Chapter 205 205
“I want the full story,” Thérèse muttered for what felt like the hundredth time, her eyes narrowing suspiciously at Jacqueline, who was desperately trying to slip away from her friends.
The moment Jacqueline had stepped inside, they had descended on her like a pack, cornering her right in the middle of the hall. Even now, they refused to let her escape, hemming her in near the lockers.
“Trust me, guys, he was staring at her with those ridiculous googly eyes,” Gilles scoffed.
Fanny immediately frowned at him, and Jacqueline shot him the same disapproving look.
“I’ll agree he acted like she belonged to him,” Fanny said thoughtfully, “but his eyes were definitely not googly.”
Jacqueline nodded in agreement.
“What exactly are we missing here?” Laurent asked, raising a brow.
With every question they threw at her, Jacqueline felt the knot in her chest tighten. Her nerves were beginning to fray.
She couldn’t tell them everything.
The fewer people who knew about her past, the better. The moment they found out, they would start looking at her differently treating her with sympathy, with pity. And that was the last thing she wanted. She treasured the normal life she had with her friends far too much to risk losing it.
“Come on, Jacqueline,” Thérèse pressed, wiggling her brows mischievously. “How did that grumpy man go from avoiding you like the plague to holding your hands?”
The question made Jacqueline’s mind flash back to the night before.
Heat rushed to her cheeks instantly.
“Are you blushing?” Gilles gasped dramatically, staring at her in shock.
Jacqueline tried to shove those memories away before they could completely flood her mind.
“Jacq, I’ve been looking for you.”
A deep, raspy voice cut through the air.
Every single one of them froze.
The owner of the voice approached, his presence impossible to ignore. Thérèse and Fanny instinctively stepped aside, parting their circle to let him through, but Gilles and Laurent stayed exactly where they were, glaring at him with open hostility.
Their glares had absolutely no effect on him.
He stopped directly in front of Jacqueline.
She held her breath, sneaking a quick glance at him before immediately dropping her gaze.
Damien, being the possessive man he was, slid two fingers beneath her chin and gently lifted her face so she would look at him.
Before she could even process what he was doing, he leaned in and pressed a soft, brief kiss to her lips.
Jacqueline’s eyes flew wide open.
All around them, loud gasps erupted.
Damien pulled back calmly and moved to stand beside her, casually draping an arm over her shoulders. Then he turned his attention to her friends.
They stood there frozen eyes wide, mouths hanging open, their expressions a perfect mixture of shock and disbelief.
“You didn’t tell them?” he asked Jacqueline.
She blinked at him.
Just as lost as they were.
With a quiet sigh, Damien looked back at the stunned group.
“We’re dating,” he announced confidently.
“We are?” The words slipped out of Jacqueline’s mouth before she could stop herself.
The moment Damien shot her a pointed look, she snapped her lips shut.
“Y—yes,” she hurriedly corrected herself. “We are dating.”
“Since when?” Thérèse demanded, narrowing her eyes suspiciously.
Beside her, Fanny was already smirking at Jacqueline, clearly enjoying how flustered she looked.
“A month,” Damien replied smoothly.
Jacqueline sucked in a sharp breath.
A month.
It had been exactly a month since their first kiss.
“You two were missing for an entire month,” Laurent pointed out.
“Yeah,” Damien said calmly. “We were on the same flight. Your friend switched seats with the woman next to me, and this one” he gestured lightly toward Jacqueline “talked my ears off for the entire flight. Somewhere along the way, I realized she was cute. So, long story short… here we are.”
He finished the explanation as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
Meanwhile, all of Jacqueline’s friends stood there with their jaws practically touching the floor.
He thought she was cute?
“He talks,” Thérèse muttered under her breath, completely dumbfounded.
Jacqueline nearly burst into laughter and had to fight the urge to snort. This man had a strange ability to leave everyone speechless. He had barely spoken a word to anyone since arriving here, so hearing him casually explain something was enough to shock the entire group.
“Yeah…” Jacqueline mumbled modestly, offering her friends a shy grin as they slowly began processing the situation.
Truthfully, even she needed a moment to believe it.
Still, she felt incredibly grateful. Damien had effortlessly saved her with that story.
But the part where he declared they were together…
That had sent a flutter of giddy warmth straight through her chest.
“I can take the bus,” she said later.
Damien simply shook his head.
They stopped by Mathieu’s school to pick him up. The boy looked a little surprised to see Damien waiting there, but he still greeted him politely.
Jacqueline asked Damien to drop Mathieu off at Gilles’s place and then take her to the café, but instead, he drove them somewhere else entirely.
“I have work, Damien,” she reminded him calmly.
He didn’t respond.
A moment later, he parked the car.
Jacqueline looked up and realized they were standing in front of the hospital.
Her brows furrowed in confusion.
“Why are we here?” she asked softly.
Instead of answering, Damien stepped out and motioned for them to follow. He opened Mathieu’s door, taking the boy’s hand while Jacqueline moved to his side.
Together, they walked inside.
They had barely crossed the entrance when a man approached them. After exchanging a few words with Damien, he led them down the hallway and into the office of a well-known doctor.
They sat down as the doctor entered.
“The patient?” the doctor asked.
Damien gently patted Mathieu’s shoulder and guided him forward.
Mathieu nodded obediently and left the room with the doctor.
Jacqueline remained frozen in her seat, barely breathing as she stared at Damien, her eyes beginning to shine with unshed tears.
“You were waiting for the end of the month to receive your payment,” he said quietly, “just so you could afford his check-up.”
Her gaze dropped to her lap.
How did he see through her so easily?
She hadn’t shown him how anxious she’d been about it how the worry for her brother had been eating away at her day and night. Yet somehow, Damien had understood everything.
Once again, he had stepped in like her own personal knight in shining armor.
“I’ll pay you back,” she whispered.
Damien immediately shook his head.
Taking her small hand in his much larger ones, he gently lifted her chin so she would meet his gaze.
“Listen to me,” he said, his voice firm, his expression deadly serious.
“You are mine.”
Her heart skipped.
“And that doesn’t just mean physically,” he continued. “It means in every possible way body, soul, and heart. If you’re mine, then your worries are mine. Your responsibilities are mine too.”
The sincerity in his voice made her chest tighten.
His dark olive eyes locked onto her glassy brown ones.
“You’re my woman,” he said. “And I don’t like my woman carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. From now on, you tell me whenever something is bothering you. You don’t fight your battles alone anymore.”
His fingers tightened gently around hers.
“You have me now.”
A warm smile slowly spread across Jacqueline’s lips.
“And you’re my king,” she whispered softly.
It was barely more than a murmur.
But Damien heard it.
And his heart responded with a wild, uncontrollable flutter.