Chapter 141: The Day Damien...Blushed!
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Suddenly, a pair of arms wrapped around my waist...pulling me closer to him gently, sending warmth through me.
I stopped talking.
Damien had stepped in close, close enough that I could smell his cedar-scented cologne, close enough to feel the apron tie brushing against my side. He was staring at the bouquet with this expression I hadn’t seen before.
Something softer than usual. Something sitting closer to the surface.
His ears were pink.
I was stunned...
This guy was capable of blushing too?! Why didn’t anyone tell me?!
His ears were pink. And his cheeks. Not the full-blown embarrassment of someone caught off guard, just a warm glow settling there, and the effect of this was so unexpected that I had to rework my entire mental image of Damien Lockwood.
And then his lips were on mine in a kiss that stole away all my anxious thoughts.
The kiss was sweet and lingering, filled with a tenderness that went beyond our usual heated make-outs. When he pulled back just enough to rest his forehead against mine, his voice was low and sincere
"They’re beautiful," he said quietly.
"You...really like them?" I asked, still a bit dazed, trying to play it cool on the surface as if buying flowers for the guy I was seeing was no big deal.
Inside, though, I was silently thanking every star in the damn sky for his positive response, relief and joy blooming in my chest like the petals of the flowers I chose.
His eyes moved over the bouquet with an awareness he usually reserved for important things. "They’re my favorite flowers now."
"...Seriously? Just like that?"
He looked straight at me. "Because you gave them to me."
The simplicity of that statement left me speechless. My heart did a little somersault, but I didn’t register any of that.
"I thought you’d think it was weird," I finally said.
His brows furrowed in genuine puzzlement. "Weird?"
"I mean... I’ve never, you know— I’m not sure how to do this...I just saw them and thought—"
"Oliver." His thumb brushed across my cheek, light and fleeting. "This is probably the nicest gift anyone has given me."
That can’t be fucking right, he was the son of billionaire... surely he had gotten better gifts than this?!
"...It’s just flowers, Damien."
"No." He shook his head slightly, his expression shifting in a way I couldn’t quite pinpoint. "It’s the thought behind them."
His words carried a softness that made my heart swell, and he pressed another kiss to my forehead.
At that moment, I felt like I might just burst. Not dramatically. Just quietly, in that way where you can only take so much without something giving.
He accepted the bouquet gently, like it was something precious, and took it into the kitchen. I assumed he’d put them on the counter.
But instead, he washed a glass vase I’d never used before, filled it with water, trimmed the stems with the scissors from the knife block, and arranged the flowers one by one like they mattered to him.
I leaned against the counter, watching nonchalantly.
But on the inside, I was literally breakdancing in joy. Damien hadn’t even teased me like in thought he would have.
Dinner was pasta, Damien’s specialty, which was consistently good in a way that had ceased to surprise me and while setting the table, I couldn’t help but glance at the vase on the counter.
The blue flowers had opened a little in the water, looking even more stunning than they had in the shop, catching the warm light of the apartment in a way that felt significant.
Every time I looked away, then back, I found myself smiling.
"You’ve smiled at those flowers at least six times," Damien said, pouring water into our glasses with that effortless precision of someone keeping count.
"You’ve been counting?"
"I have."
"That’s slightly unsettling."
"I prefer attentive."
I twirled pasta around my fork. "Actually, I went to the library today, after my shift."
"Oh?"
"Ran into one of your—" I paused, trying to pin down how to categorize Jeremy accurately. "—one of the people from the party. The nice one."
Damien’s fork slowed ever so slightly. "...Which one?"
"Jeremy Ab...Abbot?" I found myself realizing I had even forgotten his last name.
Something shifted in his expression, a small, brief recalibration. His smile stayed in place. "Jeremy Abernathy."
"Yeah, that’s the one! He came to apologize for how everyone was acting towards me for being a ’scholarship kid’."
"How...generous of him."
"He was actually—" I hesitated. "He was genuinely nice, kind of funny. He’s failing a psych elective and nearly teared up when I reassured him that his professor is just confusing, not that psychology is impossible."
Damien was silent.
"So he begged me to tutor him."
The silence that followed was brief but controlled, the kind that feels intentional rather than casual.
I looked up.
Damien was smiling, a polite, composed smile, but something about it felt different from the one he had just moments before.
"What’s wrong?" I asked.
"Nothing."
"You made the face."
"What face?"
"The one that indicates something is off but you’re determined to keep it together."
"I don’t have a face like that."
"You absolutely do. I’ve been cataloging all your facial expressions for months."
He chuckled, low and fond, and some of that careful edge softened. "It’s nothing, sunshine."
He held my gaze for a moment then smiled — a genuine smile, the warmth returning.
"I know I said I’d take a break more often, but offered me triple the fee...i couldn’t really say no to the extra cash." I looked at him sheepishly, "Can...can I go ahead with it?"
"Sure."
"That’s it?"
"That’s it."
I studied him for a second. He kept that expression steady. I decided to let it go. If Damien had made up his mind about something, it was like trying to budge a well-built wall.
We moved on to other topics, some lecture I’d found intriguing, my complaints about study habits in the library, whether the pasta needed more salt (which it didn’t, but I suggested it anyway just to stir things up).
But in the back of my mind, I kept returning to that small shift in his demeanor. It wasn’t anger. Not quite jealousy... at least not the kind I’d noticed before. It felt more like the careful, watchful nature of someone who was paying attention and keeping something filed away.
I glanced at the blue flowers in the vase.
Throughout my entire shift, I had worried that bringing them home might be awkward. That he would see it as excessive or wouldn’t know how to react.
Instead, he had washed the vase. He had trimmed the stems. He’d arranged them one by one and told me that they were his new favorites.
I picked up my fork and finished dinner, choosing to stay quiet about Jeremy, letting the evening fall back into its easy rhythm.
But I noticed, because I was getting quite good at noticing things about Damien... that his gaze shifted to the flowers on the counter once, then to me, and that quiet expression returned as if he were trying to process something unexpected.
I pretended not to notice.
But I tucked that away, too.