An anchor.
Was that what she’d become?
He didn’t know how to be soft. He didn’t know how to trust someone to hold him without using it against him later. Every relationship in his past had come with rules, expectations, power plays. This—she—was different.
Maya wasn’t born from his world. She didn’t crave the power or the luxury. She didn’t flinch at his coldness or chase the status.
The car rolled on in silence, city lights flashing past like memories he couldn’t quite hold onto.
Damien turned toward the window, catching his own reflection in the glass—a flicker of something softer beneath all that steel.
And for the first time in a long, long while…
He didn’t look away.
By the time the car eased to a stop outside his private entrance, the storm inside him had quieted—but not gone
