Chapter 53: Out of reach

Chapter 53: Chapter 53: Out of reach

The conversation had quieted into something comfortable, the kind of silence neither of them felt the need to fill anymore. Overhead, the last of the evening light had faded, and the streetlamps around the park flickered on one by one.

Garrett glanced at the time on his phone, then back at her. "Getting late."

"Mm." Emiliana didn’t move right away, still settled against his side, in no particular hurry. "I know."

"We should probably head back."

"Probably." She said it without any real urgency behind it, like agreeing with him was just a formality before either of them actually did anything about it.

A few more minutes passed before she finally shifted, sitting upright and stretching slightly as she did. Garrett stood first, offering a hand down to her, which she took more out of habit than necessity.

Once they were both on their feet, she didn’t immediately step away.

Instead, she moved into him, arms wrapping around him in a hug that lingered far longer than the quick, casual kind. Garrett settled his arms around her without hesitation this time, no stiffness in it, the two of them just standing there under the streetlamp for a while, in no rush to let go.

Her head rested against his chest, and for a moment neither of them said anything at all. He could feel the slow, steady rise and fall of her breathing.

"Thank you for tonight," she said eventually, her voice muffled slightly against him. "I needed this more than I realized."

"Yeah," Garrett said. "Me too."

She finally pulled back, just enough to look at him properly, something warm and unguarded in her expression that he hadn’t seen from her in a while.

Then, without saying anything else, she leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek. A second followed a moment later, slower than the first, lingering just slightly longer.

Garrett went still, caught off guard by it in a way he didn’t fully expect to be, though he didn’t pull away either.

Emiliana smiled slightly at whatever she saw in his expression, clearly not bothered by his lack of an immediate reaction. If anything, she seemed to find it a little amusing, the way he could handle almost anything except this.

"Goodnight, Garrett."

"Night."

She held his gaze a second longer before finally stepping back, turning toward her own path home. She glanced over her shoulder once before the distance between them grew too far to bother.

Garrett watched her go for a moment, then turned and started the walk back to his own home, the quiet of the evening settling around him differently than it had an hour ago.

The walk home passed easily. Inside his flat, he went through the usual routine without much thought behind it. Shower. A quick check of his phone, nothing urgent waiting on it. Lights off, one by one, until only the bedroom lamp remained.

He got into bed not long after, tired in the good kind of way, the evening still fresh in his mind.

Sleep came easily.

Elsewhere in the city, the night was only just beginning to get complicated.

____

Raymond sat alone in his study, the low light from his desk lamp the only thing cutting through the dark, a glass in his hand that had gone untouched for the better part of an hour.

His phone buzzed against the desk.

The message sat on his screen before Raymond even picked the phone up properly.

Emiliana: What did you do to Garrett?

He read it once, the glass in his other hand still untouched, condensation pooling slightly at its base.

He’d known this conversation was coming eventually. He just hadn’t expected it tonight.

Raymond set the glass down and typed a response, deleting it twice before settling on something that sounded reasonable enough to send.

Raymond: I did what needed to do. That guy isn’t right for you. You deserve better than someone who has nothing behind his name.

He stared at the message a moment before hitting send, telling himself it was a fair explanation. Garrett was nobody. No family worth mentioning, no money that wasn’t suspicious in how quickly it had appeared, nothing that made sense next to someone like Emiliana. Raymond had simply done what any reasonable person in his position would have done.

That was the version he told himself, anyway.

Underneath it, quieter, was the part he didn’t want to look at too closely. The part that had watched her walk past him for months, choosing someone else, someone Raymond considered beneath consideration, and felt something twist every time it happened. It wasn’t even Brian.

His phone rang less than a minute after he’d sent the message.

Emiliana.

Raymond let it ring twice before answering, steadying his voice before he picked up. "Emiliana—"

"Don’t." Her voice cut through immediately, sharp enough that he stopped mid-sentence. "Don’t you dare try to explain that message to me like it makes any sense."

"I was trying to look out for you."

"By sending three men to beat him on the street?" Her voice climbed, controlled but furious, each word deliberate. "That’s what looking out for me looks like to you?"

