Updated Oct 25, 2025 • ~12 min read
Sienna didn’t hear from either brother for three days.
Radio silence from Lucas was expected—she’d shattered his trust, humiliated him, destroyed whatever future he’d imagined for them. She deserved his silence and probably a lot worse.
But Damon’s absence felt like abandonment.
No texts checking if she’d eaten. No mysterious deliveries of things she needed before she knew she needed them. No car idling outside her building at midnight.
Just… nothing.
She told herself it was better this way. Space to think, to process, to figure out what the hell she was supposed to do now that her carefully constructed lies had imploded.
But on the third night, sitting alone in her apartment with lukewarm tea and ultrasound pictures she couldn’t stop staring at, she felt the loneliness like a physical ache.
Her phone rang at 11:47 PM.
Damon.
She answered before she could talk herself out of it. “Hello?”
“You need to get dressed.” His voice was clipped, urgent. “I’m outside. We need to talk.”
“It’s almost midnight—”
“I don’t care. This can’t wait.” A pause. “Please.”
The please was what made her move.
She threw on jeans and a sweater that barely concealed her bump anymore, grabbed her keys, and headed downstairs.
Damon’s car was illegally parked in front of her building, hazards flashing. He leaned against the hood, still in his work clothes—suit rumpled, tie loosened, looking like he’d been through a war.
“Get in,” he said.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere we can talk without you running away the second things get uncomfortable.”
“Damon—”
“Please, Sienna. Just—get in the car.”
She did, against her better judgment, and they drove in tense silence through the city. Past the late-night diners and closed boutiques, toward the waterfront where the city lights reflected off dark water.
He parked at an overlook she’d never been to—isolated, quiet, the kind of place where secrets could be spoken without witnesses.
“What happened?” she asked when he cut the engine. “With Lucas. What did he say?”
Damon’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “He disowned me.”
“What?”
“Not legally. But effectively. Said he never wants to see me again, that I betrayed him in the worst possible way.” His voice was flat, emotionless. “He’s cutting me out of the business, moving his division to a different floor, told our mother he refuses to be in the same room as me.”
Guilt crashed over her. “Damon, I’m so sorry—”
“Don’t.” He turned to face her. “Don’t apologize for this. Lucas is hurt, angry—he has every right to be. But what I need to know is what you’re planning to do about it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean—” He took a breath. “Are you going to try to fix things with him? Convince him the baby could be his, that the timeline’s fuzzy, that we were all confused?”
“No. I’m not going to lie anymore.”
“Good. Because I won’t let you.” His intensity filled the car. “That’s my son, Sienna. Mine. And I’ll be damned if he grows up thinking Lucas is his father just because it’s more convenient for you.”
“I wasn’t planning—”
“Weren’t you?” He leaned closer. “You’ve been lying for months. What’s to stop you from continuing? Lucas is the safer choice, the easier option. The one who makes sense on paper.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?” His eyes burned into hers. “Tell me right now—if Lucas called you tomorrow and said he forgives you, that he still wants to marry you, raise the baby as his—would you say yes?”
The question hung between them, dangerous and damning.
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
“That’s what I thought.” He turned away, jaw tight. “You’re still trying to find a way out. Still looking for the path that causes the least destruction.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Everything!” His hand slammed the steering wheel. “Because there is no clean ending here, Sienna. Someone’s going to get hurt. Someone’s going to lose. And you need to decide who that’s going to be.”
“It’s not that simple—”
“It is exactly that simple. Lucas or me. Safe or real. The lie or the truth.” He twisted in his seat, and there was something raw in his expression. “I’m asking you to choose me. Choose us. Choose the messy, complicated reality instead of the perfect fiction.”
Her throat tightened. “And if I can’t?”
“Then I’ll fight you.” No hesitation, no apology. “I’ll go to Lucas myself, tell him the truth about the timeline, about that night. I’ll get a paternity test the second that baby’s born, make sure everyone knows he’s mine. I’ll fight you in court for custody if I have to.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.” But there was pain beneath the anger. “I’ve already lost my brother. I won’t lose my son too.”
