Don't Make Me Love You

A FORBIDDEN TRIANGLE

Lily’s POV

Damian held onto me for a long time, like letting go might mean losing me all over again. When he finally pulled back, his eyes were wet, and he cupped my face in both hands like he was still checking to make sure I was real.

“What happened to you?” he asked. “Your face, your voice, everything.”

“I had surgery,” I said. “I needed to disappear completely if I wanted to come back and do this right.”

He hugged me tighter. “I thought I lost you forever.”

“I thought the same about you,” I whispered against his shoulder. “They told me you died in that crash.”

“I survived,” he said quickly, his eyes shifting like the memory still bothered him. “The crash was real. People did die. I just wasn’t one of them.”

I didn’t push for more than that, not yet. There was too much else sitting between us.

“So this mansion is yours? And you go by Lily?” he asked, glancing around the room.

I nodded, wiping my face. “Yes. But you need to keep this quiet, Damian. Especially from Adrian.”

His brows pulled together. “Why?”

“Because I plan on making him pay for what he did to our family,” I said, flat and certain.

He let out a short laugh, but there was no humor in it. “You’ll get yourself killed, Kath. Adrian isn’t someone you play games with.”

“I know what I’m doing,” I said, meeting my own eyes in the mirror across the room. “I don’t care what it costs me. As long as I get to end him with my own hands, I’ll be satisfied.”

I felt him step closer behind me, close enough that his breath touched the back of my neck. His arms slid around my waist, and for a moment I let myself stay still instead of pulling away.

“You don’t know what I went through thinking you were gone,” he said quietly. “How long I searched. How much it hurt not knowing if you were even alive.”

I pulled his arms off me gently and turned to face him. “I’m glad you’re back too,” I said, keeping my voice steady.

“Then why do you keep pulling away from me?”

“Because you’re my sister’s fiancé, Damian. You can’t just touch me like that.”

“I can end it right now, if that’s what you need,” he said, desperate in a way I hadn’t heard from him before.

“Stop,” I said, sighing.

“I love you,” he said, the words falling out before he could stop them.

My heart dropped somewhere I didn’t expect.

“After five years?” I asked.

“That’s the thing, Kath,” he said, frustration cracking through his voice. “I loved you even while I was with Clara. I never stopped, not once. I gave your sister a chance because it kept me close to you, to your family, a family that used to be mine too. I asked your parents to let me go so I could be with her instead of admitting the truth, that it was always you I wanted.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Loving my family’s killer or falling for the man who once belonged to my sister, neither option felt like something I could live with. Both felt like betrayal in their own way.

********

A few days later, I found him in the guest room, a towel wrapped around his waist, water still dripping down his shoulders from the shower. My eyes caught on his chest before I could stop them, and for a second I forgot every reason I had for keeping my distance.

“Kath?” he said, pulling me back to the moment.

I cleared my throat, embarrassed. “I came to give you an answer.”

“Okay,” he said, leaning against the doorframe. “I’m listening.”

I looked away from him, toward the window instead, gathering whatever nerve I had left. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, to what you asked me.”

His face lit up in a way that almost made me smile back. Almost.

“I’m just worried about what people would think,” I admitted. “About Clara.”

“Nobody will think anything, Kath. You don’t even look like Kathryna anymore.”

He was right about that much. I looked like Lily now, but the guilt sitting in my chest hadn’t changed shape at all.

He pulled me closer, his voice softer. “You don’t need to carry that guilt. Clara would want you happy. She’d probably be glad it was me.”

Maybe he was right. Maybe my sister wouldn’t have minded after everything. His mouth found mine before I could think it through any further, and whatever hesitation I had left melted the second his lips touched mine.

We ended up on the bed not long after, and I let myself get lost in it, telling myself this was the right choice, the safer choice, the one that wouldn’t cost me my whole heart the way Adrian could.

Afterward, we lay there catching our breath, his fingers tracing lazy circles on my shoulder.

“Are you good?” he asked, voice low and content.

“I’m good,” I said, even though something in me still felt unsettled in a way I couldn’t name.

His phone buzzed on the nightstand, and as I reached over out of habit to check it for him, my eyes caught on the watch sitting beside it. Gold-like with initials engraved along the band. My chest tightened.

“Where did you get this?” I asked, picking it up carefully.

He glanced at it, then back at me, his face calm. Too calm. “The watch? I’ve had it for years. It looks familiar, I guess.”

“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “Maybe.”

“You’ve been through a lot, Kath,” he said gently, taking it from my hand and setting it back down. “Let’s not talk about this for now.”

I nodded, telling myself he was probably right. I was probably being hyperactive. I needed to chill a little.

But my stomach turned over hard, nausea rising fast enough that I barely made it off the bed before it hit me completely, and the room tilted sideways around me.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​