"He’s not who you think he is, Emiliana. You don’t know what kind of—"

"I don’t care." She said it flatly, cutting through whatever justification he’d been building toward. "I don’t care what you think you know about him. That’s not your decision to make."

Raymond opened his mouth again, another argument already forming, something about her family’s standing, about what people would say, about how someone like Garrett could never actually belong in her world.

"Raymond." Her voice dropped, quieter now, and somehow that was worse than the anger. "Garrett is my business. Not yours. Who I choose to spend my time with has nothing to do with you, and it never will."

He didn’t say anything.

The silence stretched a moment, just long enough for him to feel the weight of it settle in.

"I don’t want to hear about anything happening to him again," she continued. "Not a warning. Not a message. Nothing. If I find out you’ve gone anywhere near him again, I won’t be the one dealing with you."

"Emiliana—"

"My father will." The words landed with a finality that left no room to argue. "And you know exactly what that means for you and your family’s standing, so think very carefully before you decide to test me on this."

Raymond’s throat tightened. He knew precisely what that meant. Everyone in their circle knew what it meant when the Vane name got involved in something personal. It wasn’t a threat she needed to elaborate on, and she clearly had no intention of doing so.

"Understood," he said finally, quieter than he meant to.

"Good."

The line went dead before he could say anything else.

Raymond sat there for a long moment, phone still in his hand, the study silent around him except for the faint hum of the desk lamp.

He set the phone down slowly, picked the glass back up, and this time actually drank from it.

The study door opened a moment later, his mother stepping in, still in her evening robe, an eyebrow already raised.

"That sounded intense," she said, glancing at the phone still sitting on the desk. "Who was that?"

Raymond hesitated, weighing whether to actually answer or brush it off the way he usually did with her. "A girl I like."

That got her full attention. She crossed the room, settling into the chair across from him, arms folding. "Who?"

"Emiliana."

His mother went quiet, the kind of quiet that meant she was already running through everything the name implied. "Emiliana Vane?"

"Yeah."

She let out a slow breath, some of the earlier curiosity replaced by something more careful. "Raymond. What exactly do you think you’re doing with a girl like that?"

"I like her." He said it simply, no elaboration behind it, like the statement should be enough on its own.

"Liking her isn’t the problem." She leaned forward slightly, her voice dropping into something more serious than he was used to hearing from her. "Do you have any idea what her father would do if he thought you were causing trouble for her? The Vane name isn’t just money, Raymond. It’s influence in places you don’t want to test. Business, politics, people who owe them favors they’d call in without blinking."

"I know who they are."

"Then you know exactly how careful you need to be." She held his gaze, making sure the point landed. "Whatever you’re doing, whatever this was tonight, it needs to stop. You go against that family, and it won’t just be Emiliana who makes you regret it."

Raymond didn’t answer right away.

His mother studied him a moment longer, clearly deciding there wasn’t much more to say tonight that he’d actually listen to. She stood, resting a hand briefly on his shoulder before heading for the door.

"Be careful," she said again, quieter this time. "Please."

The door clicked shut behind her, and the study fell back into its earlier silence, just the hum of the lamp and the faint city noise filtering in through the window.

Raymond sat there for a long moment, his mother’s warning settling somewhere he didn’t particularly want to examine too closely.

Eventually, he pulled his phone back toward him.

He scrolled past the message thread, past Emiliana’s name still sitting at the top of his recent calls, and opened a folder buried further down, one he didn’t let himself look at often.

A photo of her, from some event months ago, her laughing at something out of frame.

He stared at it for a while.

He thought about what it might have looked like, the two of them together instead of this. Walking into a room and actually belonging beside her, instead of watching from somewhere else while someone like Garrett got to have what Raymond had wanted for longer than he was willing to admit out loud.

He imagined it slowly, the way he always did when he let himself. The two of them, matched in a way that made sense to everyone who saw them, the kind of pairing people would talk about for the right reasons instead of the wrong ones.

It would have been beautiful.

That was the thought that stayed with him longest, sitting there in the quiet study, the photo still glowing faintly on the screen in his hand.

Beautiful.

And entirely out of reach.