HE CALLED ME FIRST
1007 Words
I didn't mean to fall asleep.
I made it home, dropped my bag by the door, sat on the couch still in my work clothes, and that was as far as I got.
No dinner. No shower. No carefully constructed mental boundary between what had happened today and what I was allowed to feel about it.
Just the couch.
Just the city noise bleeding through the window.
Just the weight of a Friday that had rearranged something fundamental inside me, and I hadn't bothered to ask permission at first.
I closed my eyes for one minute.
That was the last conscious decision I made.
I knew I was dreaming.
I always did… eventually. That small lucid part of me that watched and knew this wasn't real, even while the rest of me didn't care.
But something was different.
I felt it before I could name it.
The room was the same. Floor-to-ceiling glass. City lights scattered like diamonds below. That particular quality of silence I now recognized from somewhere other than sleep.
But the light was different.
Brighter. Cleaner. Like someone had finally decided I'd earned it.
He was there.
Standing exactly where he always stood. Back to me. Hands in his pockets. The stillness he carried like a second skin.
But I wasn't afraid to look this time.
I looked.
He turned before I could speak.
He always did.
And for the first time in two years, I saw his face.
Fully. Clearly. Every line and shadow resolved like a photograph finally coming into focus.
Same jaw. Same eyes.
The scar near his brow, faint, slightly curved.
Damien.
The name landed in my chest like something that had always been there, waiting for permission to exist.
His expression when he found me was different too.
Not the private almost-smile I knew. Not the careful patience.
Something rawer. Something he wasn't bothering to control.
"You know," he said.
Not a question.
"Yes."
He crossed the room. I didn't move. I never did.
But this time when he stopped close, I didn't look away.
I looked straight at him and let him look straight back and the air between us was so full, it was almost unbearable.
"I've been looking for you," he said.
"You don't know me."
"No." His hand lifted. Fingers brushed my jaw, light, barely there, and I felt it everywhere, the way I always did. "But I will."
My breath caught.
"You're engaged," I said.
Something moved across his face. Heavy. Complicated.
"Nova."
"Don't."
"Don't what?"
I looked at him, really looked, now that I finally could, and felt everything I'd been packing away for two years rise straight to the surface.
"Don't make this harder than it already is."
His thumb traced my jaw. Slow. Deliberate.
"It was always going to be hard," he said quietly. "That doesn't mean it's wrong."
"That's not…"
"I know." His forehead dropped onto mine. Gentle. Like a confession. "I know."
We stood there.
The city glittered below us.
His breath was warm against my face.
"What do we do?" I whispered.
He pulled back just enough to look at me.
His eyes moved over my face the way they had across the conference table today, like he was memorizing something he couldn't afford to forget.
Like he recognized me.
"I don't know yet," he said. "But I'm going to find out."
His mouth was almost there, Almost…
My phone rang.
Not an alarm. A call.
I was off the couch before I was fully awake, heart slamming, hand scrabbling across the cushions until my fingers closed around the phone.
Unknown number.
I stared at it.
It rang again.
I let it go to voicemail.
Sat there in the dark, work clothes rumpled, one shoe still on, the dream dissolving at the edges the way they always did.
Except this time I didn't let it go completely.
I held the parts I needed.
His face. Finally clear. Finally real.
I've been looking for you.
I pressed both hands into my eyes.
He was real.
He was engaged.
He was my client.
And somewhere across this city, Damien Cross was either asleep or awake, and either way, he had no idea that a woman he'd met for forty minutes today had been dreaming about him for two years.
Had been dreaming about him specifically, measurably, undeniably him before she ever knew he existed.
What were you supposed to do with that?
I had no answer.
I got up, finally pulled off my shoes, and walked to the window.
The city was still out there. Indifferent. Glittering. Enormous.
Somewhere in it was a man with a scar near his brow and a voice that settled in my chest like it belonged there.
I pressed my forehead against the glass.
I'm going to find out.
Even in a dream, he'd said it like a promise, and meant it.
The worst part: the truly devastating part
Was that some deep, irrational, completely indefensible part of me believed him?
The voicemail notification appeared at the top of my screen.
I didn't check it immediately.
I just stood there at the window until the city started to go pale at the edges and Friday became Saturday and the dream settled into something I couldn't shake and wasn't sure I wanted to.
Then I opened the voicemail.
One message. Twelve seconds.
I pressed play.
A voice I recognized immediately.
Low. Unhurried. Too familiar to make sense.
"Ms. Reyes. It's Damien Cross. I apologize for the time."
A pause. Brief. Like he was choosing his next words carefully.
"I'd like to move the Monday proposal to breakfast. My office. Seven-thirty."
Another pause.
Shorter this time.
"I hope that works for you."
The message ended.
I lowered the phone.
Outside, the city hummed and glittered and went about its enormous indifferent business.
And I stood at the window in yesterday's clothes with my heart doing something I had absolutely no framework for,
Because that was not a scheduled call.
Scheduling calls went through Lena.
Everyone knew that.
- Writer
