The Fine Print of Us

Chapter two - Slow Starting Fire

Damien Blackthorn was halfway to his first sip of coffee when Ivy stormed into his home office like she paid the mortgage. She didn’t knock.

She never knocked.

But today there was a new edge in her heels, a deliberate, furious rhythm that told him this wasn’t going to be a casual check-in. He liked confident women. Respected them. Hell, sometimes he even listened to them. But this morning, watching Ivy Morgan cut through his space like a blade wrapped in designer silk, he felt the faintest stab of something rare.

Dread.

She slapped her tablet down on his desk like it had personally offended her. “You call that a date?”

He raised an eyebrow, calm as ever. “Good morning to you, too.”

She ignored him, tapping the screen to life. “Do you know what the headlines are saying? ‘Stone-Faced Blackthorn Shares Quiet Dinner with Mystery Woman.’ You look like you were negotiating a merger, not falling in love. And don’t get me started on the body language. Damien, you could’ve been dining with your goddamn paralegal.”

He took a slow sip of his coffee, deliberately unbothered. “She’s not my type.”

“Neither was Mara Lennox, apparently,” Ivy snapped. “Because if she was, you would’ve at least looked like you wanted to touch her. The whole internet was rooting for something scandalous, something juicy. And instead, you gave them stock footage of a business dinner.”

His mouth twitched. “So sorry I didn’t perform for the cameras.”

“You weren’t supposed to perform, Damien. You were supposed to sell a story.” She leaned in, voice tight. “You’re a shark. A damn good one. But right now the press has blood in the water. You needed to look reformed. Human. Maybe even in love.”

He set his cup down, eyes narrowing slightly. “You think I should’ve kissed her on the sidewalk like some desperate tabloid prince?”

“I think,” she said, planting both hands on his desk, “you should’ve made them believe it.”

There was a pause. Tension sharp enough to slice through the glass walls behind him.

He exhaled slowly, standing. “I didn’t plan for her, Ivy.”

Her gaze flickered. “You mean the girl or the headlines?”

He didn’t answer.

Because the truth was still sitting somewhere behind his ribcage, unspoken, but heavy.

Mara Lennox wasn’t just an act. And that scared him more than any scandal ever could.

“She’s not the type of woman I expected to meet,” Damien said quietly, eyes fixed on the skyline beyond the glass. “She was clever. Sharp. Funny in a way that hit you five seconds later. And sexy as hell.”

He hated admitting it, even more so to Ivy but when they’d agreed to work together, brutal honesty had been their baseline. No filters. No PR-spin between them. Just the truth, however inconvenient.

“I wanted her,” he said, voice low.

Ivy stared at him like he’d grown two heads. “Okay… so why the hell didn’t you act like it? You should’ve kissed her. You should’ve done the whole over-the-top Hollywood thing. The ‘shove-her-against-the-wall-like-a-scandal-is-worth-it’ kind of kiss. People eat that up.”

“I couldn’t.”

That stopped her. Her brow furrowed, disbelief flickering behind her perfectly-lined eyes. “Wait, you’re Damien Blackthorn. You don’t do hesitation. You don’t do restraint. You close every deal, and you close it hard. Are you seriously telling me you couldn’t seal the moment?”

He turned to face her, jaw tight, voice clipped. “If I kissed her, it wouldn’t have been an act.”

Ivy blinked. The air shifted between them.

“She’s not a prop, Ivy. She’s not some polished society puppet looking for a headline. She’s real. And I’d end up hurting her. That’s what I do.”

“You want her,” Ivy said again, this time slower.

He exhaled. “Yeah. I do.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

He didn’t answer right away. The silence stretched, heavy with something he didn’t want to name. Because he’d walked this road before, blurred the lines, crossed the boundaries, turned someone into collateral damage.

But Mara?

She wasn’t built for that world. She deserved something cleaner than him.

“I don’t do ‘good,’ Ivy,” he muttered. “You know that. And she is.”

Ivy leaned back, arms crossed, watching him like she was seeing something new under all that tailored control. “You’re a walking scandal, Damien. You don’t get ‘good.’ But maybe… just maybe, you don’t want her for the cameras. Maybe you want her for you.”

His gaze dropped to the phone on the desk. He hadn’t deleted her number. Hadn’t stopped thinking about the way she smirked at him like she saw right through the suit and the smirk.

A woman like Mara Lennox was the kind of fire you didn’t come back from.

Ivy straightened. “You have a choice to make. We can spin the date, fake another one with someone safer, or…”

“Or?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“Call her,” Ivy said, shrugging. “Take her to dinner. No cameras. Just you and her. And see if it’s worth the risk.”

He didn’t reply. But he was already reaching for his phone. While Damien composed the text to Mara, it wasn’t the usual formality wrapped in charm. This wasn’t obligation. This was a decision. A deliberate choice to pursue something real, something that had nothing to do with image management or media damage control.

Dinner.

His terms.

His turf.

No audience, just her.

Across the room, Ivy let out an exasperated sigh that could’ve powered a wind farm. “You make my job impossible. I should be billing emotional hazard pay.”

Damien didn’t bite. He smirked, hit send, and tossed his phone face-down on the desk like it hadn’t just sent a live wire into his day. He wasn’t about to act like a teenager waiting for his crush to respond. He picked up his coffee instead, sat behind his desk, and launched his inbox, trying to pretend he hadn’t just stepped outside his own rules.

Still, his eyes drifted to the phone every few minutes, like gravity had suddenly rerouted through Mara Lennox.

