The sheets were still warm when Chriss pulled away. Toria lay still, her heart racing, her fingers searching the mattress for his hand. They found only cooling cotton. She stared at the ceiling, listening to the faint hum of the air conditioner. Her breathing was uneven, and her body felt strangely heavy. She had imagined this night differently. She had imagined tenderness, whispered words, perhaps even a kiss on her forehead afterward. It was their eighteenth month of marriage. Surely, by now, she deserved something more than this. He sat on the edge of the bed with his back to her. She counted his breaths. Four. Five. She waited for him to turn. To say her name. To touch her hair, the way husbands did in the films she watched when the house was empty. "Don't move," he said. Not are you all right. Not stay. "What?" "Stay on your back. Knees up." He checked his watch like a man leaving a meeting. "It improves the chances." The air left her lungs. "The chances of what?" She knew. She needed him to say it. "A son." He pulled on his trousers. "I want a son, Toria. I've never hidden that." "You said it like I'm a field you're planting." He didn't answer. He didn't even look guilty. She swallowed, trying to push down the humiliation crawling up her throat. She had spent months convincing herself that things would eventually become easier between them. That perhaps Chriss simply needed time. That once they had a child, something inside him might finally soften. But listening to him now, she wondered whether he had ever considered what she wanted. Something inside her went quiet. Not broken. Broken was loud, and she had done that in the bathroom with the tap running. This was a door closing from the inside. "I want a divorce." Chriss stopped, his shirt half buttoned. Then he laughed. It was low and amused, and it hurt worse than a slap. "You always mean it at night." He sat beside her, close enough that she smelled his cologne and her own perfume on his skin. "Remember the girl who waited by the window when my car was late? Who ironed my shirts herself?" "That girl was an idiot." "That girl adored me." He tucked her hair behind her ear. The gentleness was the cruellest thing he had done all night. "She'll be back by morning." Toria caught his wrist. Her hand was shaking, so she gripped harder. "Look at me. I'm not her anymore." For one heartbeat, something flickered across his face. She couldn't name it and didn't trust it. Then it smoothed away like a wrinkle from a tablecloth. "You came into this marriage with a suitcase," he said, "and a father who couldn't wait to be rid of you." She flinched. He saw. He always saw, and he always pressed the bruise. She hated that he knew exactly where to hurt her. He knew about the arguments with her father, the years of feeling unwanted, and how desperately she had wanted to build a home where she would never have to feel that way again. Apparently, she had chosen the wrong man. "And Lisa?" he added pleasantly. "Such a charming bookshop. The lease, the stock, the renovation last spring. Funny how much of it I paid for." Her blood turned to ice. "You wouldn't." "I wouldn't have to. I'd only have to stop. Money is quiet that way. No one shouts. It just stops arriving, and by Christmas, six years of your cousin's dream is an empty room." "That's not generosity," Toria whispered. "It never was." She looked at him, searching for something. An apology. A sign that he understood how cruel his words were. Anything that might convince her that the man she had married was still somewhere beneath the coldness. There was nothing. At the door he paused, one hand on the frame. "Goodnight, wife." Click. The sound of the door closing seemed louder than it should have been. Toria remained where she was, staring at the empty space he had occupied only moments earlier. She remembered Lisa last spring, a smear of yellow paint on her cheek, crying when the loan came through. You're an angel, Lisa had said, hugging her so hard her ribs ached. An angel. Or a leash. She remembered how happy Lisa had been that day. How she had talked endlessly about expanding the shop, introducing new collections and finally having a place of her own. Toria had been happy for her too. Now, even that happiness felt contaminated. She pressed her face into the pillow and finally let it break, silently, so the house would never know. Morning came as if nothing had happened. Sunlight lay in neat squares across the breakfast table. The toast was cut into triangles. Chriss sat behind his newspaper, ankle on knee, a man with nothing on his conscience but the weather. The housekeeper had prepared breakfast as usual. Everything was in its proper place. The silverware was polished, the curtains were drawn neatly, and the coffee smelled exactly as it always did. Only Toria felt different. She had imagined he might look different. Tired. Sorry. Something. His tie was perfect. His hand didn't shake. "Good morning," she said. "Morning." He didn't look up. Eighteen months, and a night that had taken her apart, and the whole of it was morning. She lifted a piece of toast. Set it down. The jam glittered, red and indecent, in its little glass dish. Her