained, until whatever this was either faded on its own or became something either of them could actually justify.

He did not respond that night. He told himself it was restraint. He knew, lying awake considerably later than his usual disciplined bedtime, that it was closer to cowardice — the specific, familiar cowardice of a man who'd rather avoid a difficult conversation entirely than risk saying something he couldn't take back.

The following week, he threw himself into work with a focus he hadn't managed in months, closing the Tribeca deal two days ahead of schedule, taking on a new acquisition that required considerably more travel than his usual schedule allowed, filling every available hour with the specific, deliberate business of not having time to think about a woman twenty years younger than him who'd texted him something he still hadn't found the courage to answer honestly.

"You're taking the Chicago trip yourself?" Priya asked, reviewing his calendar with visible surprise. "You usually send Marcus for the site inspections. You hate flying commercial."

"I need the change of scenery," Damian said, which was true in a way he wasn't willing to examine too closely in front of his assistant.

He texted Sophie instead of Elena that week, careful, casual messages about wedding logistics that gave him a reason to stay connected to the family orbit without risking direct contact with the one person currently occupying most of his actual thoughts. He told himself this was wisdom. He recognized, somewhere underneath the careful justification, that it was also, considerably more simply, fear — the specific, well-worn fear of a man who'd built his entire adult life around never again being vulnerable enough to lose something the way he'd lost his marriage.

It was Thursday, five days after Elena's text, when Sophie called with news that made the careful distance he'd been building suddenly, entirely untenable.

"I have huge news," Sophie said, breathless with excitement. "Marcus proposed. Well, technically I already knew it was coming, but he did the whole thing properly, got down on one knee at the restaurant where we had our first date, and I need you there for the engagement party, Damian. It's in three weeks. I need my favorite uncle there, and Elena's coming too, obviously, and I really want you both there together since you've gotten so close this month."

Damian felt the careful architecture of distance he'd spent a week constructing crack instantly and completely at the words *Elena's coming too.*

"Of course I'll be there," he said, his voice steadier than he felt. "Congratulations, Sophie. Marcus is a good man. I'm happy for you."

"Thank you. I'm so excited, I can barely think straight." Sophie's joy was infectious even through his own careful distraction, genuine and warm in the way that had always made her one of the easiest people in his life to love without reservation. "I'll send you the details. It's going to be small, just close family and Elena, at my parents' place in Connecticut. I really want it to feel intimate."

Damian ended the call and sat alone in his office for a long moment, the careful distance he'd been maintaining for a week suddenly rendered pointless by three weeks' notice of an event he couldn't reasonably avoid without raising exactly the kind of questions he'd been trying to prevent.

He picked up his phone, scrolled back to Elena's unanswered text — *though I'm starting to think "boring" might not be sustainable much longer* — and felt the full weight of a week's cowardly silence settle uncomfortably in his chest.

He typed a response, deleted it, typed another.

*I'm sorry for the silence. I've been trying to figure out how to be responsible about this, and apparently my solution was avoiding you entirely, which I recognize now was neither responsible nor particularly fair to either of us. Sophie just told me you'll both be at the engagement party in three weeks. I don't think I can keep pretending distance is working after that.*

He sent it before he could talk himself into deleting it a third time, and sat there, phone in hand, feeling considerably more exposed than he had in any boardroom negotiation in the last decade, waiting for a response that felt, disproportionately, like it might determine considerably more than the fate of one careful, complicated friendship.