DAMIEN
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We had just spent tangled together in the Catskills, a weekend that felt both like a lifetime and a fleeting dream, leaving me raw and exposed in a way I hadn't been in years.
I was driving back into the city, back into the world I had tried to escape for just a few hours, she was sitting beside me, her hands clasped in her lap, her body radiating a tension I could feel even without touching her, the unexpected peace, and the woman beside me, who was quiet, too quiet for my liking, her gaze fixed on the passing scenery, her profile a study in stillness, a closed book I couldn't read completely at this point.
I knew she was still scared of me, of who I really was, of the things I had done, of the things my brother had done, of the world I inhabited, a world that had caused