phone buzzed against the table. Lisa: Sunday dinner?? Bring Chriss! Love you, angel x Toria turned the phone face-down. Her wedding ring caught the light, and she twisted it, once, twice, like a tooth she wanted to pull. She wondered how many times she had sat at this same table, waiting for him to finish breakfast so they could spend a few minutes together before he left. How many times had she mistaken his presence for affection? "You've eaten nothing," Chriss said. Her head snapped up. His eyes hadn't left the page. "I'm not hungry." "You weren't yesterday. Or the day before." She stared at him. He turned a page. He was never home for dinner. He barely looked at her across a room. Yet he had been counting her meals, silently, privately, and he had never once said so. A crack in the wall. Tiny. And Toria hated herself for the way her heart leaned toward it. Perhaps he did notice her after all. Perhaps there were things about her that he paid attention to, even when she wasn't looking. But she quickly pushed the thought away. She was tired of searching for affection in the smallest things he did. She stood. "I won't be home today." The newspaper lowered an inch. "Where are you going?" "Out." "Toria." She kept walking. In the driveway she switched off her phone and watched the screen go black, and a small, wicked thrill ran through her, like stepping off a ledge she had stood on for years. For once, she wasn't waiting for him to decide whether she could leave. She wasn't waiting for permission to breathe, either. The front door opened behind her. "Midnight," Chriss said. His voice was perfectly calm. "Be home by midnight." She didn't turn around. "And if I'm not?" He didn't answer. That was the part that frightened her.

The cinema smelled of buttered popcorn and old carpet, and Toria had never loved a place so much. For the first time in eighteen months, she wasn't waiting for someone to tell her what to do. She watched three films back-to-back. A comedy where she laughed too loudly, a thriller whose ending she barely remembered, and a romance where a man chased a woman through an airport in the rain, begging her not to leave. Toria sat in the darkness with her hands pressed against her mouth, crying so quietly that the stranger beside her politely pretended not to notice. She envied that woman on the screen. Not because someone was chasing her, but because someone was afraid of losing her. No one asked where she'd been. No one needed her to be a daughter, a wife, a vessel, or a promise kept. She ate chips for lunch and ice cream for dinner. She walked along the harbour wall with her shoes in her hand, letting the cold wind scatter her hair. For a few precious hours, she forgot about the expensive house, the unanswered questions, the endless arguments about children, and the husband who could barely look at her without finding something to criticize. As the lights came on across the water, she thought, with a clarity that scared her: This is what it feels like to belong to myself. It was nearly midnight when she finally turned her phone back on. The screen lit up almost immediately. Forty-one missed calls. All from one name. Chriss. Her stomach tightened. She stared at the notifications, scrolling through them as if the number might somehow change. He had called repeatedly, sometimes three times within the same minute. There were no messages. Not even one. She slipped the phone into her handbag and ordered a cab. The house was dark when Toria arrived. She unlocked the front door quietly, careful not to make a sound. She had no intention of explaining herself tonight. She was exhausted, and for once, she wanted to go to bed without having to defend her existence. She made it three steps inside before a hand closed around her arm. Toria screamed. The lamp snapped on. Chriss stood in front of her, his hair wild, his shirt creased, and his chest heaving as though he'd run all the way home. "Jesus, Toria!" His hands moved over her face, her shoulders, and her arms, turning her one way and then the other. "Are you hurt? Did anyone touch you? Where have you been?" His voice cracked on the last question. He stopped. Toria couldn't breathe. His palm was warm against her jaw. His thumb trembled slightly as he brushed her cheek. In his eyes, for one unguarded second, was something so raw and frightened that every wall she'd built in the cinema came tumbling down. He was worried. He was worried about me. "Chriss," she whispered. The shutters slammed. His hands dropped. His expression changed so quickly she almost questioned what she'd just witnessed. His face became cold, perfectly and terrifyingly cold. He stepped back as though she had burned him. "Where were you?" The softness in her chest curdled. "Out." "I called you forty times." "I counted." His jaw tightened. "Who were you with?" "No one! I was alone. Is that so impossible?" He stared at her handbag, then back at her face. "Don't lie to me." "I'm not lying!" "You expect me to believe you disappeared for an entire day without telling anyone where you were?" "Anyone? Or you?" His eyes narrowed. "Toria." "What? You want an explanation? Fine. I went out. I watched movies. I ate. I walked