Trapped In The Billionaire’s Name

CHAPTER 42

Reina's POV

We didn't go straight home after Brooklyn.

Damian said he wanted to show me something and took us to a street in Carroll Gardens I didn't know, stopped in front of a brownstone with a for sale sign and a light on in the ground floor window.

I looked at it. Looked at him.

"I'm not buying you a brownstone," he said immediately. "I just want to know what you think of the neighborhood."

"Why?"

"Because I've been looking at the area. Quietly." He put his hands in his coat pockets. "My apartment is Midtown. Which works for the company but isn't — it's not a place that feels like a life. It feels like a location." He looked at the building. "I've been thinking about something with more room. More neighborhood. More—"

"Human," I said.

"Yes." He looked at me. "You grew up in places that had character. Streets where people knew each other. I never had that and I didn't know I wanted it until recently."

I looked at the brownstone. The street was quiet and tree-lined and had the particular quality of a neighborhood that had decided what it was and wasn't performing it for anyone.

"It's a good street," I said.

"Yes."

"The light in that window is warm." I paused. "Someone lives there properly. You can tell."

"That's what I thought." He looked at me sideways. "Too far from your hospital?"

"Forty minutes by subway." I paused. "Manageable."

He nodded. Said nothing else about it. Just stood there for another moment letting me look and think without pressure, which was so entirely him that I felt the familiar pull of it — the specific warmth of being with someone who gave you room.

We walked back to the car through the quiet street. His hand found mine without ceremony.

At my apartment he came up.

We'd stopped negotiating about that weeks ago. He came up or I went to his and neither of us made it into a declaration. It just was.

I changed into comfortable clothes. He took his coat off and sat on the couch with the ease of someone in a familiar place, which he was now. My apartment had adjusted around him the way spaces do when someone inhabits them regularly — his preferred mug was in the cabinet, there was beer in my fridge that I didn't drink, the throw on the couch was habitually on his side.

I hadn't reorganized any of it deliberately. It had just happened.

I made tea and brought it over and sat beside him. His arm went around me and I settled against his side and the Sunday closed gently around us.

"Tell me something you've never told anyone," I said.

He was quiet for a moment. Thinking genuinely, not performing the consideration.

"When my father died," he said, "the first thing I felt was relief." He paused. "He'd been sick for eight months and watching it was — there's no clean word for it. So when it ended I felt relief before I felt grief and I've never said that out loud because it felt like a betrayal."

"It's not a betrayal," I said. "It's what happens when someone you love suffers for a long time. The relief is for them as much as you."

"I know that rationally."

"Does knowing it help?"

"More since I said it out loud," he said. "Yes."

I looked at the lamp. "My turn."

"You don't have to."

"I want to." I paused. "When my mother first stopped knowing me — the first really bad day — I didn't cry at the facility. I held it completely and took the subway home and walked into my apartment and sat on this floor right there for an hour without moving." I looked at the spot. "I didn't call Marco. I didn't call Nadia. I just sat there alone because I didn't know how to let anyone in to something that large."

He was quiet.

"I do that less now," I said.

"I know," he said. "I'm glad."

"It's because of you," I said simply. "Not entirely. But significantly." I looked up at him. "You made it feel safe to be in something large with another person."

He looked at me with the expression that moved through all his composure and landed somewhere entirely undefended. "That means more than you know," he said.

"Good," I said. "I meant it to."

He kissed my temple. Simple and unhurried. His hand moved slowly up my arm and back down and stayed.

We sat in the quiet and the evening deepened and neither of us reached for anything else — not phones, not plans, not the logistics of the coming week. Just the specific peace of two people who had found something real and were inhabiting it without needing to examine it.

"The brownstone street," I said after a while.

"Yes."

"If you found something on that street," I said carefully. "With enough room. And enough neighborhood." I paused. "I'd want to see it before you decided."

He went still beside me the way he did when something had landed that he wanted to receive properly.

"Yes?" he said quietly.

"It should feel right for both of us," I said. "If it's going to be where we are." I kept my voice even but I could feel what it cost — the deliberate choosing, the door I was walking through with both feet. "I don't want to show up after the fact. I want to be part of it from the beginning."

He turned slightly so he could see my face. What was on his expression was open and certain and so specifically him — no performance, no triumph, just a man receiving something he'd been hoping for and letting it matter.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay," I said.

"Next weekend," he said. "There are two more streets I want to look at. We'll go together."

"Together," I confirmed.

He pulled me closer. I let him. My head against his shoulder, his chin at the top of my head, the lamp warm and the tea cooling on the table.

"Reina," he said quietly.

"Hmm."

"I'm very happy."

I closed my eyes. "Me too," I said.

Simple and completely true.