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When I finally straightened, smoothing the strap of my bag over my shoulder, my hands didn’t shake as I walked to the door and opened it. The hallway beyond was quiet. Empty. Freezing. Just like the space he’d left between us.
I stepped out without looking back and closed the door with a soft, final click. As I turned to leave, the walls seemed to tighten around me, and I felt it all.
The betrayal.
The heartbreak.
That reckless hope that had led me down this path. For the first time since crossing paths with Damian Sinclair, I didn’t question whether he would come after me.
If he had truly wanted me, he would have never let me slip away in the first place.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Damian
The door clicked shut behind her, final and hollow and far too loud in the empty hotel suite.
I stood there for a beat—naked, the cool air brushing over my skin like judgment. The bed behind me was a wreck of tangled sheets, damp with the heat we’d left behind.
I could still smell her—citrus and vanilla, the sharper edge of her perfume, the deeper musk of sex. God, I could still feel her. Everywhere.
I dropped onto the edge of the mattress, elbows braced on my knees, head in my hands. The bed dipped beneath my weight, still warm where she’d been. Still heavy with everything I hadn’t been brave enough to say.
The buzz of my phone cracked through the silence. I grabbed it without thinking, needing something—anything—to ground me.
Mateo: Hey D. Hope you’re good. Any chance you could help with book fees? Just short this term. No rush. Thanks, man.
I stared at the message longer than necessary, the ordinary loyalty of it cracking something raw inside me.
The science was there—undeniable, written in the angles of his jaw, the sharpness of his mind, the odd little quirks we shared without ever trying. I was the man whose DNA he carried in every cell of his body.
I thumbed a reply:
Damian: Of course. Let me know what you need.
I sat there for a long moment, letting the lie of omission settle over me like a second skin. Familiar. Heavy.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the question Juliette had asked somewhere over the Atlantic:Would you ever consider it?
Could I willingly give someone the same thing I’d once signed away without thought?
Hell… I already had.
But Mateo hadn’t arrived with expectations. He’d come into the world through science, not sentiment—no face attached to the facts. No father waiting on the other side of the glass to hold him.
Yet, somewhere along the line, I got pulled in anyway.
The idea of doing it again—intentionally—scared the hell out of me in a way nothing else ever had.
It wasn’t about DNA. It was about what came after. The knowing. The permanence. The irreversible truth that somewhere out there, a part of me would exist,with or without me.
I leaned back on the mattress, letting its weight sink into my chest. Letting the memory of Juliette’s hands, her breath, the way her body curled into mine, press into me like a bruise that hadn’t even started to fade.
What would it even look like?
Not the neat, calculated life my father had expected. Not the cold detachment of money over meaning. He hadn’t raised a son. He'd funded one.
As for me? I was dangerously close to repeating the same damn story—too cowardly to break the pattern before it wrote itself into the next generation.