around. I did absolutely nothing wrong." "And you couldn't answer your phone?" "I didn't want to." The silence that followed was suffocating. She watched him decide to be cruel. "You can't be trusted with an afternoon, and I'm meant to trust you with a child?" Her lips parted. "Eighteen months, Toria. Eighteen months, and you still can't do the one thing a wife is for." Something inside her snapped. She didn't remember crossing the hall. She only remembered the flat crack of her palm against his cheek. Chriss turned his face slightly. Before he could respond, her fists were hammering against his chest. "I am not a thing!" He caught her wrists. "Stop." "No! I'm not something you use whenever you feel like it!" "Toria..." "I am your wife, not some machine you expect to produce a child!" Her voice broke. Eighteen months of swallowed arguments, lonely nights, and unanswered questions came pouring out of her. He held her wrists until her strength finally gave way. Then he pulled her against him. She fought for another second before collapsing, her face buried against his shirt. He said nothing. His heart was racing beneath her cheek. Maybe it had been racing for forty missed calls. Maybe, for one moment, he'd actually been afraid of losing her. "That was unforgivable," he said eventually. His voice was rough and unusually quiet. "What I said. I'm sorry." Toria pulled away and wiped her face. "No. You're not." She didn't wait for an answer. She went upstairs. She did not enter their bedroom. The guest bedroom smelled of lavender and dust. Toria sat on the unused bed, staring at the unfamiliar curtains. She pressed both hands against her stomach. There was something Chriss didn't know. Something she'd buried so deeply that sometimes she convinced herself it had never happened. Six months ago, she'd been pregnant. Two pink lines. She remembered standing in the bathroom, holding the test with trembling fingers, waiting for the overwhelming happiness everyone said a woman felt when she discovered she was going to become a mother. But joy never came. What came instead was fear. A cold, animal terror. A child would bind her to Chriss forever. It would give him another reason to control her, another expectation to place on her shoulders. She had imagined sleepless nights, a crying baby, and a husband who would still turn his back on her. Three weeks later, she woke up in a pool of blood. The hospital smelled of antiseptic. A doctor had spoken gently, explaining what had happened. She remembered nodding. She remembered the apology. And she remembered feeling something far worse than grief. Relief. The realization had frightened her more than the miscarriage itself. She had wanted the baby gone. Or perhaps she'd only wanted to escape the life that came with it. She had never told Chriss. She'd called it a bad cramp and buried the truth. But sometimes, in the middle of the night, a small voice asked the same question. What if you wanted it gone? She pulled a pillow into her arms and rocked gently until the sky outside turned grey. The door opened without a knock. Chriss stood in his shirtsleeves, looking at the made bed, then at her. His gaze shifted to the small bag she'd dragged out of the closet. "Our bedroom is down the hall." "Your bedroom." He stepped inside and shut the door. The room suddenly felt smaller. "Get up." "No." His eyebrows drew together. "What?" She stood to face him, although her knees felt like water. "I said no. I'm done, Chriss." "Don't start this." "I won't share a bed with you. I won't have sex with you. Not tonight, not tomorrow, not until you stop treating me like a transaction." Shock crossed his face. Then anger. Then something she would have called panic in any other man. "You're my wife." "Not your property." "You're making this unnecessarily difficult." A bitter laugh escaped her. "Am I? Because from where I'm standing, you've made my entire life difficult." He ran a hand over his face. "You don't understand what you're doing." "Then explain." Her voice broke despite her efforts to control it. "Why a son, Chriss? Why me? You can't stand me. You barely speak to me unless it's about getting pregnant. So why do you need me to be the one?" Silence. He looked at her the way he had the night they met, measuring, unreadable, deciding how much truth she could survive. "Do you even know," he said very quietly, "why I married you?" The question dropped between them like a stone into a well. Toria stared at him. "You married me because..." She stopped. Because he'd asked. Because her father had said it was a good match. Because she'd been twenty-four, hopelessly in love, and convinced that marrying the man she wanted was the beginning of everything she'd ever dreamed of. She had never questioned it. Not once. Chriss watched the understanding crawl across her face. And for the first time since she'd known him, he looked away first. "Go to sleep," he said. Then he turned and left, closing the door behind him. Toria remained standing in the middle of the room. For eighteen months, she'd believed she understood the man she'd married. Now, alone with the silence he'd left behind, she wasn't sure she'd ever known him at all.

