Chapter 62: Damien Lockwood vs. My Last Remaining Brain Cell
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Damien moved back toward the kitchen, giving me space and distance, the escape route I’d been unconsciously requesting all night with my body language.
And somehow, now that I had it, everything felt more complicated.
Because here’s the thing about assholes: they’re pretty straightforward. You know where you stand with them.
There are clear expectations, established reactions, a whole framework of responses that are right at your fingertips. Enemies are simple. Arguments come with defined sides.
But someone who waits around with cold coffee and fumbles through an awkward apology and looks tired in a way that has nothing to do with sleep-that isn’t easy.
That wasn’t something I had a system for.
I watched him move around the kitchen, going through the commonplace motions of making coffee, pretending not to notice me.
I thought about Joey’s voice at the café this morning and Maya’s eyes across the table, and the word they both seemed to arrive at that I was still unwilling to confront directly.
Damien started the coffee maker and glanced my way briefly.
I looked away.
He had apologized. He had genuinely apologized, and somehow that was the moment that made me feel, standing in my own kitchen on a Sunday evening, like I was the difficult one. Like I was the problem.
Like all the armor I’d been wearing had shifted from protection to something I’d picked up long ago and still hadn’t figured out how to put down.
That, I decided, was the most inconvenient thing he had ever done to me.
And he didn’t even mean to do it.
I even considered apologizing to him too for being a complete dumbass, but lord knows I had a huge problem with saying stuff like ’I’m sorry’, ’I love you’, ’i care a lot about you.’
Then Damien did what he did best, saying things that drove me into a deeper state of confusion.
"Do you really like her?" He asked abruptly.
I regretted every decision that led me to this moment. From the party to standing here in this kitchen, under the warm light, with the coffee maker humming and Damien Lockwood staring at me with that calm, knowing look, as if he already had the answer and was just waiting to see how I’d respond.
Parts of my brain kicked into overdrive. One part wanted to come clean, that I didn’t know what I truly felt about her. Another part just wanted to leap out the nearest window, assess the height, and maybe rethink my choices.
A third wanted to know why it was any of his business at all. And another part had just given up, completely checked out.
The part with the worst judgment was the first to react.
I laughed, even to me, it sounded empty, like someone trying to fake confidence they didn’t actually possess.
"Pfft, of course I like her."
The words came out too quickly, too evenly, like something rehearsed and rushed out on instinct. Too fast. Too smooth. It was the spoken version of a resume that had been edited so many times it sounded nothing like a real person’s words anymore.
Damien didn’t change his expression.
That somehow made it worse. Over the past few weeks, I’d unwittingly learned to read Damien Lockwood’s face, the slight tension in his jaw when he was annoyed, the way his eyes narrowed slightly when he sensed dishonesty, and that tiny lift at the corner of his mouth when something amused him but he chose not to laugh.
I’d picked up on all these little cues just from being around him and trying to understand someone who had this strange effect on me.
Right now, his expression screamed: not convinced. Completely, unmistakably, quietly not convinced.
And he knew I knew it.
"Right," he said.
Just one word, but delivered in that calm, relaxed tone of someone who was confident they had made their point and was more than happy to let it linger.
It felt exactly like being called a liar straight to my face.
Which wasn’t fair. Objectively speaking, it wasn’t fair at all. Melanie was fantastic... genuinely great. She was funny, quick-witted, and easy to be around, the kind of person who made conversation flow naturally instead of feeling like a chore.
She was cute. She texted me first, repeatedly, which was a rarity I still wasn’t used to because most girls didn’t do that. She had kissed me, sweetly and clearly, outside her dorm under the evening sky.
A normal kiss, a good kiss. A kiss that had somehow turned my entire understanding of my emotions upside down.
So why did I feel like I was standing before a judge, defending a case I wasn’t even sure I believed in, hoping nobody would ask me for details?
Damien leaned back against the counter, looking relaxed, like someone who’s never had to question whether they belong anywhere, that effortless confidence that comes naturally to people who’ve always been allowed to take up space.
It was infuriating. I’d been annoyed by it for weeks, and it was still getting on my nerves.
"I apologized," he said.
I blinked. "What?"
"Earlier." His gaze remained steady on me, patient and doing way too much. "I apologized."
"And?"
"And," he said, with the smoothness of someone who had clearly been thinking about this for a while, "it’s your turn."
I just stared at him, letting the sentence sink in. Processed it.
Then I laughed once again, genuinely, involuntarily, like someone hit with unexpected news.
What the actual fuck?
Then I laughed harder, then I looked at his serious face, and the laughter died in an instant.
"W...why the hell do I have to apologize to you, huh?"
A faint smile appeared, the one I had developed a complicated relationship with over the last few weeks, it showed up rarely enough to feel significant, landing in a way I didn’t want to analyze.
"I can think of several reasons," he said.
"Oh, I’d love to hear them."
"I know you went on that date to make me jealous, to ’take my girl’"
My mouth fell open and stayed that way, it needed a moment to process. The sentence hung there like a perfectly crafted arrow, delivered with the confidence of someone stating a verified fact.
The audacity. The sheer, breathtaking audacity of this man!
"Excuse the hell outta me?"
Damien chuckled. Not a smirk, not a genuine chuckle, low and warm, filling the room with the comfortable ease of something that belonged there. I’d need to file a claim for emotional damages.
"I don’t know why you’re surprised," he said.
"I’m surprised because that’s insane."
"Is it?"
"Yes."
"No."
"Yes!"
"No"
"Damien!"
"Oliver."
"You are genuinely unbelievable!"
"I’ve been told." He said it like it was a mildly interesting fact about himself, without any hint of embarrassment.
I wanted to throw something at him. I mentally scanned my surroundings. The kitchen island was between us, either a tactical choice on his part or a cowardly one, but it was working either way.
"You seriously think I went on a date to annoy you," I said, not as a question but a statement for someone cataloging a delusion.
"I know you did."
"I went because Melanie is funny and pretty and she asked me."
"All true."
"And because I wanted to go."
"Less true."
I pointed at him. "Stop doing that."
"Doing what?"
His smile somehow got worse. "I think you spent weeks believing I liked Melanie," he said, deliberately laying out his argument.
"Because you looked like you did."
"I didn’t."
"You were staring at her at the party—"
"I wasn’t staring."
"You absolutely were—"
"I absolutely wasn’t."
"You—"
"Wasn’t."
We went back and forth for another thirty seconds like two little dumb kids squabbling over a stolen juice box, which was a humiliating realization that I would think about later in private and bang my head against the nearest hard surface.
Then Damien pushed off from the counter, taking one step, then another, unhurried, like he had all the time in the world and chose to close the gap between us at a pace that gave my nerves a chance to register every inch of it.
And I was immediately reminded of just how tall he was, way too tall. The kind of presence that shifts the atmosphere just by walking through it, broad shoulders and entirely too comfortable in his own skin, which was frankly excessive and should come with a warning.
I was mentally drafting my complaint when he reached out.
My nerves staged a protest.
His fingers caught a stray hair near my temple... a casual, almost absentminded gesture, like he hadn’t fully decided on it until it was happening, like...like he had the right to touch me however he liked.
What...? What was he up to this time?!