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He paused for a moment, something that looked familiarly like pain turning his lips down before he regained control of it. “Yep. I’m the eldest of three. Two younger sisters.”
Hmm.
Were they the complicated part he spoke about when he talked about his family? Obviously, I was an only child, but I’d experienced enough sibling rivalries growing up around Abby and her siblings.
“Oh,” I said. I wouldn’t push it further—hell, it was the most information he’d ever willingly offered me. I’d been given more personal info from my pet rock when I was seven.
I pulled a hair tie from my purse and swept my hair back into a ponytail. The sun was falling lower in the sky, but it hadn’t cooled down any from earlier this afternoon. The traffic had reached a crazy level, too, so we’d left my car in the shaded parking lot and once again taken to the streets of the city by foot.
Damien had even stopped to buy a short-sleeved shirt. Of course, it was black, but the damn thing fit him like a glove, even though it’d come right off the hanger.
“Can I ask—”
He jerked his head toward me with a firm look.
Right. Don’t ask if I can ask. Just do it.
Like Nike. Except I usually put those yoga pants on to watch Netflix, so maybe not that kind of just do it.
“Do you ever take a day off?” I turned to face him.
His eyebrows raised, and pleasant surprise shone out of his dark eyes, twisting his lips up slightly. “From what? Work, or annoying you?”
I was tempted.
I settled for saying, “Work.”
Damien stared at me for a moment before he responded. “No. Not really. I don’t have much of a reason to. What would I do? Wander around my empty house? Sleep? Play video games?”
“Do you have a video game console?”
“No.”
“Well, then, that was a stupid idea.”
His mouth twitched to one side before he started laughing. “I didn’t mean it literally. It was just an idea. But, literally: the answer is no. I don’t take time off. Something always needs to be done, no matter where I am or what I’m doing. My attention is always required.”
“Wow.”
“What?”
“I just…I can’t imagine doing all the things that you do all by myself.” The admission had me tearing my gaze from him and looking at a tree on the opposite side of the street. “How do you not go crazy? There are so many different clubs and staff members and managers. The mere thought makes my head spin.”
“I’ve learned to delegate,” he said slowly. “I deal with the, shall we say, broader picture of things. A lot of the stuff you deal with is probably far more personal than I ever will. That’s the manager’s job. Mine to make sure everything lines up.”
“But there’s nobody to take your place. If I need a break, I know I can count on Abby. Hell, she just did it for months when I left.”
“You were grieving. There’s a difference.”
“It doesn’t mean I was right to leave.” I sighed and sat up straight, looking down at my feet. “The longer I’m here, the more I know I was wrong to go for three months, no matter how much I was hurting. But I could, so I did. I had someone here who could take up the slack for me. I could have a breakdown tomorrow and my business would be okay. Do you have that? Do you have anyone who would do the same thing for you if you broke?”
Damien slid his hands from his pockets and clasped his fingers behind his head. “No.”
He didn’t go on.
“Just no?” I asked.
“Just no,” he confirmed. “I have nobody. My father could do it for a few days, but he’s worked his entire life and shouldn’t have to. Otherwise, I have nobody who could or would do this for me.”
“Not even…your sisters?”
“Neither of them are able to.” Vagueness surrounded his answer, as simple as it was. “Even if they could, they probably wouldn’t.”
“That’s sad. I like to think that if I had a brother or sister, they’d help me.”
“If you had a brother or sister, your life would be very different,” Damien said quietly. He dropped his arms, laying one along the back of the bench. His fingers brushed my hair as his hand fell down next to my shoulder. “Your childhood would be filled with memories of fighting for attention and never being good enough unless you were the princess. Which, honestly, you probably would’ve been.”
I would’ve argued that, but it was true.
“There was always something.” He stared out in the same direction I’d been looking for the past few minutes. “Whose turn it was in the bath, why was there no hot water, where the hell was the TV remote, why was there no space on the DVR, why didn’t you get off the phone…It was an endless stream of bullshit that, given the chance, I’d probably take back. Not all of it. They deserved the shit occasionally. But sometimes, I would.”