Toria She didn't sleep. By morning, the question had worn a groove in her mind. Why did I marry you? She replayed Chriss's words until they became almost meaningless. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the way he'd looked away, as though meeting her gaze had become impossible. She walked into the dining room already braced for another argument. Chriss was waiting at the table, dressed in a crisp white shirt, scrolling through his phone. A cup of untouched coffee sat beside him. He looked up when she entered. "Where did you go yesterday?" Toria pulled out a chair. "We've done this." "You never answered my question." "Because it's none of your business." She poured herself some coffee, keeping her hands steady. He put his phone down. "I'm your husband. Of course it's my business." A humourless smile touched her lips. "Interesting. You vanish for days, and I'm not allowed to ask questions. Last month, you were gone for four nights. Who was she, Chriss? Should I start wondering about her name?" His cup stopped halfway to his mouth. "Don't be absurd." "Am I?" She took a sip. "I've smelled perfume on your jackets that isn't mine. I've watched you turn your phone face-down every time it lights up. I've stopped asking where you go because I've realised you don't owe me an explanation." His expression hardened. "Be careful, Toria." "Maybe next time I go missing, it should be with someone." The cup hit the saucer too hard. "Was that yesterday?" She frowned. "What?" "Was there a man?" A strange, ugly laugh rose in her throat. "You don't want to touch me, talk to me, or even sit across a table without hiding behind a newspaper. But the thought of another man makes you shake?" "Answer me." "Give me a divorce." His face became unreadable. "When I have my son." The words came calmly. Final. Like a door locking. Toria stared at him. "Why?" He didn't respond. "Why, Chriss? If you hate being married to me, why would you want a child with me?" He opened his mouth. For a moment, she saw the same hesitation she'd noticed the previous night. A man standing at the edge of a cliff, afraid of what waited below. Then her stomach lurched. A hot, sick wave rolled through her without warning. She slapped a hand over her mouth, shoved her chair back, and ran. She was still on her knees on the cool washroom tiles when she heard his voice through the wall. The study. He was on the phone. Toria reached for the sink, rinsing her mouth before standing. She hadn't intended to listen. But then she heard her name. "...I'm doing what we agreed." She froze. There was a pause. "No, she doesn't know. She still thinks..." Silence filled the room  "Alexa, I told you this would be a problem." Her father's name went through her like a needle. She moved towards the connecting door, which never quite met its frame, and pressed her ear against the gap. "You said she'd understand. You said she married me knowing." Her father's voice came faintly through the phone. Smooth and patient. The voice he used whenever he wanted someone to agree with him. Then Chriss laughed. "Because she was in love with me? That's not an answer. That's a convenience." Toria stopped breathing. Knowing what? What had her father told him? "One more year, then. I give you your heir, and I'm released." His voice sharpened. "A male child. Those were the terms. I don't care what you promised her. I care that you promised me I could go back to my life. To Joan." The name landed like a dropped glass. .... Toria had never heard that name before. Yet somehow, she knew it. It was the perfume on his jackets. The late-night calls. The turned-over phone. The four nights he had disappeared without explanation. .... The world narrowed into a bright, roaring tunnel. She had thought the nightmare was that Chriss didn't love her. The nightmare was that he'd never been hers to love. She had walked down an aisle in a dress she hadn't chosen, towards a man she hadn't been told the truth about. And the one person who was supposed to protect her had signed her away like a piece of land. Her stomach turned again. She barely made it to the sink. When Toria finally looked up, the woman staring back at her in the mirror looked like a stranger. She wanted to leave. The thought came suddenly and refused to disappear. But with what? The accounts were joint. The cards were his. Her father's influence