Chapter 80: The Unraveling Truth.

Lisa’s POV

I don’t remember when the silence began to feel so loud.

It has now invaded every crevice of my day, weaving its way into the intervals between conversations, the quiet after meetings, and the empty spaces between the sound of keys on my keyboard. My head should be full of numbers and strategies and deadlines, but all it contains are irrelevant snippets.

The line of Leo’s jaw when he’s contemplating, the way his eyes deepen in color when a thought roots itself, the heat of his hand that briefly covers mine in the conference room and that I remember on my skin when I’m in the storage room, as well as the touch of his lips on mine, all those images recycle themselves endlessly against my will. I try to concentrate on numbers in rows, but his face is there where the digits belong, as if I had carved him into the substance of my mind.

From across the room he, too, appears now just as preoccupied. I see him observing me in those moments when he assumes I don’t know, and now when we come face to face, we no longer look away quite as quickly as we once did.

The moment lingers, hung up and delicate, before one of us makes the world start spinning again. Even that, reality feels thin, like glass that might shatter from a single word or touch.

When the city is bathed in the twilight, fatigue wraps around me, not so much the physical fatigue resulting from long work hours but the emotional fatigue that permeates the marrow of your bones.

We are told to stay late for a coalition dinner with a couple of partners from a neighboring district. I would have found a polite excuse to slip out early on any other day, but today, I’m staying.

The restaurant is bathed in soft golden light.

Without thinking about the fact that Leo has already taken the seat directly opposite me, I sit down. When I raise my eyes and connect with his, nothing else matters or exists. The same tightness from the storage closet snaps between us, except now it’s bulked up, it’s more sincere, and a hell of a lot less contained.

“Are you okay?” he asks quietly. I don’t trust myself to talk, so I just nod once, even though there’s a lot more to the truth than that simple nod would indicate.

“Long day,” he observes, but his words sound as though they’re directed at me.

“Yes,” I whisper. “Long enough.”

Now, even as the other voices talk of logistics and profits and how their business ought to expand, they are drowned out among the white noise. I am all too cognizant of the distance between our two chairs, the unseen string drawing me to him.

Our feet meet under the table – I know it – and I also know it is no accident. My instincts are telling me to move away, to dissimulate it was an accident… but I’m not.

So I stand my ground as his foot presses harder under mine, a question mutely asked in a foot, an admission, and, a temptation all rolled in one. Not fully understanding my own decision, I fight back, and when my eyes meet his I catch the slightest hesitation in his face—the slip in his facade.

Blurred is the rest of the dinner. As he slides my glass across to the server, our fingers briefly meet, and that small touch sends a jolt of consciousness through the carefully constructed walls I have around myself.

Even as he reclines in his chair, it is still to my eyes that he turns, as if he could not see the rest of the table. Even when he’s laughing at a comment made by someone else, it’s me he looks at, to share that laugh.

The realization frightens me.

“You are distracted this evening,” he says.

“Well, so are you,” I say in surprise at my own frontal honesty.

His eyes hold me as the overhead light in the room diffuses the intensity I normally see in them.

“I can’t concentrate,"he confesses.

“Then stop looking at me,” I mutter.

“I don’t want to,” he said, and this time there was no hesitation.

My heart is pounding, slow and heavy as the reality starts to sink in. This is not anymore about nearness or situation. Not the obliging partnership of two people tied by contracts and expectations. This is something else, something that is lucid beyond reason and logic.

When the dinner finally draws to an end and people begin reaching for their coats, Leo is beside me almost in an instant.

“You don’t need to walk me out,” I tell him, aware that it’s a feeble attempt at distance.

“I want to,” he says.

Outside at that moment, the air of night is cold, very cold, and more solid than any walls could ever be. The city murmurs as though nothing earth-shattering is occurring, but within me something is moving uncontrollably. We stop in front of the door, the space between us a live wire humming with all that we refuse to say aloud.

“I don’t want to go back,” he says.

Those words settle deep within me. A silent agreement flows between us, not oppressive in this moment, but rich and incontrovertible. He smiles -- not the polished, public smile that the world sees, but the one I am the only one allowed to see -- and I smile back, feeling a warmth between the us that I never thought could exist.

Whatever we were before, we are no longer that.

And for the first time since the day we exchanged our careless vows, I don't think of our marriage as an error or an encumbrance.

Tonight it’s like something is due to be reborn. Only this time the truth isn’t written in ink or notarised by contracts. It’s written in the way we look at each other, in the way our silence is louder than any words could ever be.