“This isn’t about taking sides—”
“Yes, it is. That’s exactly what this is about.” He grabbed her hand, pressed it to his chest where his heart hammered. “I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you since before that night, and I’m done pretending I’m not. So yeah, Sienna—I’m asking you to choose a side. Mine.”
The confession stole her breath.
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do. I love you—your ambition, your stubbornness, the way you fight me on everything. I love how you take your coffee and the fact that you’re terrible at asking for help. I love that you’re carrying my son and that you’re terrified but doing it anyway.” His voice cracked. “I love you, and I need to know if there’s any chance you feel the same.”
She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think past the pounding of her own heart.
“Damon—”
“Don’t.” He released her hand. “Don’t tell me you need time to think, or that this is complicated. Just—answer the question. Do you love me?”
Yes. The answer screamed through every cell in her body.
But saying it out loud meant burning bridges, destroying Lucas completely, choosing chaos over safety.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she said instead. “Be with you, I mean. We’ve been enemies for three years. We barely know each other outside of competition and that one night.”
“So we’ll learn. We’ll figure it out together.”
“And Lucas? Your family? The fact that everyone will know I got pregnant from a one-night stand with my biggest rival?”
“I don’t care what anyone thinks.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re Damon Cross. You’re untouchable. I’m the woman who slept with one brother and got engaged to the other.” Her voice rose. “Do you know what they’ll call me? Gold digger. Manipulator. Worse.”
“Let them talk. I’ll know the truth. You’ll know the truth. That’s all that matters.”
“Is it? Because Lucas knowing the truth didn’t exactly work out well.”
“Lucas deserved honesty from the start. You owed him that.” Damon’s expression softened. “But you don’t owe him a lifetime of pretending. And you don’t owe the world a relationship that makes sense to anyone but us.”
God, she wanted to believe him. Wanted to surrender to the possibility of something real with Damon, consequences be damned.
But three years of rivalry didn’t just disappear because of good sex and an accidental pregnancy.
“What if we can’t make this work?” she asked quietly. “What if we’re too different, too damaged, too—”
“Then we’ll fail spectacularly and co-parent like adults.” He traced her jaw with his thumb. “But we’ll have tried. We’ll have given our son the gift of knowing his parents chose truth over convenience.”
“You make it sound noble. It’s just messy.”
“Life is messy. Love is messy.” His forehead pressed against hers. “But I’d rather have messy and real than perfect and false.”
She closed her eyes, breathing him in—cologne and certainty and the reckless hope that maybe, possibly, this could actually work.
“I can’t promise you anything,” she said. “I can’t promise I won’t screw this up or that I know how to be what you need.”
“I’m not asking for promises. I’m asking for a chance.”
“To what?”
“To prove that what we have is more than just biology and one incredible night.” His lips brushed her forehead. “To show you that choosing me isn’t settling for chaos—it’s choosing something that could be extraordinary.”
The word hung between them—extraordinary, impossible, terrifying.
“Okay,” she whispered.
“Okay?”
“Okay, we can try. But Damon—” She pulled back to meet his eyes. “If this goes sideways, if we hurt our son by being together when we should have stayed separate—”
“We won’t. I won’t let that happen.”
“You can’t control everything.”
“Watch me.” His smile was fierce. “I’ve spent three years trying to beat you professionally. Imagine what I can accomplish when I’m actually on your side.”
Despite everything, she laughed. “You’re insane.”
“Probably. But so are you, for even considering this.” He kissed her then—not desperate or demanding, but sure. Certain. Like he’d already mapped their future and was just waiting for her to catch up.
