CRASHING INTO YOU

EPISODE FOUR: UNSEEN LINES

CHAPTER FOUR: UNSEEN LINES

Damian’s POV

I left the apartment with the taste of my own words still stuck to the back of my throat. “Don’t cross the line,” I’d said. Cold, clinical. I meant it. She was mine by contract, not by affection — a fact I liked because it kept things tidy. I liked tidy. I liked control.

Still, as the city slid by through the windshield, a small, uncooperative part of me twitched. Maybe I’d been harsher than necessary. Maybe I could have said it softer. Maybe she’d been trying to be kind by making breakfast. I swallowed the thought and tightened my jaw. Agreements were agreements.

The lobby of the building smelled like sanitizer and power. I almost took the private ramp, but my secretary waved me up the elevator door, and I obeyed. Then I saw her — Sienna — planted by the marble pillar like she owned the space. Silk dress. Dangerous smile. The kind of woman who’d been a distraction and a headline in equal measure.

“Sienna,” I said, and meant it to be dismissive.

Her smile widened. “Damian. Fancy seeing you here.” She fell into step, heels clicking. “You disappeared on me.”

“Busy,” I said.

She followed me into the lift and all the way to my floor. She didn’t wait for an invitation when she came into my office. She shut the door with a soft click, like she was making the world smaller and more intimate by force.

“You’ve been impossible to reach,” she said, leaning on the desk with one hip. “Did I do something wrong?”

“You should leave,” I told her. The words were blunt because blunt kept things clean.

She laughed, a sound meant to disarm. “We were good. We had fun. You don’t just ghost someone—”

“I didn’t ghost you.” I didn’t bother to explain. I didn’t want to. I was not in the mood for conflations of pleasure and sentiment. I was not in the mood for complications.

She sauntered closer, slipped onto the edge of my desk, and swung a leg up so it draped over the armchair that sat across from mine. The move boxed me in. Her hand hooked the knot of my tie and tugged, drawing me forward until my sternum brushed against her knee.

For a moment the world did what it always did — narrowed to the heat of her body and the scent of her perfume. The rational part of my brain catalogued the consequences: scandal, distraction, an unnecessary ripple in a week already tight with negotiations.

I reached to her hand, pried her fingers from my tie, planted her leg back on the floor. “I said leave,” I repeated, quieter, colder.

She straightened, feigning a disappointed pout. “Fine. Call me when you’re ready to have fun again.”

She left like a practiced flame — quick, loud, and leaving only the faint scent of trouble in the air. The door clicked behind her and my assistant pretended not to look. I sank into my chair and let the silence fill the room.

Why had I sent her away?

She didn’t know about the marriage. No one outside the inner circle did. There was a practical convenience to Sienna: quick, private, and uncomplicated. I could have closed the door and undone the compartmentalization I’d built so carefully — slept with her, walked back out, and Leah would never know. I owed Leah nothing. I owed the marriage nothing but appearances.

Yet when Sienna’s heels had faded, a small, foreign tightening sat under my sternum. I told myself it was propriety. I told myself it was laziness. I told myself anything that would keep me from asking the quieter question: what the hell was I protecting?

My phone buzzed on the desk and I didn’t reach for it at first. When I finally did, my grandfather’s name lit the screen.

I want to have dinner with you and Leah tonight. Just the both of you. I want to know her better.

His messages had way of turning orders into invitations. For a second I imagined the old man prying at the surface, at the seam of things, prodding where a lie could be felt. I didn’t like the idea of anyone—least of all my grandfather—turning a phone into an interrogation.

Okay, I texted back. 7 p.m. I’ll be there.

Then I typed Leah.

Dinner at Grandpa’s. 7 p.m. Meet me there.

No etiquette. No adornment. Efficiency.

When we pulled into the drive at the same time — the synchronization felt staged — my grandfather nearly ran down the porch steps when he saw her. He lit up in a way he never had for me alone. He stepped toward her like a man who’d found a missing piece.

Leah—Leah, not the manufactured persona—moved with a quiet grace into the old man’s orbit. He took her arm, shepherded her straight into the dining room, and they started talking like conspirators. I sat at his left and felt every chuckle peel me farther into the background.

At first it was minor things: his stories about the garden, her comments about a book he’d mentioned. Then the subtle timing of their laughter — too natural for my taste, too settled. Somewhere between the entree and the wine, my phone thrummed with messages again. Old flames, brief dalliances, women I’d left hanging. The curiosity in their texts was a mirror of my own past indiscipline — where are you? we should catch up — a list of interruptions.

I stepped outside to take it. The cool air was sharp in my face. Inside, through the glass, they were close in a way I hadn’t certified. She leaned toward him, animated and warm. He grinned like a boy with a secret. My chest tightened the way it does before a wave breaks.

I walked back in and told him we had to leave.

“No,” my grandfather said with a slow smile. “You’re spending the night. I have catching up to do with my daughter-in-law.”

The phrase lodged in my throat like a bitter pill. He said it with the authority of a man who expected a performance and would not be denied. I’d framed the marriage as convenience; he framed it as family. Somewhere between my intention and his interpretation, we’d created something messier than either of us had negotiated.

That night in the guest room I told her to take the couch. She rolled her eyes.

“I wasn’t going to share a bed with you anyway,” she said.

“Good.” I meant it. I wanted distance. I wanted the border to hold.

She arranged the pillows, a soft fort meant to keep us literal and figurative miles apart.

I woke to a strange weight against my cheek — not the scratch of a pillow or the press of a blanket, but something warmer, softer. My eyes opened and there it was: her hand, resting against my face, fingers curved lightly along my jaw as if she’d fallen asleep mid-thought.

And she wasn’t on her side of the bed.

She was on mine.

For a second my reflex was pure muscle memory — push her off, reclaim the distance. But instead I lifted her hand carefully, almost cautiously, like I was defusing something fragile.

That’s when I saw her face.

I’ve woken up with women beside me more times than I can count. It’s usually the same—hair tangled, makeup smudged, a haze of perfume clinging to the sheets. But this… this was different. Her features were soft even in sleep, lashes damp from whatever dream had her trembling earlier. And her lips — full, a shade that almost made me lean closer without thinking.

I told myself to look away. I didn’t. Not until she stirred. The moment she shifted, I jerked back like I’d been caught staring. She blinked awake, confusion in her eyes, and I didn’t give her a chance to say anything. I was already on my feet, out of the bed, and out of the room before my thoughts caught up with me.

We didn’t speak much after that. On the drive home, she broke the silence first.

“Can we stop at the café near the house?” she asked, voice low but steady. “I want to get some croissants and coffee.”

I didn’t answer right away — just flicked on the indicator and pulled over in front of the little place she’d mentioned. She stepped inside, the bell above the door giving a short, bright chime, and I stayed in the car, scrolling through my phone as if the notifications mattered more than watching her.

But my eyes drifted up anyway.

Through the glass, I saw her at the counter — and then I saw another woman approaching her.