Yours, Forever

Chapter 54

Damien folded the last of the shirts he had taken out of the closet, neatly into the small traveling bag on the bed.

The time for his flight wasn't long now so he needed to get a head start. He wasn't packing a lot of things, just enough for a few days and when he was done with the shirts, his eyes skimmed through the room to check for anything else he might be missing.

As he began to zip up the traveling bag, his phone vibrated in his jeans pocket.

Praying silently that it wasn't work related, Damien slipped his phone out and smiled a little when he saw it was his mother calling. As long as it wasn't work, it was fine and also it had been a while since he'd heard from her.

"Mother." He greeted, zipping the bag with one hand and then carrying it to the corner of the room, "How are you doing?"

"Hey, honey." She cooed from the other end, "I'm okay. I just wanted to hear from you. Are you good?"

Damien flipped through the documents he had procured from his bottom drawer, his left hand firmly holding his phone to his right ear as he replied,  "Yeah I'm great, thank you."

"That's good. So... according to what we spoke about the last time, you're not busy at all this week, nor do you have any important meetings or projects. So this means that you're free to have dinner with your sister and I, right?"

Damien chuckled, dropping yet another file in the pile of documents he needed his secretary to attend to while he was gone. "So you're keeping tabs on me now? Is that right?" He asked joking and his mother responded by letting out a small laugh, "Hey, you did tell me that yourself. But... back to dinner. What would you like to eat? I could make all your favorites. I won't skip even one, you just trust me."

Damien paused in the middle of flipping through a document. He couldn't come to this dinner because of his flight, and he also couldn't tell his mother no, because he didn't want her to know about his trip to London as it would bring up a lot of questions. None which he felt like discussing.

"Um... I can't do dinner, mom." He finally said, feeling bad internally. He had turned down her offer so many times, and this was so unusual of him. It was also beginning to look like he was doing it on purpose, and he didn't like it at all.

"Oh, come on, Damien. You assured me that you wouldn't be busy this week. Your sister and I have been looking forward to this. Layla wants to see you so much. She wants to tell you about her school ceremony coming up, amongst some other things Damien, come on."

He could note the hurt in her voice and he even imagined her sulking as she said this, and guilt pinched him hard in the chest.

Sighing, he pushed the files he was looking through and tried to gather his words, "Mom, I really want to hang out with you and Layla. It's been a while and I think it'd be very nice, but I can't. I can't because... I'll be going on a trip to London. The flight's already been booked."

As soon as the words left his mouth, Damien instantly regretted it and the heavy silence that instantly descended was not helping. His mother knew how much he despised that place, and the vow he had never made never to go back was not lost on her, so it was bound to come as a shock to her naturally.

"London?" She finally breathed, her voice strained but curious, "Why are you going to London Damien? What business do you have there? Is there something you are not telling me?"

Damien sucked in a deep breath. He didn't want to talk about this, but he knew there was no way to avoid it, so he spilled the beans. He rarely hid things from his mother and no matter how hard he tried, she always had a way of knowing about so keeping it from her seemed useless. "I'm going to see Madison, no the Connors rather. I know it's strange, but there are so many things that I still don't..."