Chapter 61: How Dare He Be Mature And Apologize?
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Damien blinked slowly, absorbing the information at his own pace, completely unfazed.
"I see," he said.
"Oh, you see."
"Yes."
"Wonderful. Fantastic. Glad we’re on the same page."
I genuinely, specifically, with intent, hated him. A little, maybe more than a little. The exact amount was tough to quantify and probably not worth dissecting right now.
His gaze dropped momentarily to the counter, then returned to mine, and when it did, something felt a bit different—shifting, like he was about to say something he’d been holding back.
"I shouldn’t have left."
The words landed, and I was completely unprepared for them because I hadn’t seen this coming. I’d spent most of the day imagining various versions of this conversation, and none of them kicked off here.
I’d anticipated sarcasm and deflection, the cool, composed Damien who didn’t want to engage, or maybe even a heated argument that would give me something concrete to push against.
Not this.
Not Damien Lockwood in his kitchen at the end of a day spent waiting, saying I shouldn’t have left like someone who had already fought with himself about it and lost.
Him owning up felt, surprisingly, more disarming than anything he’d done before. Even more than the kiss. Maybe even the coffee.
I folded my arms. "That’s it?"
His eyes narrowed just a tad. "What were you expecting?"
I opened my mouth. No useful response surfaced. "Nothing," I muttered.
I wasn’t expecting nothing, I was expecting to tell me who he wanted.
Because for some stupid reason...I was still dying to know. Curiosity! Yep, that must be it.
His gaze lingered for a moment, not demanding, just present..
and the silence stretched into something almost comfortable before shifting into something else entirely.
"Did you have a good time?"
The question came out with an attempt at nonchalance that didn’t quite hit the mark, like someone trying too hard to appear effortless.
The words felt light, but everything underneath them suggested otherwise.
"At the date?" I asked, eyeing him.
"Yes."
The response came out a beat too clipped, the kind that happens when someone is overly mindful of their tone and is trying a little too hard to control it.
I blinked in shock, was this an attempt of him trying to get back on my good graces again?
I should’ve just answered. The reasonable, mature response that would move us forward without unnecessary drama pointed toward just answering his question.
"Why?" I asked instead.
His jaw tightened. "There doesn’t have to be a reason why I’d want to know."
"There usually is with you."
Something crossed his face, quick, there and gone, like someone who has just been accurately described and is less than thrilled about it.
Then, to my genuine surprise, he sighed. A full, human sigh, like someone finally putting down a heavy burden.
I was taken aback. Witnessing Damien Lockwood express something close to a feeling was a rarity. It felt like observing a rare animal in the wild.
"It...it shouldn’t be this difficult to answer," he said, his voice now lower, less restrained. "You drive me crazy, you know that?"
I realized I had been unconsciously stepping back until I felt the edge of the counter behind me.
The kitchen wasn’t a big space, and Damien had closed the gap so seamlessly that it felt inevitable, not intentional, and now he was close, not touching, not cornering me, just there in a way that made everything else feel secondary.
Why...why was he so close to me this time?!
My body had already proved itself to be a traitor, I was genuinely afraid of...not what he would do. But what I was going to do with him so close to me.
Punch him? Push him? Fucking kiss him? Yeah, I had no idea too.
But his eyes, in this light, were strikingly blue. Staring straight into my eyes, as though he was trying to unravel me. Find out just what I was hiding deep down.
I wasn’t going to think about the closet. I wasn’t going to think about the party, or his hand against the wall, or the six words from last night.
Nope, not going to do it. This was already confusing enough.
"You’re doing that weird staring thing," I said when I broke the silence.
Damien looked genuinely puzzled for a second. "So are you."
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. He had me pinned. I had nowhere to go with that, I turned away.
I fumbled my way back to solid ground. "You’re fucking weird."
"That’s not an answer."
"Why do you care?" The question slipped out before I could stop it, not confrontational, just genuine curiosity about the underlying emotions of the evening. Why do you care how my date went? Why were you sitting here with cold coffee? Why did you look up the second I walked in?
Damien froze.
Not visibly...most people wouldn’t have caught it. But I was watching him, and I noticed the slight pause, the small involuntary halt. Something shifted behind his eyes, like he was contemplating whether to take a step closer to something true.
Then his expression smoothed out. Controlled again, but it was different this time, not the automatic composure he’d had before. Something that cost him, the kind that demands something real.
He looked away.
An exasperated breath escaped him. His hand raked through his hair, messing it up further, and the gesture was so uncharacteristically open that I felt something stir in my chest that I didn’t quite know how to handle.
"It doesn’t matter," he said.
"It clearly does."
"Oliver—"
"Damien."
He briefly closed his eyes. When he opened them, he looked exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with sleep, like he’d been carrying a heavy weight for a while and was starting to feel the strain.
"I shouldn’t have made assumptions," he said. His words came out carefully, like he had charted a cautious path through them.
"About you and Melanie. What you did or didn’t—" He halted. "I shouldn’t have assumed the two of you had sex, it wasn’t any of my business."
I just gaped at him, with Damien Lockwood...you could never really tell what he was going to do.
His apology landed with a thud I wasn’t prepared for. I hadn’t been expecting it, which was the tricky part about reasonable Damien.
I had no plan for him because I’d never truly accounted for his existence. Difficult Damien? I could navigate that. Composed, cutting, controlled Damien? I could push back against that.
But this version of him, standing in his own kitchen looking like it was costing him to say those words? That was genuinely impossible to contend with.
"I was angry," he said, as if reporting on an emotion he’d rather forget. "I shouldn’t have been."
The silence that followed was different from the others. It had weight but wasn’t hostile, that feeling of two people grappling with something real they weren’t quite ready to confront.
"I wish I could explain why I was mad, but I can’t," he finally admitted, quietly.
"I know," I replied. Then, because the moment felt like it called for honesty: "I noticed, idiot."
The corner of his mouth shifted. Not a full smile, but it was moving in that direction, like he was letting go of some tension.
And unexpectedly, I let out a small, accidental laugh. Just one, but it broke the tension between us and shifted something.
Not entirely, though. There was still tension, still confusion, still everything unresolved looming in the background. But somehow, the energy had lightened. Or at least the weight of it had changed.
Damien studied me for another moment, steady, searching, conveying something with his eyes that his words hadn’t yet been cleared to state. Then he stepped back, giving me space, creating some distance that made the air feel more manageable.
It should’ve felt like relief. It was the distance I’d been telling myself I wanted all night...room to think without him shifting my thoughts around.
Instead, what settled in my chest felt like disappointment, which was incredibly inconvenient. I cataloged it mentally, labeled it not dealing with this right now, and tucked it away with meticulous precision.
He rubbed the back of his neck. "I’ll make fresh coffee."
I blinked. "What?"
"The one on the counter." He nodded at the cold mug. "It’s been sitting there a while. You want some?"
I looked at the mug, then at him again, then back to the mug, the realization dawning slowly like someone doing math that leads them somewhere unexpected.
He had brewed coffee when he got home. It had gone cold because he’d been waiting. He had been sitting there for hours without saying a word. Just waiting.
Something warm and deeply inconvenient settled in my chest.
He was waiting for me to come home again.
So he could apologize.
I hated the realization immediately, because of how warm it made me feel. So I cataloged it, filed it away, did not examine it.
There’s no way this stoic guy, this odd roommate of mine cared about my feelings this much.
It almost seemed like he was doing all he could to progress our relationship as friendship...and I was the one too scared to let him.