Chapter 83: Damien’s (Not So) Hidden Agenda
POV: Damien Lockwood
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The hockey game kept popping back into his mind. It had been doing that all week, as if it hadn’t finished processing everything, flashbacks surfacing unpredictably, details arriving in no particular order.
The noise of the crowd. The way Oliver’s voice sounded when he forgot to hold back and just reacted to the game, cheering at things before he even realized it, the arena lights, the expression on his face when the Kiss Cam found them on screen, that fleeting moment that landed somewhere between horror and something else, something beneath the horror that he had quickly masked.
And Damien had caught it because he’d been watching.
(Damien may or may not have bribed the person in charge of it to ensure that camera landed on him and his bratty little sunshine)
Shhh, that’s a secret no one should ever tell.
And then there was the kiss.
Not so brief, a little messy. It came from an unexpected angle, like the best things tend to, from a direction neither of them had planned for.
Damien let out a slow breath.
What lingered with him, what had been haunting him for six days, surfacing at inconvenient times with irritating clarity ....wasn’t the kiss itself, but the two or three seconds afterward, when Oliver had looked at him amid the noise and lights of the arena with his hand still on Damien’s lapel, not having moved it, and whatever had been on his face at that moment would be something Damien would ponder for a long time.
He hadn’t pulled away. For those seconds, he hadn’t run or deflected or thrown out a sarcastic remark to create distance. He had just, been there staring into space.
That had shifted something significant in the level of control Damien had worked hard to maintain.
Before that moment, there still existed a version of this he could frame as manageable.
An attraction that felt real but containable, like something you acknowledged privately and kept at a safe distance from your actual behavior. He’d practiced that. He was usually good at it.
But afterward, that distance collapsed entirely, and he couldn’t put it back together,.he simply stopped trying.
He wanted...the word arrived clearly, without embellishment, Oliver.
Not as in a fleeting desire, not just temporary. He wanted the version of Oliver who offered sarcastic commentary during breakfast, who had unwavering confidence in things he didn’t know about, who pretended to hate things he clearly enjoyed.
He wanted the complaints, the terrible sleep schedule, and the way he cheered at hockey goals before he consciously decided to care about the outcome.
He wanted to be the one who made sure Oliver ate when he’d been working or studying too long, who recognized when something was off before Oliver was ready to admit it, who got to know the side of him that emerged when he was too tired to keep pretending he was fine.
That recognition, laid out so plainly, didn’t feel dramatic. It felt settled, like something that had been taking shape for a while and had finally aligned.
Damien wanted him, needed him so bad. Perhaps his attraction to Oliver bordered on obsession?
He looked at Oliver sleeping.
For the millionth time, he considered the ways to end Oliver and that Melanie’s so called relationship.
Like hell he’d ever let Oliver go just because of some girl.
The urge to reach out and smooth the crease from Oliver’s forehead surged with an inconvenient immediacy.
His hand actually moved slightly against the mattress before he caught himself.
He stopped. Touching Oliver while he was asleep would probably provoke a reaction somewhere between startled violence and an extremely loud complaint when he woke up, both scenarios likely to disturb the neighbors who had enough on their plates.
The image of Oliver’s expression upon waking to unsolicited forehead smoothing made him smile, with each possible objection and the specific look he would make producing a warm, private amusement that Damien didn’t bother containing because there was no one there to suppress it for.
A fierce, exhausted, thoroughly infuriating little disaster.
That probably summed it up pretty well.
Outside, the storm shifted. The rain’s intensity gradually softened, settling into a quieter, steadier rhythm, it had made its point and was now just existing rather than insisting. The thunder had drifted far enough away to feel almost theoretical.
Oliver stirred slightly at the change in sound, a small unconscious adjustment, and without thinking about it, Damien shifted a fraction closer beneath the blanket.
Not touching. Just closer to Oliver’s warmth like he was addicted to it, the space between them narrowing into something that felt less like distance and more like the absence of it, their warmth becoming a single, seamless entity instead of two separate ones.
He’d learned, thanks to a lifetime of necessity, how to be patient.
Oliver was stubborn, proud and defensive. Currently lost in a prolonged internal argument with himself over something he wasn’t ready to voice yet, which Damien recognized because he’d been witnessing it unfold for weeks and had a fairly clear picture of the landscape.
Pushing him would lead nowhere good and probably spark several more weeks of complex scheduling to ensure they never shared the same space.
So, patience.
One more morning, one more conversation allowed to unfold at its own pace, one more moment of Oliver pretending not to appreciate something he clearly enjoyed, with Damien pretending not to notice the pretense, and the entire careful, ridiculous, completely unnecessary dance of two people who had both arrived at the same destination but hadn’t yet acknowledged where they were.
He would wait, he was good at waiting anyways. And Oliver was... he looked at him again, at the relaxed grip on the blanket, the freckles, his warm hazel eyes, pouty pink lips, the persistent sleeping frown, the evidence of all the shifts he’d navigated and the early mornings on not enough sleep, worth considerably more patience than this situation required.
Damien closed his eyes.
Sleep felt far away but not urgent. The apartment was genuinely quiet now, the storm having exited gracefully as if it had never demanded an audience. The warmth under the blanket was steady and complete.
Beside him, Oliver continued to sleep. Entirely oblivious, the way people are when they’re not ready to know certain things, that he occupied a specific and permanent spot in Damien Lockwood’s life.
Unaware that coffee was made every morning with a clear understanding of how he took it. Unaware that Damien had bought the hockey tickets weeks before their conversation that led to them, in the way someone plans for an outcome they intend to achieve.
Unaware that sharing a blanket on this stormy night felt like more than anything that had previously been called significant.
A small, private smile spread across Damien’s face. The version that didn’t show in public, that wasn’t performed for anyone else, that arrived only in moments like this... quiet, unwitnessed, utterly his own.
Sleep well, Oliver.
Tomorrow there would be breakfast. Oliver would wake up still pretending to be annoyed about the blanket situation. He’d probably say something sarcastic within the first four minutes of waking up.
He’d be tired, defensive, and impossible in all the specific ways that Damien had somehow, without any forewarning, come to look forward to with genuine anticipation.
Tomorrow. All of it.
For now, the storm had passed. The apartment was warm, Oliver was here, asleep and finally unguarded, arguing with nothing in his dreams.
Damien could wait.
Soon, Oliver Reyes wouldn’t be able to turn away from him again.