Unscripted Seduction - Chapter 19
By the time Damian finally emerged, nearly twenty-four hours after he’d silently dismissed her in that doorway, she was standing at the windows in the living room with her arms folded tight across herself and enough frost in her spine to cut glass.
He looked wrecked.
As if something internal had been ripped open and roughly resealed. His shirt was half-buttoned, his jaw shadowed, his eyes bloodshot and brilliant.
‘Ama.’
She turned. ‘How generous of you to remember I’m still here.’
His face tightened, even as his eyes glistened with the quiet but feral triumph of overcoming demons. ‘Don’t do that.’
‘Do what? Object to being ignored in the aftermath of becoming your creative aid package?’
He crossed the room too fast, barely granting her time to draw breath before he was in front of her, hands on her arms, mouth on hers.
The kiss was hot, furious, desperate enough to feel like a contradiction rather than an apology. For one traitorous second her body answered and heat flared as her fingers flexed against his chest.
Then the last twenty-four hours crashed back in and she shoved him hard. ‘No.’
He stepped back, breathing rough. ‘Ama—’
‘No.’ Her voice shook, which only made her angrier. ‘I won’t be used as your conduit, your catalyst, your convenient little emotional detonator and then expected to stand here grateful because you finally got your pages.’
Something dark flashed in his face. Resistance, like he wanted to refute that.
Then he turned away.
And for one cutting second she thought that was it. That he would retreat again, leave her with the wreckage, silence and all the things she hadn’t been careful enough to protect.
Instead, he stopped at the doorway, dragged a hand over the back of his neck, and said without looking at her, ‘You need to eat.’
Ama laughed once, dry as salt. ‘Marvellous. Promoted from muse to meal schedule.’
He shot her a look over his shoulder that should not have made her pulse jump and yet somehow did. ‘It seems you’re feisty every hour of every day.’
‘And you,’ she said, following him because hopelessness apparently now had feet, ‘are spectacularly bad for my self-respect.’
They went to the kitchen.
He moved with clipped efficiency, pulling things from the fridge, setting a pan on the stove, opening cupboards with the familiar economy of a man in his own domain.
Ama leaned against the counter and watched him, all sharp angles and bruised nerves and maddening masculine competence, and hated that she still wanted him. Hated more that the wanting sat right alongside the ache.
Finally, she said it. ‘Did you use me?’
The knife stopped in his hand and silence swelled.
When he turned, there was nothing casual left in his face. ‘No.’
‘But you disappeared the second it happened. The second you got what you needed.’
His mouth hardened. ‘That’s not what happened.’
‘Then tell me what did.’
He stared at her for so long she almost thought he would refuse. Then the words came out rough.
‘I went into the study because for the first time in weeks I could see the man clearly.’
She said nothing.
Damian set the knife down. ‘Not as something shaped and distant and manageable. As a son standing over his father’s unfinished work and trying to treat it like an intellectual problem because that is easier than admitting the thing is a wound. I kept stalling because every version felt too shaped, too elegant, too controlled. I was writing around the wound instead of through it. The son
wasn’t just carrying my father’s shadow. He was carrying mine.’
Rainwater dripped softly somewhere outside. The kitchen felt very still.
He went on, more tightly now. ‘And after…’ His jaw flexed. ‘After you, after us, I couldn’t hide behind polish any more. I went in there and wrote for nearly a day straight because the distance was gone. That’s what happened.’
Ama’s chest tightened.
She believed him. That was the problem.
Believed the breakthrough, the torment in it. Believed that he had not vanished to punish her but because he’d been caught in the very thing she had pushed him towards.
And yet the bruise inside her remained.
‘I am glad,’ she said quietly, and meant it. ‘I’m glad you broke through.’
His gaze held hers.
But gladness was not the same as safety. Not the same as being chosen beyond usefulness or knowing she hadn’t crossed every professional and personal line she cared about only to become collateral to someone else’s unravelling.
So when Damian looked at her then, raw and difficult and more open than she’d yet seen him, Ama could only stand there with her heart still unsteady inside her chest, happy for him and somehow still heartsick for herself.
By Monday morning, Ama had what she’d come for.
The script was back on track.
Ashon Biney’s satisfaction came through the phone in warm, rare approval. Investors and production were reassured.
By the time Ama returned to New York, she had a raise, a permanent position at Obibini as Director of Creative Development, and a future that looked sharper, stronger, more solid than the one she had stepped out of only days before.
The promotion mattered. But for the first time in her life, the real shift was quieter and harder won: she no longer needed success to prove she deserved a seat at the table. She had already taken it.
She also had a heart that felt like someone had handled it with chilled hands and then set it down cracked.
She’d left Damian’s house with professionalism restored and her feelings in tatters.