Part 1
Outside Albany International Airport, the air was sticky and humid as the 10am August sun beat down on the Capital District. In one of the airport's small terminals, Damien was seated back on the stiff bench seat, legs crossed absently scrolling through his phone. He was dressed in a variation of his usual travel garb: a pair of fit jeans tucked into striped button-down sport shirt, one that was absent of neon flamingos, pineapples, and margarita glasses, and rolled up to the elbows. Across from him, Anne leaned over wringing her hands and mumbling to herself. Much to Damien’s delight, he was allowed the slightest peek at what lay beneath her blouse. While it wasn’t much as she too was dressed more casually for travel, a V-neck sports bra lay beneath an equally V-neck plain shirt, he knew that beggars couldn’t be choosers.
“You good over there?” he asked, and Anne met his gaze tentatively, playing with her necklace. He knew she was reciting the presentation over and over again, but there was something else underneath that. “I know you’re running through the keynote but it can’t possibly be just that, can it?”
She shook her head, sitting up straight, removing the view he was enjoying so much. “No, it’s not. I’m also stressed out about the rebrand proposal, and that other thing—the solar farm stuff. I feel bad for my team, who has—ugh, never mind.”
“Did you really just ‘never mind’ me?” he raised an eyebrow.
“You may be the CEO, Damien, but you’re not really my boss. And telling you some of this stuff could get me in trouble with my boss. Again. Complaining about my boss is what got me here in the first place.”
“You make it sound like it’s a bad thing—being here, I mean.”
She tossed him an exasperated look. “You know what I mean. It already feels like Charlie has it out for me, and the last thing I want to do is push any more of his buttons. I like my job enough to want to keep it.”
“Would you tell me if you didn’t want to keep it?”
“No, probably not.”
Damien laughed. “Tell me what’s going on anyway, and I promise I won’t let it get back to Charlie. I won’t even do anything about it if you don’t want me to.”
Her look was wary, but she spoke all the same.
“You’re more than aware at how happy and supportive Charlie has been about this rebrand since he found out,” she began, looking at Damien expectantly and he agreed. “It feels like since he’s learned about it, he has done absolutely nothing but try to sabotage it.”
“Sabotage how?”
“The solar farm project, for starters,” she explained. “He unloaded that project onto me and my team with a super tight deadline. I reminded him of the deadline for the proposal and only asked if we could push the solar farm project back a week because of the design team not only finishing up the rebrand, but also the graphics for our keynote. Naturally I was met with some variation of ‘you should have thought of that before signing up for projects I didn’t authorize.’ Then he said the solar farm was the top priority, made even more difficult by the fact not only by sheer volume and deadline, but also the fact that we had next-to-no details to work with so the lot of us are wasting time—yes, I said wasting time—trying to scrape together and invent language to sell something we know nothing about. That sheet you saw was all we had to go off of. It doesn’t matter how many apologies I give my team, they all want to kill me.”
“What deadline did he give you?”
“Same day as the presentation to the board.”
Damien felt a spark of irritation sour him, further curdling any dwindling respect Damien may have had for the man as the question of why Charlie had given her that piece of paper was finally answered. To add insult to literal injury, the pressure behind Damien’s eye elevated to an ache, certainly brought on by the increasing load of stress, in addition to the anticipation of being five miles high in a pressurized steel tube. Damien opened his mouth to reply, but Anne continued.
“And then there’s the contact I’ve been asking for. Do you remember telling me what you wanted for the international side of the branding proposal?”
Damien, knowing exactly the complaint she was about to make, lied and said he didn’t with a shake of his head.
“You wanted some international collateral materials, and some of that required being put in contact with some translators and whatnot. I harangued him for weeks about getting me a contact so I could get those pieces done. But he ignored and ignored and ignored. I only got a response on Monday, and totally don’t buy the ‘I’ve been tied up’ line.”
Anne let out a sarcastic laugh before she crossed the divide between them to take the seat next to him. She turned to face him, placing a hand on his arm involuntarily as she said, “Please don’t tell Charlie. Please. I know that might be a big ask given your position, but I’ve made enough waves as it is. I know I did just run to mommy and daddy, but I’d rather suffer in silence with him around than have to deal with more of his shit because I complained to you.”
Too late, Damien thought in amusement, feeling his heart skip as the heat of her hand bled through the sport coat and the faintest scent of lilac tickled his nose. He forced himself to hold eye contact with her as he contemplated what to say next, and felt more of the slack between them get taken up. It was like someone had taken a torque wrench and it had been cranked just a few more times. Click click click.
