*ARIA*
For days, the house held a quiet that didn't belong to either of us.
Damian moved like a ghost, present, breathing, alive, yet unreachable. Something in him had shifted after the nightmare he had two nights ago, the one he wouldn't talk about. His eyes carried a heaviness that didn't match a man hiding from authorities; it matched a man grieving something he still couldn't name aloud.
I tried not to watch him, but I always did.
The way his jaw tightened whenever he caught me staring.
The way he avoided sitting too close.
The way he slept on the couch again last night even though his shoulder still hurt.
He was protecting something in himself. Maybe from me.
Maybe from the harsh truth.
This morning, I found him at the edge of the balcony, staring at the mountains like they were the last steady thing he had left. He didn't turn when I stepped out, but he didn't leave either.
That was new.
"Damian?" My voice came softer than I intended.
For a moment, I thought he wouldn't respond. Then he said, "Come with me."
He didn't wait for my answer. He just walked inside, down the hall, toward the room he always kept locked.
My pulse quickened.
He never let me in there.
When he opened the door, I expected weapons, documents, a map, something cold and strategic.
I didn't expect the shelf.
Books. Not just books. Journals. Dozens of them, stacked, worn, some with torn corners, some with dark smudges on the edges. Lives lived in ink.
He reached for one, a leather-bound volume with a small tear along the spine, and held it out.
"To read?" I whispered.
He nodded once, barely.
My stomach tightened. "Damian… this is personal."
"I know," he said quietly. "That's why I'm giving it to you."
"You will need one when writing my memoir."
I walked to the bed, sat, and opened the first page. The handwriting was sharp, rushed in some places, almost shaky in others.
And the first lines stole the breath from my chest.
The day I lost Renia.
The day the world ended.
The day I stopped being anyone worth saving.
My fingers lingered over the ink as if touching the memory itself. I looked up at him.
He stood by the wall, arms crossed, pretending he wasn't watching my every reaction, pretending this wasn't costing him a piece of his soul.
Minutes passed, maybe hours, until I finally closed the journal, holding it gently like something fragile.
"Damian…" My voice cracked. "Why do you carry this alone?"
"Because no one wants the truth."
"I do."
That simple answer made him step toward me, breath uneven. I didn't move.
"You're not a monster," I said.
He gave a bitter laugh. "That's not what the world says."
"I'm not the world."
We were inches apart, too close, dangerously close. His breath mixed with mine. Something pulled us toward each other, magnetic and reckless.
He leaned in. I did too. My lips parted.
Then I blinked, breaking the spell.
We stepped back at the same time, breathless.
I felt stupidly lightheaded.
He almost kissed me. Or I almost kissed him. Or we both almost crossed a line neither of us was ready for, not when truth still hovered like a knife between us.
"I shouldn't," he whispered.
"Neither should I."
The silence between us wasn't cold. It was warm. Alive. Charged.
"If the world knew this side of you…" I said softly.
"The world doesn't deserve to."
My heart tightened. Because he meant it. Because he trusted me with a part of himself he had locked away for years.
And that trust felt like gravity pulling us into something neither of us fully understood, but neither of us could walk away from.
---
*DAMIAN*
Her fingers brushed the journal again as if trying to memorize the weight of my past.
I should have taken it from her. Closed the door. Locked everything away again. That's what I knew. Silence. Control. Distance.
But I didn't.
Because Aria didn't flinch from the truth. She didn't look at my scars like proof of guilt. She didn't treat me like a danger; she treated me like a man who had bled too long alone.
And that terrified me more than any enemy ever could.
"Damian," she whispered, "what do you want?"
The question hit harder than any bullet.
What did I want?
Justice.
Answers.
To breathe without guilt choking me.
And God help me… to not be alone when I finally found the person who destroyed my life.
But I couldn't say that. Not now. Not yet.
So I said the only truth I could give her.
"I want to finish what was started. I want to find who tried to kill me."
Her breath caught.
"And when you do?" she asked.
I held her eyes. "Then I'll finally know what to do with the rest of my life."
Emotion glimmered in her gaze.
The journal lay between us like a pact neither of us had spoken aloud.
Outside, the wind shifted, warning us that this moment, whatever it was, had already changed everything.