It was David who accidentally caused the dinner.
He had booked a table for the Phase Two team at Calla — one of the city's best restaurants — as a working dinner, which everyone knew was a polite fiction for "we are celebrating and pretending it's work." When he realized Nora had not been included on the invitation, he had gone red, apologized profusely, and added her with the kind of overcorrection that meant she absolutely could not decline without making it worse.
So she went.
The restaurant was warm and low-lit, the kind of place that softened everything — sharp angles, sharp words, sharp feelings. The team was relaxed in a way they never were in the office. David was telling a story about a disastrous server migration in Singapore. Someone had ordered wine.
Damien arrived twenty minutes late.
He stopped in the entrance, scanning the table, and his eyes found hers immediately — as they always did now, as if they had recalibrated to her location without his permission.
He took the only open seat. Which was, naturally, beside her.
"Mr. Cross," David said, flagging a waiter. "We've already ordered."
"Fine," Damien said, shrugging off his coat. "Whatever they're having."
The conversation resumed around them. Under the table, his arm settled on the back of her chair — not touching her, just close, the way a man sits when a room is crowded and he is not thinking carefully about his own body.
Or perhaps he was thinking about it very carefully.
"You look like you'd rather be somewhere else," he said quietly, under the conversation.
"I'm always somewhere else in my head," she replied.
"Where?"
She glanced at him. "Working."
"Even now?"
"Especially at dinners."
He almost smiled. "That's the most honest thing anyone has said to me at a work dinner in ten years."
"You surround yourself with people who perform enjoyment for you," she said. "It must be exhausting."
He was quiet for a moment, turning his wine glass slowly.
"It is," he said.
She had not expected him to agree. The honesty of it caught her off guard — cracked something small and carefully maintained in her chest.
She looked away.
"Nora." His voice was lower now. Meant only for her.
"Don't," she said quietly.
"I haven't said anything yet."
"I know what you're going to say."
"Do you?"
She turned to look at him. He was close — closer than she'd realized, the restaurant noise creating a strange privacy around them.
"You're going to tell me you're sorry," she said. "And you mean it. And it won't change anything."
He looked at her steadily. "You're right that I'm sorry. You're wrong that it changes nothing."
"Damien —"
"I spent two years not seeing you," he said. "I am not going to make that mistake again."
Her heart did something inconvenient.
She turned back to the table, picked up her water glass, and took a long sip.
Across the table, David was still talking about Singapore. The wine was being poured. Everything was exactly the same as it had been three minutes ago.
But the space between her and Damien had shifted into something she didn't have a name for yet.
And that frightened her more than anything else had.