Damien didn’t want to lie to her about Charlie no longer being with the company. He opened his mouth to admit the truth when the PA overhead sounded that they were now boarding first class for the flight to Miami. Distracted by the announcement, she removed her hand from his arm, standing to gather her carry-on bag. He did the same and took the lead as they moved towards the gate.
After a long delay on the tarmac, a smooth flight, and a rental drop-top Mustang later, Damien and Anne arrived at their beachfront hotel.
“Did they put us next to each other?” Anne asked as Damien handed her the key card.
“Yes,” Damien answered with a hint of suspicion to his tone and a slight narrowing of the eyes. “Why?”
A crooked grin crossed her face, one that Damien had learned held somewhat irreverent and sly humor. “I just want to prepare myself in case you want to have a last minute meeting that probably should be an email.”
Of course that's the joke she would make, and in turn he too flashed a smile. He couldn’t resist it. In front of their rooms, his on the right and hers on the left, Damien held his keycard over the lock. It blinked green and chirped, and he turned the handle.
“What’s the plan?” Anne asked before he could step inside.
Damien turned to face her again.
“I thought that maybe you’d want to take some time for yourself before dinner. A long day of travel from one hot place to a hotter place calls for a shower and a nap. Naturally I have a bunch of stuff to deal with…”
Like the message from Gavin he’d swiped away earlier, one that had arrived as they had been waiting on the tarmac for takeoff. It still sat in his notifications, a low hum of annoyance at the back of his mind, much like the dread of having to sift through the nine hundred resumes HR had sent him regarding the President of Marketing position.
His eye upgraded to a throb at the thought of sifting through them all.
“...and I thought that maybe you’d enjoy some space away from me before we spend all day joined at the hip tomorrow.”
“Sounds good. Knock on my door at seven?”
“Will you be dressed this time?” He hadn’t thought about the words before he said them. And it wasn’t the words he said that alarmed him, it was the fact that he realized he didn’t care anymore that did alarm him.
Pink colored her cheeks, but she grinned again before speaking, that mischievous glint in her eyes again. “Only in my finest robe.”
He felt his heart skip.
Composure, Damien. Keep your shit together.
“I’ll see you at seven.”
After a lengthy dinner at a fancy Japanese restaurant— “This sushi is divine,” Anne had said with his favorite little shimmy she made when she tasted something good—Damien cautiously suggested they take a walk on the beach.
“A final bit of peace before the conference activities ramp up,” he had said to her, hope lacing his voice.
Anne agreed, appreciative of the chance to stretch her legs after the long day. Before long, her jeans had been rolled into cuffs and the two of them left footprints in the cooling sands behind the towering hotel. They couldn’t see the setting sun hiding behind the skyline, but around them the sky was still painted in summer hues of orange and purple, a soft breeze carrying the salty tang of the ocean, and beads of humidity clinging to their exposed skin. The rhythmic rumble of the waves rolling against the shore provided a soothing backdrop as they walked side by side, shoes in hand.
Damien, usually so composed, found the vista both relaxing and unnerving. As they walked, he struggled again; his proximity to her perpetually stirred a mix of emotions and desires he tried to manage. Away from the stiff formalities of boardrooms and offices that made it easier, albeit not much easier, to suppress and bury his feelings, a casual setting like the beach made it more difficult to maintain his professional façade—something that had become exponentially harder since their excursion to San Francisco where it had nearly slipped entirely. However, in among the surf, sand, and sea, it wasn’t lust rearing its hot, tempting head. It was the complex, real emotions that embraced her humanity he found so irresistible.
They were agony to Damien. He hated to think of how he would have to keep fighting against them until the end of time—especially caught in moments like the ones they were sharing at that very moment—like a fly in a silken web. In these moments where it seemed she was at her most authentic and charming self that reminded him how much he didn’t want to fight them anymore. It was exhausting, and the thought of him never being able to act on them was just as terrifying now as it was to realize he had the feelings in the first place.
Erik’s words played again and again in his head: “You need to express your feelings one way or another.”
Anne dropped her shoes at his ankles, and sprinted off towards the waves. Her hair was whipping behind her in the sea breeze, giggling and grinning wide as she splashed through the water until her pants were soaked to the knees, and pearls of bleached and eroded corals spotted the sands that settled over her feet as the water ebbed and flowed.
Damien realized his heart hurt, and without realizing it had crossed his arms over his chest as he watched her frolic with a childlike joy in the ocean. She stood akimbo, the waves frothing around her, her smile a beacon beaming in his direction. Standing there in the foam with her tousled hair, sparkling eyes, and cheeks limned with the colors of the sky, Damien knew that smile was his siren song.