stretched further than she understood. Even victoria's little shop, the one place she could breathe, suddenly felt like another thing that could be taken away. Chriss had money, lawyers, connections. Her father had all three. And she had nothing except a handbag and a marriage certificate. The walls she'd thought were merely unhappy had become walls. She washed her face, fixed her hair, and walked out of the bathroom. Chriss was standing in the hallway, perfectly composed. A man who had just discussed selling her future with her father. "Lunch?" he asked. "Just us." She stared at him. "We've been on one date." He frowned. "Before we married. You spent most of it on your phone." "Toria..." "I'm seeing victoria." She brushed past him before he could say anything else. victoria's shop smelled of paper and cinnamon. It was one of the few places where Toria didn't feel the need to measure every word before speaking. Robert was standing near the poetry shelf, arguing with victoria. "It sells nothing," he said. "It's a beautiful shelf." "It's the saddest shelf in the shop." "So is your face." victoria threw a duster at him. Robert caught it, grinning, before pulling her towards him and kissing her temple. Toria stood in the doorway, clutching her handbag. Such a small thing. Teasing. Warmth. Hands that reached for each other without thinking. She watched them for a moment longer than she intended. She had never been touched like that in her life. Not even by her husband. The bell above the entrance rang. She turned. Chriss stood in the doorway, his coat hanging over one arm. "Don't mind me. I was passing." Robert's arm fell from victoria's waist. The atmosphere changed immediately. victoria's smile disappeared, and Robert stepped away from her as though he'd suddenly remembered something important. Toria noticed. She hated that she noticed. The people she loved had become polite and careful around her husband, like children around a dog that might bite. She excused herself and disappeared into the little kitchen. Of course, Chriss followed. "I want us to try." Toria turned around. He stood near the doorway, his expression unusually restrained. "Try what?" "Us." She stared at him. "After eighteen months?" He didn't answer. "Right after you start talking about a son, you suddenly want us to try?" "Toria, listen..." "What happens when the baby comes? Be honest, just once." A long silence followed. Then he said, "You'd keep him." Her chest tightened. "Keep who?" "Our son. You'd have full custody. I'd go back to Italy. I'd visit a few times a year." She stared at him, unable to believe what she'd heard. "A few times a year?" "He'd have everything he needed." "Except a father." For once, Chriss had no answer. Toria looked away, fighting the tears gathering in her eyes. "I've never chosen anything, Chriss. Not my dress. Not my wedding. Not this house, or even who I'm allowed to see." Her voice trembled. "Your choices, my father's choices. Everyone deciding what was best for me while I smiled and said thank you because I thought that was what love felt like." She swallowed. "I did love you. That part was real. I walked into that church with a whole heart. You walked in with a contract." He flinched. "It wasn't only a contract," he said roughly. "There was love in my reasons. Just not for..." He stopped. Toria's eyes narrowed. "Whose love?" He said nothing. "Whose love, Chriss?" His gaze travelled somewhere beyond her shoulder, somewhere far away that she would never be allowed to visit. That was answer enough. "You have never been my husband." The kitchen fell silent. Even the distant sounds from the shop seemed to disappear. "I'm sorry, Toria." The apology sounded dragged out of him. He turned and walked away. A moment later, the shop bell chimed. Toria remained standing among the teacups, trembling. She felt hollow. And, impossibly, a little free. Then she noticed something. Chriss's phone. It lay beside the sugar bowl, forgotten. For the first time in eighteen months, he'd left it behind. She stared at it. She knew she shouldn't touch it. But the name she'd heard in the study was still ringing in her ears. .... The screen lit up. A message appeared. ...: I can't wait any longer. Tell me you've told her. Toria's pulse thundered. Told her what? Her eyes remained fixed on the screen. Then, slowly, her hand reached for the phone.