He forced himself back to focus. Lunch today with one of the firm’s senior partners, an old-school bastard who smiled like a viper and didn’t hesitate to sink teeth into exposed weakness. After last week’s scandal, they were circling like sharks. He needed to show control.

Strength.

Composure.

But before he could clear his head, an unexpected email slid into his inbox. The subject line froze him.

FROM: A. Reinhart

SUBJECT: You always thought you were untouchable.

Damien’s jaw locked.

Andrew Reinhart.

The name came with a bitter aftertaste. The man had been mediocre at best, overconfident, under-delivering, and completely incapable of holding his weight in the courtroom. Damien had fired him months ago after a string of failures and cover-ups. He hadn’t made a scene… not publicly. But in private? He’d left with venom.

“I’ll ruin you,” Andrew had said. “The moment you think you’ve won, I’ll remind you just how far you can fall.”

Damien opened the email.

Nice to see your name finally dragged through the mud. You always said image was everything, funny how fragile it looks now. You should’ve kept your enemies closer, Blackthorn. You’ve got cracks showing. I wonder what else the press would love to know…

The words weren’t a threat, they were a declaration. And for the first time in days, Damien felt the ice slide back into his veins. He leaned back in his chair, throwing his head back and staring at the ceiling.

This wasn’t just about a PR crisis anymore. This was war. And Reinhart had just declared himself the enemy. Behind the polished veneer, behind the cold control, Damien Blackthorn began to calculate. Every move. Every counter. Every weakness that could be turned into leverage.

But even with a knife at his back, one thought tugged at the edge of his mind, soft but stubborn.

Mara.

The timing couldn’t be worse.

Which made it the perfect moment to see her again.

Damien didn’t waste time. He forwarded Reinhart’s email to Ivy with a single line:

“Handle this quietly. Assume he’s sitting on more.”

She didn’t need a novel, she’d know what to do. Ivy was many things, but unprepared wasn’t one of them. Then, and only then, he allowed himself to pick up his phone. Mara had responded. No emojis. No overt flattery. Just a short reply laced with her usual sharpness, and underneath it, interest. Real, crackling interest. She hadn’t said she missed him. She didn’t need to. He knew how to read silence, and hers was humming.

He smirked, satisfied. So he had read the room right.

Without a second thought, he opened his contacts, dialed a number, and leaned back as it rang.

“Takeshi,” he said when the line picked up. “I need a table tonight. Something quiet.”

There was a brief laugh on the other end. “You want me to move heaven and earth again?”

“It’s for someone worth moving it for,” Damien said coolly.

Reservations at Sakana No Yoru were damn near impossible unless you knew the right people. Luckily, Damien always did. The place was discreet, elegant, and intimate, shadowed corners, whispered conversations, no cameras. No staged photo ops. Just sake, firelight, and atmosphere you could feel in your bones.

Exactly the kind of place where Mara Lennox would drop her guard… if he played this right.

Reservation confirmed, Damien set the phone down and straightened his cuffs. The softness vanished from his expression, replaced by something colder.

He still had to deal with the senior partner. They’d asked for lunch. Really, it was an ambush in tailored suits.

Let them try.

He buttoned his jacket and stepped into the hallway with the slow, certain stride of a man who didn’t just own the room, he was the room. Let Reinhart scheme, let the firm’s board squirm. He wasn’t going anywhere. He’d win the case. He’d clean up the mess. And if anyone tried to push him out, he’d drag them into the fire with him.

But first, he had a date to plan. And this time, he wasn’t interested in just getting a headline.

He wanted the woman.

There were dates you forgot before dessert. Then there were the rare, dangerous ones that lingered, etched into your brain like a tattoo in midnight ink.

Damien Blackthorn was the second kind.

Mara knew it the moment she read his text. It wasn’t anything dramatic. No poetry. No flowers. Just a message with confidence that dripped off the screen like cologne: Dinner. My pick this time. 8 p.m. I’ll send a car.

No overthinking. No question mark. Like he already knew she’d say yes. And the truly unhinged part?

He was right.

She’d stared at that message for a full minute before realizing she was smiling like some walking, talking cliché. Like a woman in a music video. Velvet dress. Stormy eyes. The whole damn bridge of a magnetic song written by one of her favorite pop artists.

Her roommate would’ve rolled her eyes. Her mother would’ve panicked. Mara just poured herself a drink and questioned herself how long it took to walk the emotional tightrope between caution and screw it, I want this

She knew better.

She HAD to know better.

She said it to herself in the mirror twenty times while curling her hair. He’s dangerous. He’s here for press. You’re a photo op.

Nothing more.

And yet.

When the car arrived, sleek and black, with a quiet driver who addressed her by name, her pulse was already doing reckless choreography in her throat. She wasn’t even at the restaurant yet, and she felt like she was being slowly reeled in. But she didn’t mind the line.

Not yet.

The restaurant was nothing like the glossy showroom Ivy had picked the first time. This one breathed. Low light, wood panels, soft textures. Warm sake and warm eyes. And in the far corner, Damien waited.

God, he looked good.

Black shirt, no tie, jacket off. Casual by his standards, but somehow more dangerous. Like this wasn’t a date, it was a confession.

He stood as she entered, and for a breath, her confidence faltered.

Just a flicker.

Because the way he looked at her wasn’t performative or polite, it was deliberate. He wasn’t undressing her with his eyes. He was memorizing her.

“Mara,” he said, like it was a secret.

She swallowed a smile. “You clean up pretty well yourself, Damien.”

He held her chair. She let him.

And as she sat across from him, flickering candlelight between them, she thought, Oh, I’m in trouble. Because this didn’t feel staged. It felt like fire starting slow.