“Is Mister Damien Wilson afraid of getting a little wet?” she challenged, taking a few steps backwards. “Or is he—
She shrieked and fell backwards onto her ass.
Damien started in surprise towards her, but slowed as the shrieking turned to laughter.
“No,” he said, rolling his own jeans into cuffs, moving through the water to tower over her, a smirk on his face. He extended a hand out to her and she took it, standing. Water dripped off of her, sand sticking to every part of her body that had touched both sea and sand. “I’m afraid of getting a lot wet. This outfit is Cuchinelli, you know.”
She rolled her eyes and rolled her pointer finger in an upward circle. “Whoop-dee-doo,” it said, before flicking her hand at him, a few drops of seawater stippling his shirt. But she was still smiling as she marched back to where she had dropped her shoes, plopping herself down on her butt, purposely now.
Hesitantly, Damien sat himself down beside her. She began brushing sand off of her one foot, peering at it.
“What happened?”
Under the dusting of wet sand on her foot, he saw a little semicircle on the pad of one toe oozing a drop of red. She looked at Damien flatly.
“Fucking crab got me.”
Damien ejected a laugh.
“Make that afraid of getting a lot wet and losing a battle to a little crab.”
“Little crab, big pincer. Asshole.”
“Me or the crab?”
“Pleading the fifth.”
“Jury’s out, then,” he said, watching her bury her feet in the sand again.
She scooped more with her hands over them, and then to his surprise, piled some on top of his feet too. She patted the growing mound of sand. He patted hers in return.
“How are you feeling about the presentation tomorrow?” He turned his head so he could see her. His voice was casual, but it felt like his tension was patent and loud. He shifted a little more, sending black fractals of fault lines splitting through the pile of sand. He wanted to see her more, harder now as the light rapidly faded around them. He hated the way his blindness felt more disabling, and ironically more visible, in times like this. All he wanted to do was see her clearly and fully. She was beautiful.
Anne didn’t acknowledge his movement, but continued to look out over the water, considering her response. “I’m very nervous, but excited,” she admitted after a moment. “I think we’ve got a strong message that will resonate. I know we’re both passionate—
“And knowledgeable,” Damien cut in.
“Don’t interrupt me,” she scolded, leaving Damien looking a little startled.
“Sorry. Carry on.”
Her voice was gentler. “I was getting there. We’re both passionate and knowledgeable about the content. But it’s the idea of standing up there in front of a full hall’s worth of people for the first time in God knows how long. I’m honestly a little afraid I’m going to disappoint you because you’ve put so much faith in me.”
Damien waited to make sure she was finished then nodded, understanding her mix of excitement and anxiety. “I appreciate the honesty. You’re going to be great,” he reassured her, his tone sincere. “You always are, even if you do happen to read off the note cards every once and a while. I won’t punish you if you do.”
The compliment brought an earnest smile to Anne’s face, and Damien cut his eyes away afraid that they lingered a little too long. The moment stretched, heavy with so many things he was aching to say.
Anne bumped his shoulder playfully. “Just make sure you don’t wear any Hawaiian shirts during our talk,” she joked. “I beg of you. I’m scared that because you didn’t show up this morning wearing one, you’re going to whip it out for all of our spectators. You did say you were at your sexiest when raiding the Tommy Bahama closet, and though that remains to be seen, I don’t want to see it. No palm tree jump scares.”
Damien chuckled, the sound mingling naturally with the soft crash of waves, before pointing past her to a tree a little farther down the beach by the boardwalk. She turned her head to follow the direction of his finger.
“Boo.”
She rolled her eyes, returning them forward.
“I promise no tropical prints. Just the usual boring executive attire. Three piece suit. Navy.”
“Oh, God. I’ll be so severely underdressed. I’m wearing business casual with full intent to switch into jeans immediately after. I’m not going to lie, I hate any and all business wear.”
“Actually, I’ll be overdressed,” Damien nodded in assurance. “Everyone else will be dressed like you. So, you dress like you, and I’ll dress like me. It works for the collaboration part. Two separate types of people working together.”
“I keep meaning to tell you,” she said, gesturing at the blue shirt he wore. “Blues, especially navy, is your color. It really brings out your eyes.”
The warmth and a flutter of butterflies that embodied his attraction to her filled him. “That’s very sweet of you.”
“Speaking of eyes.”
The warmth evaporated. A strange, self-conscious panic set in.
“You don’t have to tiptoe around it,” he said coldly, instantly. “It was a car accident.”
She looked alarmed. “I… what?”
“My eye, Anne. Just ask about it and get it over with.”
A moment went by before her expression softened a little. “I wasn’t going to say anything about your eye, Damien. I was going to say that we should give one more look at the presentation before tomorrow.”
