The next weeks passed in a blur of quiet intimacy and unspoken dread. Damon tried to work from home as much as he could, rearranging meetings, rescheduling calls, and even cancelling a few appearances just to be near me. He knew he’d be gone for three months soon — a long stretch of distance neither of us wanted to face. And I… I was already unraveling.
I told him, more than once, how much I hated being alone. How the silence wasn’t peaceful for me — it was suffocating. I had lived with loneliness my whole life. At home, it was a constant companion. Even when surrounded by people, I felt unseen. Then Eva came into my life and filled that void with laughter and chaos and sisterhood. And when she left, Damon became my anchor. My oxygen. My everything.
I knew he’d come back. I knew it wasn’
