CHAPTER FIVE TITLE: A FUTURE WITHOUT ME.

Was he trying to get intimate with me?

Three years ago, I would have turned around. Three years ago, I would have melted into his touch and told myself this was enough that this was as close to love as I'd ever get from him. I used to convince myself that small moments like this meant something, that if I was patient enough, gentle enough, understanding enough, they would eventually turn into something real.

Not tonight.

I caught his wrist before his hand could go any further and pushed it away.

"Don't," I said quietly.

Lucas went still behind me. "Emma"

"You spent the whole night defending her." My voice came out steadier than I felt, though my heart was pounding so hard I was sure he could feel it through my back. "And now you want to touch me like nothing happened?"

"That's not what this is."

"Then what is it?" I turned to face him, and even in the dark, I could see the confusion in his eyes as if he genuinely didn't understand why I was upset. That, more than anything, told me everything I needed to know. Three years of marriage, and he still couldn't see it. "You don't get to yell at me in front of your family, take her side, and then climb into bed expecting me to just forget it."

"I'm not expecting you to forget it. I'm trying to fix it."

"You can't fix three years in one apology, Lucas."

He sat up slowly, the sheets pooling at his waist, and raked a hand through his hair. For a second, something close to hurt flickered across his face but it was gone before I could be sure I hadn't imagined it.

"So what do you want me to do?" he asked, quieter now. "Tell me, and I'll do it."

I want you to choose me. Just once. Without me having to ask.

I didn't say it. I'd spent three years saying it in a hundred different ways in the meals I made from scratch, in the meetings I memorized so he wouldn't have to, in the nights I stayed up waiting for headlights in the driveway that never came until dawn. He'd never once heard any of it.

"I want to sleep," I said instead, and turned back toward the window, watching the city lights blur through unshed tears.

The silence that followed felt heavier than any argument. I heard him exhale, heard the mattress shift as he settled back down, careful now to keep distance between us. For a moment, I let myself believe the night was over. That we could both just close our eyes and let this day end.

Then the bedroom door flew open.

No knock. No warning. Just the sudden slam of it against the wall, hard enough that the sound cracked through the quiet like a gunshot. Sophia stood in the doorway in a thin silk robe, her hair loose around her shoulders, her eyes wide and glassy like she'd been crying for hours.

"Lucas." Her voice cracked, trembling in exactly the right places. "I need you. Please."

I shot up in bed, pulling the blanket instinctively around myself. "Sophia, what are you doing in our"

"Something's wrong with the wiring in my room." She wasn't even looking at me. Her eyes were fixed entirely on Lucas, pleading, desperate, like I wasn't even in the room at all. "The lights keep flickering, and I heard something in the walls, and I didn't know who else to call at this hour"

"That's what staff is for," I cut in, sharper now. "It's midnight, Sophia. Call Henry. Call maintenance. Call anyone but"

"Emma." Lucas's voice was low, warning, the same tone he used in boardrooms right before he shut down an argument for good. He was already throwing back the covers.

I stared at him, disbelief settling cold in my chest. "You're not seriously about to go check her *wiring* right now. At midnight. Personally."

"It'll take five minutes." He grabbed a shirt off the chair, not quite meeting my eyes, the buttons half-fastened as he moved.

"Five minutes," I repeated, and the words tasted bitter. "Like the airport was going to take five minutes. Like every single time she needs something, it only ever takes five minutes."

Sophia pressed a trembling hand to her chest, and for just a second so brief I almost missed it I caught the flicker of something sharp and satisfied cross her face before it dissolved back into the fragile, frightened woman she wanted us to see. Gone so fast I could almost convince myself I'd imagined it. Almost.

"I'm sorry," she said softly, finally glancing my way, her lower lip trembling just enough. "I didn't mean to interrupt anything."

Didn't mean to. She'd stood in that doorway long enough to hear every word we'd said to each other. Long enough to time her entrance perfectly, right as the silence between us had started to feel like it might turn into something else. She knew exactly what she was interrupting. She'd probably been listening at the door for longer than either of us realized.

Lucas was already at the door, keys forgotten, phone left behind on the nightstand. He paused there, looking back at me like he actually expected me to say something to stop him, maybe, or to tell him it was fine, the way I always did.

I said nothing. I didn't have anything left to give him tonight.

"I'll be right back," he said.

He wasn't.

I sat alone in that massive bed, staring at the door long after his footsteps had faded down the hallway, Sophia's voice trailing softly beside his, already lowering into something more intimate than a conversation about faulty wiring should ever require. Ten minutes passed. I told myself I was overreacting. Then twenty. I told myself it didn't matter anymore, that I'd already made my decision days ago in that notebook locked in my drawer, that a man checking on faulty wiring shouldn't be able to hurt me like this.

But it did. It still did, and that was the part I hated most.

At half past midnight, I finally got up, wrapped a robe around myself, and walked barefoot down the long corridor toward Sophia's wing, telling myself I only wanted to see for myself what kind of electrical emergency required my husband's personal attention for thirty minutes in the middle of the night.

The hallway outside her room was dark and completely silent. No flickering lights spilling from beneath the door. No sound of anything wrong buried in the walls. Just the low hum of the air conditioning and my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.

I stopped a few feet from her door, my hand hovering in the air, not quite ready to knock, not quite ready to walk away either.

Through the narrow crack where the door hadn't fully latched, I could hear Sophia's voice, low and trembling in a way that had nothing to do with faulty wiring.

"Lucas, please don't leave. Not yet. Just stay a little longer like the old days."

I held my breath, waiting for his answer. Waiting for him to remind her that those days were over, that he had a wife three doors down, that whatever they used to be to each other no longer had a place in this house.

But there was nothing. No answer at all.

Just silence, stretching long and unbearable behind that door and the faint, unmistakable sound of the light switch clicking off.