Chapter 99: Again and Again
The scent of him—clean skin, expensive soap, the faintest ghost of last night’s whiskey—was her new reality. Beth traced a lazy, absent pattern on Damien’s chest, her fingernails grazing over the tight plane of muscle, the faint ridge of an old scar. The silence wasn’t empty; it was thick, honeyed, a shared secret in the pale morning light.
A thought, playful and sharp, unfolded in her mind.She tilted her head, looking up at his profile. He was staring at the ceiling, but she could see the focus in his stillness.He was listening to her breathe.
“So,” she began, her voice a low rasp in the quiet room. “What do I call you now?”
His head turned.A slow, dangerous smile spread across his face. “What do you want to call me?”
“That’s the question.” She propped herself up on an elbow.“Ex-husband is factually accurate but feels… reductive. Future husband is a mouthful. Fiancé sounds like a boy in a sweater-vest asking my father for permission.” She let her knuckles drift down his sternum. “Which one fits?”
He caught her wrist, his grip firm but not tight. “You’re playing with fire, Bellamy.”
She leaned in, brushing her lips against the corner of his mouth. “I know.” She kissed the same spot again, softer. “But you’re the one who keeps giving me the matches.”
He released her wrist only to slide his hand into her hair, cradling her skull. He pulled her in for a real kiss, deep and slow and claiming. When he broke it, his breath was warm against her lips.“Call me whatever you want. As long as it ends with ‘yours.’”
The words, so simple, so absolute, stole the air from her lungs. She hid the jolt they sent through her by ducking her head, resting her cheek back on his chest. His heartbeat was steady under her ear.A fortress.A anchor.
“Alright then,” she murmured.The practical part of her mind, never fully dormant, clicked forward to the next item. “There’s another thing.”
“There always is.”
“My ring.”
He went very still beneath her.She felt the subtle tension coiling in his arm where it lay around her.
“The old one,” she clarified, lifting her left hand between their faces. It was bare, always had been since the day she’d twisted it off in a fury a lifetime ago. But she’d kept it.A beautiful, brutal souvenir.“The emerald-cut.Platinum band. Baguettes.”
“I remember every facet,” he said, his tone neutral.
“What should I do with it?” She asked the question lightly, but the weight of it hung there. That ring was the ghost of their first promise, the one he’d shattered.It was a museum piece of their greatest failure. Keeping it felt like holding onto a landmine.Selling it felt like an erasure.
Damien was silent for a long minute.He stroked her hair, his fingers threading through the dark waves. “Do you want to wear it again?”
“No.” The answer was immediate, clean. “That was for a different version of us.It belongs to those people. The ones who didn’t know how to do it right.”
He let out a slow breath, a sound of profound relief. “Good.Neither do I.” He shifted, rolling onto his side to face her fully. “So we melt it down.”
She blinked. “What?”
“The stone, the metal, all of it.” He said it with a casual finality, as if discussing the weather. “We take the materials and we make something new.Something for now. For the us that knows better.”
The idea was shocking in its perfection.Not discarding the past, but forging it into a future. It was brutal and beautiful, much like the man himself.“You’d do that?” she asked.
“It’s just carbon and pressure, Beth.The value was what we assigned to it. We’ll assign new value.” He reached out, took her bare hand, and linked his fingers with hers.“We’ll design it together.No surprises this time.”
No surprises. The phrase covered a multitude of sins and promises.She tightened her grip on his hand. “Okay.”
“Okay.” He brought their joined hands to his lips, kissing her knuckles. “And until then?” He let go of her hand and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He walked naked to a sleek, modern dresser, pulled open the top drawer, and retrieved something small.When he returned, he took her left hand again.It was a ring. But not a diamond. It was a band of dark, polished wood inlaid with a thin line of gleaming platinum.
“This was your father’s,” Damien said quietly, sliding it onto her ring finger.It fit perfectly.“He wore it every day. Dove gave it to me a few weeks back. Said I should have something of his.” He met her eyes, and there was no playfulness there, only a stark sincerity that was far more disarming than any charm. “It’s not an engagement ring.It’s a promise. From him, through me, to you.That this time, I understand what I’m holding.”
Beth stared at the band. The wood was warm from the drawer, smooth under her thumb. She remembered this ring on her father’s hand, a stark contrast against his own weathered skin.A piece of the ranch. A piece of her history.Now, a piece of her future.She couldn’t speak. Her throat was too tight. So she just nodded, curling her fingers into a fist, feeling the unfamiliar shape settle into a place that had been empty for so long it had forgotten what it was like to be filled.
Damien watched her, his eyes tracing the tears she refused to shed. He leaned forward, kissing her forehead, then her eyelids, then finally her mouth. It was a kiss of sealing, of solemnity.
When he pulled back, he was smiling again, the dangerous, charming mask slipping back into place, but now she could see the cracks of light beneath it. “Now,” he said, slapping her thigh lightly.“Get up. I have a terrarium to show you, and you need to approve the inhabitants. I refuse to be judged by a tarantula.”
A laugh burst out of her, unexpected and bright, shattering the heavy sweetness of the moment.It was the perfect transition. From the sacred to the absurd.From history to the strange, crawling present.
She pushed back the sheets.“You bought spiders without consulting me? That’s practically a betrayal, Rossi.”
“See?” he said, grabbing a robe and tossing it to her. “You’re already calling me yours.”