His Secret Addiction

Chapter Thirty

Alex's POV

Thursday morning I woke up to Damien making breakfast.

Actual breakfast. Not coffee and whatever was in the fridge. He was standing at the stove with a spatula, concentrating on eggs like they were a quarterly report.

"You're cooking," I said from the doorway.

"Attempting to cook. There's a difference." He flipped an egg. It broke. "Damn."

I came over and took the spatula from him. "Lower heat. You're rushing it."

"I cook everything on high."

"I know. That's why everything you make tastes burned." I adjusted the burner and fixed the broken egg as best I could. "What brought this on?"

"I don't know. I felt like doing something normal." He leaned against the counter. "We've been eating takeout for three months. I thought I should learn to make actual food."

"Very domestic of you."

"Is that bad?"

"No. Just unexpected." I plated the eggs and handed him one. "Good unexpected."

We ate at the counter. The eggs were mediocre but edible. Damien looked unreasonably proud of himself for managing that much.

"I'm meeting James for lunch," I said. "He's in the city for a conference."

"Your brother."

"The lawyer, yes. He wants to meet you."

Damien paused mid-bite. "Meet me as in casual introduction or meet me as in family evaluation?"

"Probably both. He's protective." I drank my coffee. "You don't have to come if you don't want to."

"I want to. I'm just terrible at family things."

"You have a sister."

"Victoria doesn't count. She already knew everything about me before I could disappoint her." He set his fork down. "What if your brother hates me?"

"Then he hates you. But he won't. He'll ask awkward questions and be too formal and eventually relax when he realizes you're not going anywhere."

"You're sure about that last part?"

"About you not going anywhere?" I looked at him. "Yes. Are you?"

"Yes." He said it immediately. No hesitation. "I'm terrible at this but I'm sure about you."

*******************

We met James at a place in Midtown.

He was already there when we arrived, looking exactly like he always did. Suit, briefcase, everything organized and slightly anxious. He stood when he saw us.

"Alex." He hugged me, then turned to Damien. "You must be Damien."

They shook hands. James held on a second too long, doing his older brother assessment thing. Damien handled it gracefully.

We ordered food. James asked questions that were polite on the surface but clearly designed to evaluate whether Damien was good enough for his little brother. What he did for work now that he'd left Ross Industries. Where he saw himself in five years. How he handled conflict.

Damien answered everything honestly. Didn't oversell himself. Admitted he was figuring things out. By the time food arrived, James had relaxed slightly.

"Alex says you're moving in together," James said.

"We already live together," I said. "Have been for months."

"Officially, I mean. Getting rid of your apartment."

"I got rid of it last week. Lease was up." I looked at Damien. "We haven't actually talked about making it official."

"Do we need to?" Damien asked. "You're already there. Your things are there. I assumed it was settled."

"Most people have a conversation about it."

"We're not most people." He said it like it was obvious. Then I looked at James. "Does that answer your question?"

James almost smiled. "Yes. It does."

After lunch, James pulled me aside while Damien took a call from his lawyer.

"I like him," James said. "He's different than I expected."

"Different how?"

"More human. The way you described him before, I thought he'd be all business. But he's just a guy figuring things out like everyone else." James paused. "He's good for you. You're calmer than I've seen you in years."

"Calmer probably isn't the right word given everything that's happened."

"You know what I mean. You're settled. Like you found something you weren't looking for and decided to keep it." He squeezed my shoulder. "I'm happy for you."

Damien came back and we said goodbye to James. back toward the apartment because it was nice out and neither of us had anywhere else to be.

"That went well," Damien said.

"He liked you."

"How can you tell?"

"He smiled. James doesn't smile at people he doesn't like." I took his hand. "And he called you good for me when you stepped away."

"Am I?"

"Good for me?" I thought about it. "Yes. You make me want to stay instead of planning my exit. That's new."

"You make me want to try things I'm bad at, like cooking and family dinners and not working eighteen hours a day." He squeezed my hand. "Also new."

We walked for a while without talking. Just two people moving through the city on a Thursday afternoon with no particular agenda.

*****************

That night we stayed in.

No plans, no reservations, no reason to leave the apartment. Damien read his architecture book while I worked on updating my portfolio for job interviews. We'd migrated to opposite ends of the couch at some point, my feet near his legs, his hand resting on my ankle.

Around eight I set my laptop aside. "Are you hungry?"

"We could order something."

"Or I could teach you to make pasta. Actual pasta, not the fancy stuff. Just basic carbonara."

He looked skeptical. "I'll burn it."

"Not if I'm supervising." I stood and pulled him up. "Come on. If you can run a billion dollar company you can make pasta."

"Former billion dollar company."

"Still counts."

We made a mess of the kitchen. He used too much heat again. I corrected him three times. The bacon got slightly crispy but the pasta came out better than expected. We ate it standing at the counter because we were too hungry to bother with the table.

"I made food," Damien said, looking at his plate like it was a minor miracle.

"You did. It's edible and everything."

"Don't oversell it."

"I'm not. For your second real cooking attempt, this is impressive." I finished my plate. "Next week we'll try something harder."

"Next week?"

"Yes. We're doing this regularly now. You're learning to cook."

He looked at me for a moment. Then nodded. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"I like doing normal things with you. Even things I'm bad at." He set his plate in the sink. "It makes everything else feel less heavy."

I understood that. The past months had been an investigation and crisis and constant pressure. This, standing in a messy kitchen eating mediocre pasta we'd made together, felt like the opposite of that. Simple. Easy. Real.

We cleaned up together. Washed dishes side by side, bumping elbows, not talking about anything important. Just existing in the same space doing something ordinary.

Later we ended up back on the couch. Same positions as before. His book, my laptop, comfortable silence between us.

"I love you," I said without looking up from my screen.

"I know." He turned a page. "I love you too."