Chapter 270: Don’t Let Go

He leaned back slightly, his eyes growing colder and his shift in demeanor made the space feel smaller. "What did she want?"

"To talk."

"About?"

"Us." I replied.

Damien’s fingers clenched against his knee. "What did she say?"

I looked down again, this was tougher than I anticipated. The words felt heavy in my throat, each one weighing me down.

"She said she doesn’t care about..." I waved my hand vaguely between us. "About you being with me. She said your sexuality isn’t her concern."

Damien’s expression stayed unreadable. "Then what is?"

"Me."

His blue eyes sharpened. "Keep going."

I swallowed hard. "She said you’re attached to me, and while she understands you love me, she also believes I’m costing you your future...no surprise there I guess."

Damien looked away, the movement small but telling and I pressed on before I lost my courage.

"She brought up the inheritance and your accounts, your family’s support and your tuition."

His jaw clenched even more tightly as I kept on talking. "She said you’re at risk of being forced out of Hawthorne if you can’t find funding soon."

Damien didn’t reply right away and the silence felt heavy, stretching into something that felt all too judgmental.

"Is that true?" I asked.

"There’s a possibility."

My stomach dropped. "So...so you could actually be pushed out?"

"I’m working on alternatives."

"Well you didn’t freaking mention that to me."

"I didn’t want you worrying."

I laughed softly, though there wasn’t much humor to be found in it. "That’s ironic."

His gaze returned to me. "What?"

"Nothing." I rubbed my palms together, the friction doing nothing to ease the restlessness stirring inside me.

"She said if you walk away from the inheritance for good, she’ll benefit."

Damien’s expression darkened as that seemed to catch him off guard while he stared at me.

"But she said she doesn’t want the CEO position."

Damien let out a humorless laugh. "Of course she doesn’t."

"She said it was meant to be yours."

"It was."

"And she doesn’t want the responsibility."

His eyes dropped. "Sounds like Dianne."

I nodded, then paused, the next bit sitting heavily on my tongue. "There’s more."

Damien looked at me. "What?"

"She said..." My voice trailed off, quieter now. "She said if I really loved you, I should step back."

His face went impassive and I felt a tightness in my chest.

"She said your parents want you back. They’ve supposedly learned their lesson. That they’ll treat you better if I’m out of the picture."

Damien’s expression hardened further. "They tried to buy you. And they made threats toward your father. They even had you fired. And she still expects you to believe they’ll suddenly be loving parents?"

"I didn’t say I believed her."

Damien stared at me, and I looked away, that was the trick and I hadn’t claimed I believed her, but I hadn’t said I didn’t either.

He must have noticed either way, I took a shaky breath. "She said you were born for that life."

Damien stayed silent.

"She said you were raised for it. That you were educated for it. That everything you’ve ever done was leading you to take over the company."

He looked down at his hands.

"And she asked if I really thought you could live the kind of life I know."

My throat tightened when Damien met my eyes. "She said our relationship would always be problematic due to the gap between our worlds."

I hesitated, then I forced myself to spit out the part that stung the most. "She said if I left, your parents would stop fighting you."

Damien’s face turned completely unreadable.

"She said you could get your future back."

Silence filled the room.

I could barely hear myself breathe.

Damien looked toward the window, the city lights faintly reflecting against the glass.

I studied his profile, trying to grasp what he was thinking, but I was failing miserably.

"That’s everything we’ve discussed," I said quietly.

He didn’t reply and I waited.

A minute passed, maybe less infact, but God...It felt like it dragged on for an eternity.

Finally, Damien turned to face me, and his voice was low. "You don’t think the same, do you?"

I froze, there were probably a million things I could have said.

I could have laughed and I could have immediately denied it, I could have claimed Dianne was just manipulating me and I could have said I trusted him, I could have insisted none of this mattered because I loved him.

But my mouth wouldn’t cooperate and I looked down...that was all it took.

Damien’s expression shifted. It wasn’t anger exactly, not quite...something worse.

It was disappointment.

He slowly turned away from me, as if he needed a moment to process what he’d just seen. "Fuck."

His hand slammed against the table, the sharp crack made me flinch then he stood up.

"Damien—"

He walked toward the other side of the room, not stopping.

"Wait... Damien!"

I stood quickly, the swift movement nearly making the room tilt for a second. "Damien, please."

He kept moving and panic surged in my chest, this wasn’t how I wanted it to go. I hadn’t told him intending for him to walk away.

I had shared it because I was lost on what to do right now, because I was scared. Because some part of me hoped there was a way to protect him without destroying us.

And now I’d made everything worse.

"Damien."

Finally, he paused near the kitchen, his back was to me. His shoulders were tense, hands resting at his sides.

He seemed too still, I moved closer. "Please."

He didn’t turn around and I swallowed hard as I ran towards him, then I wrapped my arms around his waist from behind, pressing myself firmly against his rigid back.

He froze, completely while I pressed my face into his back, gripping his shirt tightly with both hands.

"Stay." My voice cracked, I held onto him tighter. "Please."

For a moment, Damien didn’t budge at all, my heart pounded so hard it hurt.

"I don’t want you to leave," I whispered. "I don’t want to lose you."

He said nothing, I couldn’t I clung to him more. "I don’t know what I’m doing."

My fingers trembled against his shirt. "I just keep thinking that maybe if I wasn’t here, they’d back off. Maybe you’d get everything back you wouldn’t have to worry about your tuition or family or your future again."

My voice shrank.

"But I don’t want to let go." I shut my eyes. "I don’t want to let you go."

Damien stayed rigid in my arms and that scared me more than anger ever could.

Because anger meant he was still fighting for us, silence meant I had no clue what was going through his mind.

I pressed my face against his back harder.

"Please, Damien." My voice broke completely. "Stay with me."

I held onto him like letting go would mean the end of everything and the worst part? Part of me already feared it might be.