His Best Friend's Daughter

The rain hadn’t stopped for three days. I stood in the doorway of my father’s study, dripping onto the hardwood floor, my suitcase abandoned in the foyer. The house smelled exactly the same—leather, old books, the faint hint of my mother’s lavender candles from before she left. But something was different. He was different. Damien Cross sat in my father’s leather armchair like he owned it. Like he owned everything. His dark hair was damp from the storm, a few strands falling across his forehead. His jaw was sharper than I remembered. Harder. The years between twenty-two and twenty-five had changed me, but the years between thirty-eight and forty-one had carved him into something devastating. He hadn’t seen me yet. "—can't keep her locked away forever, Marcus." His voice. God, his voice. Deeper than I remembered. Rougher. "She's not a child anymore." My father laughed, but there was an edge to it. "She'll always be a child to me. And to you, I'd hope." Silence. Damien's glass of whiskey paused halfway to his lips. I watched his jaw tighten. Watched something dark flicker across his face before he masked it. "Of course," he said quietly. But I saw it. That pause. That half-second of hesitation that said more than any confession ever could. And then his eyes lifted. And he saw me. --- The glass slipped from his fingers. It shattered against the edge of the mahogany desk, whiskey splashing across contracts and papers. My father swore, jumping up to salvage documents, but Damien didn't move. He just stared at me. Three years. Three years since I'd last stood in this house. Three years of university, of distance, of trying desperately to forget the way he made me feel. Three years of telling myself the crush would fade, that I'd grow out of it, that I'd meet someone my own age and forget all about my father's best friend. I hadn't. And the way Damien was looking at me now—like I was a ghost, like I was a threat, like I was something he wanted to devour and run from in equal measure—told me I wasn't alone in this. "Lizzy." My name was barely a breath. He caught himself immediately, standing, smoothing his expression into something neutral. "You're home." "Damien." I stepped into the room, suddenly aware of the rain soaking my clothes, the way my white blouse clung to my skin. His eyes dropped for one betraying second before snapping back to my face. "I didn't know you'd be here." "Business." The word was clipped. Controlled. "Your father and I were just finishing up." My father looked between us, oblivious, still patting papers dry with his sleeve. "Sweetheart, you're soaked. Go change before you catch a cold. Damien's staying for dinner—Marta's making your favorite." I didn't move. Neither did Damien. "Lasagna," I said softly, still holding his gaze. "You remembered." Something cracked in his expression. Just a hairline fracture, but I saw it. "I remember everything," he said. Then he turned away, retrieving a second glass from the bar cart, pouring himself another drink with hands that weren't quite steady. And I knew—in that moment, with the rain hammering against the windows and my father humming obliviously and Damien Cross refusing to look at me—that I was in trouble. Because I'd come home to forget him. But he'd been waiting. And he remembered everything.