The warmth he had felt moments earlier, one that had solidified into something icy and defensive, once again melted into something hot. But instead of the heat of attraction, it was the heat of humiliation.
She put her hand gently on his arm, and looked him dead in both eyes, evenly. “I figured that if it was ever something you wanted to talk about, then you would bring it up on your own time.”
There was a long beat of silence between them. “I’m ashamed that I accused you of that,” he admitted quietly as his embarrassment petered out.
“I’m saddened that your mind immediately jumped to thinking that’s what I was going to ask about, but that doesn’t mean I don’t understand why you might feel that way. I imagine you encounter a lot of people who want to ask intrusive questions about it every day. And based on your reaction, it’s also something you’re self-conscious about. Or at least hyper aware of when people notice it.”
“You noticed.”
“Of course I noticed, but it’s only one piece of the bigger you. A rather well-crafted, awfully convincing part of you, I might add.”
Damien watched as the final kiss of sunset painted a brush stroke along the gently curving shoreline ahead of them.
“You know, being here, doing all this… It’s not just the professional pressure. There’s a lot I keep under wraps, like dealing with…” He hesitated, then decided that it was time to trust her with a little bit of his vulnerability; installing a gate for her in the walls of his world. “Like dealing with my vision. Most people don’t realize what it’s like to navigate a room, a stage, or a life with one functioning eye. Add in the wealth component, and it just sounds like ‘woe is me.’ Trust me, I know I have a significant amount of privilege and leg-up when it comes to being disabled as a wealthy man.”
“I’m not judging you, Damien. I can’t imagine how tough it can be at times,” she said gently. Her response was full of genuine sympathy and respect, devoid of pity. “You can be honest with me. I hope we’re fr—”
There was an almost imperceptible pause before she continued, “comfortable enough with each other for honesty at this point.”
It wasn’t lost on him how she almost, but didn’t, say “friends.” Erik was wrong about that too. It was just another thing the power differential between them would never allow—defining it as a friendship. True friendship. That stung.
But that didn’t stop his shoulders from sagging a little as he appreciated her understanding, feeling weight lift from him. “As you’ve indicated, the prosthetic is obvious, but there’s not a lot of people I talk to about it or even know the story. Pretty sure Cathy is the only one in my corporate circle who knows the story, though I admit that despite how self-conscious I am about it, I do get a little masturbatory kind of glee in hearing everyone speculating what actually did happen. And from what I hear, that goes two ways. It either makes me sound like a badass, or it makes me sound incredibly weak.”
“What are your favorite tales?”
“I like the one where I got into a fight and got stabbed, or something.”
“Were you slaying a dragon?”
“Naturally.”
“How noble of you,” she said with a giggle. “Now, do you want to tell me what actually happened? I won’t push if you don’t want to tell me. But I’m here to listen to you.”
Anne waited as Damien considered. He drew a breath.
“It was a decade and then some ago, but somehow it still feels like yesterday. It was one of those brutally cold winter nights that came after a day that was unseasonably warm enough to melt the snow before the temperature plummeted.”
“I know the type.”
“It was a little after midnight. The sky was black and the stars and moon were out. It was honestly a beautiful night. I wasn’t driving a supercar, no. But I was certainly an overly-confident douchebag behind the wheel of what was still an expensive car with shit ton of horsepower. I’m sure you have an idea of where this is going.”
“Were you drunk?”
The way he heard disappointment begin to creep into her voice hurt him.
“No. Driving drunk has never crossed my mind once. Ever. And I was buckled too, which I almost certainly owe my life to.”
She nodded.
“I wasn’t flying, but I was definitely speeding. I was on my way back from New York in the home stretch, itching to be in my bed after a long day of meetings in Manhattan. So I was speeding on one of the natural curves of the road, except there was a huge sheet of black ice that I must have just hit in the right way…”
He trailed off, retreating inward as he was suddenly overcome by the memory of the sheer terror he felt in the moment. The bite of the cold air against his skin and the crepitating as the windows shattered. The way the car and wheels spun and screamed as he begged them for purchase, and the way the headlights illuminated the tree skeletons with every rotation, and the way he didn’t remember how to breathe, or simply couldn’t, as the seatbelt kept him locked in. But Anne’s hand on his arm brought him back to the beach in Miami.
“I woke up in the hospital a day later, missing an eye, Erik at my side. Nothing humbles you quite like smashing your face so hard against the steering wheel you get an orbital fracture, and whoopsie, rupture your eye.”
Anne grimaced.