When they broke apart, she was breathless and terrified and inexplicably hopeful.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“Now?” He started the car. “Now I take you home, make sure you eat something because I know you skipped dinner, and tomorrow we start figuring out how to build an actual relationship.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. Unless—” He glanced at her. “Unless you want to go to my place instead. No ulterior motives. Just—I don’t like the idea of you alone right now.”
The offer was tempting. Dangerously so.
But Sienna had spent months making decisions based on fear and convenience. Maybe it was time to start making choices based on what she actually wanted.
“Your place,” she said. “But you’re feeding me first.”
His grin could have powered the city. “Deal.”
Damon’s penthouse looked different than she remembered from that night—or maybe she was just seeing it through clearer eyes. Still expensive, still intimidating, but somehow less cold.
He ordered Thai food while she explored, touching the books on his shelves, the art on his walls, the evidence of a life she’d never really considered before.
“You collect first editions,” she said, running her fingers over leather spines.
“Guilty. My one non-work-related obsession.” He appeared beside her with water. “Drink. You’re growing a human.”
“I’m aware.”
“Are you? Because you keep forgetting to take care of yourself.”
“I have a lot on my mind.”
“Then let me take care of you. At least for tonight.” He guided her to the couch. “Food’s on the way. Until then, talk to me.”
“About what?”
“Anything. Everything. I want to know you, Sienna. Really know you. Not just the competitor, not just the woman I got pregnant. You.”
So she talked. About growing up with a single mother who worked three jobs. About putting herself through college, clawing her way up in a field dominated by men who thought she was decoration. About building her career brick by brick and being terrified that one mistake—one night—would destroy everything she’d worked for.
Damon listened without interruption, and when she finished, he said, “That baby isn’t a mistake.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant. But Sienna, our son—he’s not the end of your ambition. He’s just a different chapter.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. Because I know you. And you don’t give up on anything you decide matters.”
The words settled something in her chest.
The food arrived, and they ate on his couch—her curled into the corner, him close enough to touch but giving her space. They talked about safer things: her favorite books, his terrible taste in action movies, the fact that they both secretly loved terrible reality TV.
It was easy. Comfortable in a way she’d never expected.
“This is weird,” she said eventually.
“What?”
“This. Talking to you like you’re not my sworn enemy.”
“I was never your enemy.” His expression was serious. “I was your equal. Your match. The only person who could keep up with you.”
“You stole my clients.”
“You deserved better clients. I was doing you a favor.”
She threw a pillow at him, and he caught it, laughing.
The sound was so genuine, so unguarded, that it made her chest ache.
“Stay,” he said when the hour grew late. “Not—I’m not trying to seduce you. Just stay. In the guest room. Let me make you breakfast, drive you to work tomorrow. Let’s try normal.”
Normal sounded impossible.
But looking at Damon—at the hope in his eyes, the careful way he was trying not to push—she found herself nodding.
“Okay. One night. Normal.”
“One night,” he agreed. “And then tomorrow, we figure out the rest.”
She fell asleep in his guest room, in sheets that smelled like expensive detergent, and dreamed of a future that didn’t feel quite so terrifying.
But she woke at 3 AM to her phone ringing.
Lucas.
Her heart pounded as she answered. “Hello?”
“I need to see you.” His voice was rough, like he’d been crying. “Please, Sienna. We need to talk.”
She glanced at the door, thought of Damon sleeping down the hall, of the choice she’d almost made.
“Okay,” she heard herself say. “When?”
“Now. I’m outside your building.”
“I’m not—I’m not home.”
Silence. Then: “Where are you?”
She closed her eyes. Another choice. Another consequence.
“I’m at Damon’s.”
The sound he made was part laugh, part sob. “Of course you are. Of course. That’s—” He took a shaky breath. “You know what? Never mind. Forget I called.”
“Lucas, wait—”
But he’d already hung up.
She sat in the dark, phone clutched in her hand, and wondered if choosing Damon meant losing Lucas forever.
“You’ll never belong to him,” Damon had rasped that night at the engagement party.
And maybe he’d been right all along.
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