The knock came just before sunrise.
Amelia blinked awake, heart skipping a beat. For a moment, she thought it might be another letter slipped under her door, another cruel whisper from someone who didn't believe she belonged in his world.
But when she opened it, Damian was standing there in jeans, a T-shirt, and a dark green coat that made his eyes look impossibly vivid. A duffel bag hung off one shoulder, and in his other hand he held two travel cups of coffee.
"Get dressed," he said.
She blinked. "Excuse me?"
"We're going away."
"What?"
"Just for a few days," he said. "No headlines. No board meetings. No expectations. I booked a cabin upstate. No press, no service, no plans. Just us."
"Damian…"
He stepped forward, pressing one of the warm cups into her hand. "I know you're scared. I am too. But I also know that if we stay here, we'll start reacting instead of living. And I don't want this thing between us to become a performance. I want to remember what it feels like when it's just you and me."
She stared at him.
And then she smiled.
Twenty minutes later, she was throwing clothes into a bag, heart racing in a way that had nothing to do with fear.
They left the city behind as the skyline faded in the rearview mirror. The radio hummed softly—something acoustic, something that felt like breath after drowning. Amelia curled up in the passenger seat with her feet tucked under her and her camera around her neck.
Damian glanced at her. "You planning on documenting the great CEO escape?"
"No," she said with a smirk. "I'm planning on remembering this. In case it's the last time we're allowed to be ourselves."
"You think they'll come for us?"
"They already have."
Damian didn't reply. But his hand reached for hers, resting on the console between them, and she threaded their fingers together.
The cabin was hidden by trees and wrapped in silence. It smelled of cedar and old stories, with a fireplace that crackled to life the moment Damian coaxed it into flame. There was no TV. No cell signal. Just a record player, some books, and each other.
That night, they sat on the floor in front of the fire, wrapped in a single blanket, their wine glasses forgotten on the table.
"I used to dream about disappearing like this," Amelia said softly. "Just vanishing from the noise. Becoming nobody."
"You're not nobody," Damian said, watching the way the firelight danced on her skin. "You're the only real thing I've ever had."
She turned to him, eyes soft. "What about your company?"
"It doesn't hold me at night."
That made her laugh—but it was the kind of laugh that carried tears with it.
"Tell me something you've never told anyone," she whispered.
He took a breath, gaze flicking to the fire.
"When I was seventeen, I ran away for a night. Took my father's car and drove to the beach. I didn't take anything with me. I just sat there for hours, staring at the water, wondering if everything they were building me to be would be worth it."
"And was it?"
He looked at her. "Not until you."
There was a silence after that—thick and warm and holy.
She leaned in, cupped his cheek, and kissed him like she was finally claiming him—not as a secret, not as a risk, but as a choice.
Later, tangled in sheets that smelled of pine and sleep, he traced lazy patterns across her spine and whispered, "We can make it through this."
She nodded against his chest. "As long as we keep choosing each other."
The wind howled outside, bending the trees like prayers.
But inside, in that little cabin tucked far from the world, they weren't CEO and writer, scandal and story.
They were just two people in love.
Two people finding peace between the silence and the storm.