“A few surgeries, whiplash, a nasty concussion, fractured wrist, and some broken ribs later… here I am. Apparently I rolled the car like nine times. Totaled it, naturally. Pretty sure I was knocked out at that point, thankfully. It took Erik all of an hour of my lucidity before he started making stupid jokes about missing an eye. He hasn’t stopped since.”
“You did say he never knows how to be serious.”
“I needed a laugh that day, as much as it hurt to do so with my ribs the way they were. His ineluctable humor has helped me get through some really tough times. Especially the year or so after the accident. You don’t appreciate how your life can change in an instant until it happens. Sudden change like that does a number on your self esteem as you learn to navigate a world with a newfound disability.”
“I can imagine it’s rather destabilizing.”
“And it’s a world that’s not necessarily sympathetic to disabilities either, even the ‘smallest’ ones. I’m ashamed to admit that I, too, was once part of that world who thought that way. I’ve learned a lot since then, and there are still some habits hard to break. There’s such a hostile undercurrent to something having a disability that could be construed as a ‘minor inconvenience,’ as opposed to a disability. It's seen, no pun intended, as laziness or an excuse, by people who are apathetic at best and don't understand, or want to.”
She waited.
“When you’re beside me in the car, I can’t see you. Do you know that?”
“I didn’t for certain. Inferred, I suppose.”
“Thankfully there’s blindspot technology now to help with that in the actual driving part. But it changes everything in your life in the most unexpected ways—hand-eye coordination, reading, using the internet. My balance, depth perception, and spatial awareness in general all got altered that day. You start to second guess every physical action you might make and think, ‘how could this disability hurt me right now if I don’t think this through?’ There’s some degree of underlying pain every day, just some days it’s more than others. Then there’s the people who stare and want to ask every invasive question that pops into their heads. Children are one thing. But adults who should know better…”
Damien noticed he had doodled a crude pictograph of an eye in the sand. He drew an X through it.
“That’s a lot of trauma to experience.”
“What’s a little bit more?” he said bitterly more to himself than to her. “Obviously I still love my cars, but I am considerably more nervous and cautious when driving in the winter than I used to be. SUVs and all wheel drive in the wintertime, from here on out.”
Anne was the one who shifted this time, positioning herself directly in front of him and sitting back on her heels. It didn’t escape him how she made an effort to make sure that he felt seen. Her lips curved into a gentle smile and her voice soft as she spoke. “I’m glad we’re here right now.”
A long few moments passed where the two of them just looked at each other. He suppressed a shudder that passed through him, feeling his pulse quicken.
“Also 3D movies suck now,” he said quickly.
“They’ve always sucked,” she said equally as fast, looking away, back towards the rumbling ocean. She opened her mouth and took a breath to say something else, but appeared to reconsider.
“What?”
“Do you ever wear an eyepatch?”
“Of course you ask that,” he said, but his voice was playful. “Yes. And while perhaps a little TMI, when it’s feeling especially painful and red is when I wear it, and it can get a little… runny.” He winced. “I don’t want people to think I have pinkeye. Thankfully it’s been a while since I’ve needed it, because that especially draws attention to the injury.”
“Maybe you should embrace it. I bet you look like a badass.”
He felt some different walls he’d built around himself, the ones meant to separate his personal desires from his professional duties, begin to crumble. The brightest stars and planets now poking through the overhead canvas of civil twilight, he had the most compelling need to kiss her. That need in this particular moment terrified him, but there was one small sane piece of his brain acting as the voice of logic—the keynote. Nothing could distract him, them, from that. And while it was a professional hurdle to clear, he also felt that maybe it was a precipice that might lead to something more profound. If the conversation they’d just shared was any indicator, it already had.
Damien stood, brushing himself off, suggesting they head back. Anne did the same, but failed to remove a majority of the sand that still coated her wet body and clothes.
Standing outside their respective rooms, Damien paused, looking down at Anne. “Thank you for the walk, Anne. It was… more helpful than you know.”
Anne met his gaze. “Anytime, Damien.”
“Do you still want to rehearse one more time?”
She considered, looked down at her sand-stippled clothes, then shook her head. “It’s late, and I think it’s more important to wash this off and get some sleep at this point. This outfit is rather itchy now, you know,” she said with an affectation of grandeur he knew was meant to tease him about his Cuchinelli remark.
Stepping inside and away from Anne’s presence and scrutinizing gaze, Damien felt the cocktail of emotions openly wash over him. It was one of anticipation and dread for what the next day would bring—not just for the presentation, but for whatever was unfolding between them. More than ever, he had a strong feeling it wasn’t one-sided, and had a stronger feeling that the finger in the dam for his resolve had been yanked free. The lines had officially blurred, and for the first time, Damien wasn’t sure he wanted to redraw them.