Chapter 311: Accidentally on a Date

"You have sauce on your mouth."

I reached for a napkin, but before I could find one, Damien leaned closer and gently wiped the corner of my mouth with his thumb.

I froze and he glanced at his thumb, then back at me. "You had sauce."

I stared at him, suddenly forgetting that I had been in the middle of a perfectly reasonable complaint about carnival food prices.

"I could’ve handled it myself," I managed.

"I know."

He said it so calmly that I was left with absolutely nothing useful to say, which was an unfortunate development because I usually had at least three sarcastic responses prepared for any situation involving Damien.

I cleared my throat and looked down at my food, hoping the warm colour spreading across my face could be mistaken for the effects of the evening heat.

"Thanks," I muttered.

His smile was gentle. "You’re welcome."

We continued through the carnival, and I tried very hard to convince myself that the little things Damien was doing were nothing more than ordinary acts of consideration.

He remembered which foods I liked, avoided buying me drinks that were too sweet or had some with alcohol, and somehow noticed whenever I began to tire before I had even realized it myself.

He slowed down whenever I stopped to look at something, listened to my complaints as though they were genuinely interesting, and laughed at my jokes even when they were objectively terrible.

He was paying attention to me.

Not in the distant, watchful way he had been since returning to my life, but in the small, familiar ways that reminded me of the person he had been before everything fell apart.

Every now and then, I caught him looking at me beneath the carnival lights, his expression soft and thoughtful, as though he was quietly taking note of all the changes the years had made to my face.

He looked so beautiful and happy, it almost made my chest ache.

Had he ever been this happy in the years we’ve been apart?

Whenever our eyes met, he never looked away immediately, and I found myself doing it for him because maintaining eye contact with Damien Lockwood for longer than a few seconds had apparently become an activity my nervous system was no longer equipped to handle.

Somewhere between the ridiculous stuffed animal, the overpriced food, and Damien’s increasingly suspicious attentiveness, a horrifying realization finally struck me.

Wait a damn minute...

This was... a date.

I stopped walking so suddenly that Damien took another step before noticing I was no longer beside him. He turned around, looking mildly concerned. "What’s wrong?"

I stared at him.

He stared back.

Then I looked around at the carnival, at the food in my hand, at the enormous stuffed animal tucked against my side, and finally at the man standing in front of me with the kind of patience that suggested he was perfectly willing to wait while I had a complete internal crisis.

"This is a date," I announced.

Damien’s eyebrows lifted slightly, faking surprise. "Oh really? Is it?"

"Yes, Damien. It is!"

"I thought we were just looking around."

"We’ve been here for hours!"

He glanced toward the carnival as though checking whether time had somehow moved differently for him. "Well, you’re having fun."

"That isn’t the point!"

"Then what is the point?"

"The point is that we’ve been eating together, playing games, wandering around under pretty lights, and you’ve been buying me things like some kind of ridiculously wealthy romantic lead in a terrible television drama!"

His mouth curved into a slow smile. "I don’t mind."

I stared at him in disbelief. "You knew?"

"I suspected."

"You suspected?" I repeated, my voice rising slightly. "And you just let me wander around thinking this was a completely innocent outing?"

"I didn’t want to scare you away."

I opened my mouth, then I closed it. Yeah he was right, if he had mentioned that earlier I would have ran away screaming.

Then I opened it again, only to discover that my brain had apparently decided to shut down all communication services without providing prior notice.

The worst part was that Damien was looking at me with such obvious amusement that I couldn’t even pretend he had misunderstood my accusation.

I glanced down at the stuffed animal still tucked against my side. "This is humiliating."

Damien smiled. "You’re still carrying it."

I looked at the creature, which seemed to be staring back at me with its permanently foolish expression. "Well, it’s mine now. So I don’t really give a shit anymore."

He laughed, and I rolled my eyes so dramatically that I was surprised they didn’t get stuck somewhere near the back of my skull.

Unfortunately, I was also smiling, and when I caught Damien looking at me, I tried to arrange my face into something more appropriately irritated.

It was a complete failure, mostly because the smile had already taken up residence on my face and apparently had no intention of leaving.

We stayed a little longer, walking past the last few stalls and watching some of the rides begin to glow as the evening light faded.

Damien suggested we try one of the slower rides near the edge of the grounds, but I informed him that I had already reached my daily limit for humiliating myself in public, especially after my spectacular performance at the game booth.

He accepted my refusal without arguing, although he did point out that I had been considerably less reluctant to participate when food or prizes were involved.

Eventually, we began making our way out of the carnival, the lights shining brightly behind us as the sky shifted into the deeper colours of evening.

The crowd had grown larger, and the music followed us for a while before gradually fading into the ordinary sounds of town.

I was still carrying the stuffed animal, although I had started holding it by one arm because the thing was becoming increasingly heavy, and Damien had offered to take it several times only to be informed that I was perfectly capable of carrying my own prize.

He hadn’t pointed out that I had spent most of the afternoon claiming I didn’t want it.

I appreciated his restraint.

The walk home was quieter than the one into town, but it wasn’t the uncomfortable kind of silence that had followed us through the house that morning.

Our shoulders brushed occasionally as we walked, and neither of us made any effort to move away.

The air had cooled slightly, carrying the faint scent of grass and the distant smell of food from the houses we passed, while the familiar streets looked softer beneath the evening sky.

After a while, Damien glanced at me. "Did you have fun, Sunshine?"

I kept my eyes forward. "No."

He laughed quietly. "Liar."

"I hated every second."

"Of course."

"The food was overpriced."

"Was it?"

"Yes, Damien...and the games were rigged, too."

"Obviously."

We continued walking, and for a little while I let myself enjoy the simple comfort of having him beside me without trying to dissect every little thing he said or did.

It was strange how easily the afternoon had unfolded, how naturally we had fallen into conversation, and how little effort it had taken for me to laugh with him despite everything that remained unresolved between us.

I still had questions, and I was still hurt by the years we had lost, but for the first time since Damien had returned, I wasn’t spending every moment searching for a reason to push him away.

I glanced at him. "Thank you."

He looked over. "For what?"

I shrugged, suddenly finding the pavement very interesting. "For coming out to town with me, I actually did have fun."

His expression softened, and when he spoke, his voice was quieter than before. "I’d do it again."

I looked away before he could see how much those words affected me, although I suspected he had already figured it out.

I knew he would do it again, too, and that was precisely what made the thought so dangerous.

I had spent the entire afternoon insisting that this wasn’t a date, pretending I wasn’t enjoying myself, and acting as though every moment of familiarity between us was something I needed to be suspicious of, but somewhere between the carnival lights and his quiet laughter, I had stopped trying quite so hard to push him away.

The day had felt uncomfortably close to something I used to want, something I had once imagined sharing with Damien before life had become complicated enough to tear us apart.

I had spent years convincing myself that those ordinary little moments belonged to a version of our future that no longer existed, yet there I was, walking home beside him with an enormous stuffed animal tucked under my arm and a smile I couldn’t seem to get rid of.

I had spent the entire afternoon insisting this wasn’t a date, and the worst part was how little I actually wanted it to end.