Chapter 41 — Something Like Normal

He texted on a Wednesday afternoon. Not about the evening or the suite or anything that required a coded answer.Just: *Saturday morning. Early. I know somewhere quiet.*I read it twice.Then: *Okay.*He picked me up two streets from my building at seven-thirty, before the city had properly woken up. I got in the car and he glanced at me once and pulled back into the road without ceremony, which I appreciated. No preamble. No checking whether I had changed my mind.We drove for about twenty minutes, out of the central streets and into a quieter neighbourhood I didn't know well — wide roads, old trees, the kind of area that felt like it belonged to a slower pace of life.He parked outside a small place on a side street. The kind of café that didn't have a sign you could read from the car, just a window full of warm light and two tables outside that nobody was using yet."You've been here before," I said."Occasionally. They don't know me." He opened the door. "That was the point."Insi

Chapter 42 — Chloe Sees Something

It happened at the gallery.The Meridian show was the kind of event Chloe had been excited about for two weeks — she had texted me about it four separate times, sent a photo of the outfit she was planning, and arrived twenty minutes early to walk the first room before the crowd filled in. By the time Damian and I arrived separately, she had already identified three pieces she wanted to discuss at length and one artist she was prepared to argue about."You came," she said when she saw me, immediately linking her arm through mine."You asked me four times.""Because I wasn't sure you'd actually come." She pulled me toward a large canvas on the far wall. "Look at this one. Tell me what you see."I told her what I saw. She disagreed with most of it, which was exactly what she had been hoping for."No, no — see the way the light falls on the left side? That's not accidental. He's doing something with the asymmetry." She tilted her head. "You're looking at the surface.""Most people look at

Chapter 43 — His Past

I found it by accident.I was in the study looking for a charger — the kind of errand that had become unremarkable over months of coming and going through this house, when I opened the wrong drawer.It was near the back. A photograph, not framed, just loose between two folders like it had been placed there quickly and not moved since. I almost closed the drawer without looking properly.I didn't.The man in the photo was Damian, unmistakably, but a version of him I had never seen. Younger — not dramatically, just enough to show in the set of his shoulders, the slight looseness around his jaw. He was laughing. Properly, genuinely, the kind of laugh that didn't know it was being observed. The kind I had never once seen on his face in all the months I had known him as something more than Chloe's father.Beside him was a woman.She was turned slightly toward him, her hand on his arm, her expression warm in the particular way of someone completely at ease with the person beside them. She w

All Chapters of Ruined by My Best Friend’s Father: Chapter 41 - Chapter 43

Chapter 41 — Something Like Normal

Chapter 42 — Chloe Sees Something

Chapter 43 — His Past