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Chapter 55 – A Tapestry of Missed Moments
“Why didn’t you approach me sooner?” The question hung in the air between us, heavy with unspoken possibilities.
Damien’s expression softened as he leaned against the railing beside me, our shoulders. almost touching. The city lights twinkled below us like fallen stars.
“I wish I had,” he admitted quietly. “But my time in Xuzhen was brief. My grandfather believed in strict discipline–1 was only there for summer training before being sent to a military academy.
I nodded, encouraging him to continue.
“After those encounters, I asked about you whenever I visited Kuzhen, but you weren’t there. Your grandmother had passed away, and there was no trace of you.”
The mention of my grandmother brought a familiar ache. She’d been my safe harbor in a stormy childhood. When she died, I’d lost my only refuge from my father and stepmother’s home.
“But we actually crossed paths again” Damien continued, surprising me. “During your first year at Huada University”
“What?” I straightened up, searching my memories. “I don’t remember seeing you
there.
“I was a postgraduate student,” he explained. “I saw you on enrollment day. You were wearing a yellow sundress, looking completely lost until someone showed you to the administration building”
The memory clicked into place. “That was when I first met Victoria! She helped me find my way around campus.”
“No, Damien’s voice quieted. “It wasn’t just Victoria with you that day.”
My heart sank as I understood. “Julian was there too.”
Damien nodded, his jaw tightening slightly at the mention of my ex. “You looked… happy. Completely captivated. He was carrying your bags, and you were looking up at
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him like he hung the moon”
I winced at the description, recognizing myself in it. “I was so love–struck back then. Completely naive.”
“You were young and in love,” Damien said kindly. “I saw how devoted you were to him. It didn’t seem right to intrude.”
“So you just… watched from afar?” The thought of Damien observing my my knowledge should have unsettled me, but somehow, it didn’t.
life without
“Not exactly. I was busy too. After that brief sighting, I was sent to the Northwest Desert Research Base for nearly two years on a government project.”
“Two years in a desert?” I raised my eyebrows.
“It was important work,” he said simply, in that way he had of dismissing his own accomplishments.
“By the time I returned to the city, I was focused on establishing my position in the family business. And you were…”
“Still with Julian,” I finished for him, suddenly feeling a strange sense of loss for what might have been.
“You were building your own success with your designs,” he nodded. “Your relationship seemed solid from the outside. I didn’t want to disrupt that.”
I laughed bitterly. “Some solid relationship. Six years wasted on someone who’d throw it all away the moment something shinier came along.”
Damien’s fingers brushed against mine on the railing–the touch so light I could almost believe I’d imagined it.
“Not wasted,” he said firmly. “Every experience shapes us. Even the painful ones.” The wind picked up, sending a chill through me. Damien immediately removed his jacket and placed it around my shoulders. The fabric carried his scent–sandalwood and something uniquely him,
“Thank you
you, I murmured, pulling it closer around me. “So you went from the scrawny kid I rescued to postgrad and desert researcher in record time?”
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He chuckled, the sound warm in the cool night air. “I was small for my age as a child. A late bloomer. My grandfather worried I’d never make it through military training”
I tried to reconcile this with the commanding man standing before me–tall, broad–shouldered, and radiating quiet strengt
“You?” 1 shook my head in disbelief. “I can’t imagine you as anything but… well, this.” I gestured vaguely at his impressive height.
“Believe it or not, I was the shortest boy in my class until I was sixteen.” There was a hint of remembered pain in his voice. “Being the ‘Sterling runt‘ was… challenging.”
“What changed?”
“My grandfather’s intervention,” Damien said. “When the other military kids were too rough, he doubled my training rather than pulling me out. Made me run extra miles, lift more weights, practice combat techniques until my muscles screamed.”
1 frowned. “That sounds harsh.”
“It was,” he agreed. “There were nights I cried myself to sleep. But by the time I hit seventeen, the growth spurt finally came. And when it did, I had years of discipline and technique that the other boys lacked.”
The vulnerability in his admission touched something deep within me. This powerful. man had once been a struggling child, just as I had been.
“Is that why you finished school so quickly? Your grandfather’s discipline?”
“Partly,” Damien nodded. “I completed high school two years early and university in three years instead of four. When you’re raised with military precision, procrastination isn’t an option.”
“And your academic brilliance had nothing to do with it?” I teased, nudging his arm slightly.
He smiled, a rare full smile that transformed his serious face. “That might have helped.”
“Did your grandfather approye of your career choices? He sounds like the type who’d want you in the military.”
“He wanted me prepared for anything,” Damien said. “The Sterling family has always straddled multiple worlds–business, politics, military. He understood the value of my
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research work, even if he complained about my ‘soft hands‘ whenever I visited.”
I laughed at that, imagining a gruff old general inspecting Damien’s palms with disapproval.
“What about you?” he asked. “Did you always want to be a designer?”
“Always,” I nodded. “Though my father wanted me to study business management to help with his company. I compromised by double–majoring.”
“Overachiever,” he teased.
“Says the man who finished university early while working on classified desert
research!”
Our laughter mingled in the night air, and I realized how comfortable I felt with him. This shared history–even one I hadn’t been aware of until tonight–created a
connection that felt both new and ancient.
“I wish we’d met properly back then,” I said softly. “At university.”
Damien’s eyes met mine, and the intensity in them took my breath away. “Would you have noticed me? With Julian beside you?”
The question hung between us, honest and challenging. I considered it carefully.
“Probably not,” I admitted. “I was so focused on him, on our future together. I had
tunnel vision.”
“Then perhaps the timing wasn’t right,” he said, his voice gentle. “Some paths need to converge at the right moment.”
I couldn’t help but wonder about all those missed connections–the years that could have been, the pain that might have been avoided. But looking at him now, I also felt a strange sense of rightness, as if all those near misses had been preparing us for this precise moment.
“My grandfather used to say something about timing, Damien continued, his voice taking on a reflective quality, “He said that in battle, attacking too soon or too late can be equally fatal. The right moment reveals itself to those patient enough to wait.”
“And was that why you finally approached me at the hotel? The right moment had arrived?”
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“I’d like to say I planned it that carefully,” he admitted with a self–deprecating smile. “But the truth is, seeing you in that moment–so hurt yet still standing tall–I couldn’t stay away any longer.
His honesty disarmed me. Here was a man who could have invented any noble reason, who could have portrayed himself as my calculated savior, instead admitting to a human impulse.
“Do you know what my grandmother used to say about me?” I asked, feeling a sudden lightness.
“What?”
“She said I was like a bamboo shoot–I looked delicate, but I could break through concrete if I had to.” I smiled at the memory. “She’d be shocked to know I’d end up here, on a terrace with the mysterious Sterling heir.”
“I don’t think she’d be shocked at all, Damien countered. “She’d probably say you were exactly where you were meant to be.”
As our eyes met again, I felt a rush of warmth that had nothing to do with his jacket around my shoulders. There was something almost predestined about how our lives had circled each other for years before finally aligning.
“Did you know,” Damien said suddenly, his voice dropping conspiratorially, “that before my grandfather’s intervention, I was actually the neighborhood troublemaker?”
I laughed in disbelief. “You? Mr. Perfect Sterling? I don’t believe it.”
His eyes danced with mischief. “I once set off firecrackers in the military compound’s officers‘ bathroom. And that’s just one of many incidents.”
The image of a small Damien running from angry officers made me laugh harder than I had in months. He joined in, and for a moment, we were just two people sharing joy under the stars, the weight of our complicated histories temporarily lifted.
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