Chapter 4 - What He Brought Home
At the estate, Naomi sat on the guest-room floor beside the bed.
She had not meant to end up there. She had lowered herself to pick up her purse and stayed because the carpet felt solid beneath her. The scarf lay across her knees.
At first, she thought she was frightened for Caleb.
Then she understood that the fear was larger and uglier than that.
She was frightened of what Damian would bring back.
A man could return from a place she had never seen and alter the room around her forever. She had known that about Caleb once. She did not know how to survive learning it again.
She got up and called Damian.
The phone rang.
He did not answer.
She called Enzo.
This time, someone picked up.
“Is he there?” she asked.
A pause followed.
“Miss Naomi—”
“Put him on.”
Another pause.
Then Damian’s voice came through the line.
“Naomi.”
“Is Caleb alive?”
“Yes.”
She gripped the bedpost.
“Then come back.”
He did not answer.
“Please,” she said. “I need you here more than I need you there.”
The line remained open long enough for her to hear rain.
Then Damian said, “We’re coming.”
Naomi heard the car before she saw it.
Headlights moved across the guest-room ceiling, pale and distorted by rain on the glass. She stood too quickly, then waited for the brief dizziness to pass. Her phone was still warm in her hand.
At the foot of the stairs, Damian handed his coat to Enzo.
There was a dark mark on one cuff.
Naomi stopped on the landing.
He looked up.
For several seconds, they studied each other across the open space of the foyer. She had been afraid of his return; now she was equally afraid of what it would mean if he avoided her eyes.
He did not.
“He’s alive,” Damian said.
She came down the remaining steps.
“What did you do?”
Enzo looked toward the entrance.
Damian remained still.
“Naomi, you should sit.”
“What did you do?”
He looked at the scarf hanging from her hand.
“His hands were injured.”
The answer struck her in pieces. First the words, then their deliberate vagueness, then the knowledge that he had chosen them because the complete account would be worse.
She backed away one step.
Damian moved instinctively, then stopped.
“Did you do it?”
“I gave the instruction.”
She looked toward Enzo.
He did not defend himself.
The foyer smelled of rain, polished wood, and the faint floral scent of the arrangement on the center table. Naomi focused on one white flower bending over the edge of the vase because looking at either man felt impossible.
“I asked you not to kill him.”
“I didn’t.”
“That isn’t the whole boundary, Damian.”
His face tightened.
“No,” he said.
The admission left them nowhere comfortable to stand.
She wrapped her arms around herself.
Part of her felt relief so sudden and fierce that she hated it. Caleb was far away. Caleb was frightened. Caleb would think of this night before coming near her again.
Another part remembered the clinic, the nurse adjusting a blanket, Dr. Chen asking questions without making Naomi earn the right to be believed.
She wanted the relief without the cost.
There was no way to separate them now.
“What happens to him?”
“He’s receiving treatment. Then he’ll leave the city.”
“You arranged that too.”
“Yes.”
She looked down at the scarf.
“Did he admit it?”
“Yes.”
“Did he say it was an accident?”
Damian’s eyes sharpened.
She gave a small, exhausted nod.
“He always called things accidents after he’d finished choosing them.”
For the first time, the expression on Damian’s face broke into something plainly human.
“How long was he hurting you?”
Naomi looked toward the stairs.
“I’m not answering everything tonight.”
“All right.”
The answer came immediately.
She looked back.
He seemed to understand that speed mattered here.
“I’m tired,” she said.
“I know.”
“And I don’t want to be alone.”
He stood very still.
She hated that asking sounded like forgiveness when she had not decided what forgiveness meant.
“Those are separate things,” she added.
Damian nodded.
“I know that too.”
Upstairs, he sat in the chair near the guest-room fireplace while Naomi rested on the edge of the bed. He kept his hands visible, loosely clasped between his knees. The room was warm, but she could not stop feeling cold.
For a while, they listened to the rain.
Then she said, “I almost apologized to you.”
“For what?”
“Bringing him into your life.”
Damian looked at her.
“I heard myself thinking I should have paid him. Or hidden it better. Or gone home by another street.”
He leaned forward.
“Look at me.”
She did, reluctantly.
“Refusing him wasn’t the mistake.”
Her mouth tightened.
“You’re very certain.”
“Yes.”
“What if he’d come back?”
“Then he would have been wrong again.”
She stared at him until the words began to reach somewhere beneath her exhaustion.
He did not tell her she should have called sooner. He did not ask why she had stayed with Caleb years earlier. He did not turn the worst thing that had happened to her that day into a problem she had failed to prevent.
Her face crumpled before she could stop it.
Damian crossed the room, then knelt a little distance away.
“Can I?”
She nodded.
He took her hands.
The gentleness of it made her cry harder.
“I don’t know what to do with you,” she whispered.
His thumbs stilled against her fingers.
“That makes two of us.”
A breath of laughter escaped her, broken and unwilling.
He bowed his head until his forehead rested against their joined hands. Naomi watched the man who could empty a dining room sit quietly on the carpet because she had asked him to come home.
She had wanted something from him that evening.
He had heard her too late to leave it unbroken.
Still, he had come.
She let one hand move into his hair, cautiously, and he closed his eyes.
They remained that way until the fire settled and the rain softened.
May you like
He did not kiss her.
When she finally lay down, he returned to the chair.
